Breadth

Disclaimer: Yah, so you give me copyright to deh eff eff seben, yah? Nein? Damn, focking Americans who dink dey own even deh Japanese games.

Chapter Two

The trip back to "Edge" wasn't a short one, it turned out. This made sense, but Lain still found it amusing to find herself hopping off the back of Cloud's bike only to arrive before another of Cloud's "pit stops." It had gotten dark a while ago, and Lain could only guess that Cloud wanted to eat something and sleep between now and the rest of their epic journey. Cloud cut the engine and dismounted the bike after her, lifting his goggles off his blue eyes. Lain was taken aback to notice that Cloud's eyes, which had seemed just regular blue in daylight were now glowing luminously.

"Um, dude...?" Cloud looked at her wordlessly as he twisted the sticky doorknob. "Your eyes are like, glowing..." Cloud seemed to find this information neither new nor interesting. In fact, he almost looked like what she'd told him had been said so often that it was getting annoying.

"It's the mako," he said simply, forcing the door open. Lain looked at him blankly, then decided not to ask. It would only make Cloud think even more that she was stupid, strange, or something to that effect. Walking inside the shack after Cloud, Lain looked around.

This one was rather better furnished upon closer inspection, which made Lain think that this one was probably used more often than the one she had come across. It had a futon and a couch this time, and featured a small woodstove with a fairly decent pile of logs next to it. Not to mention a working door. Lain pulled off her trench coat and dropped it on the couch, stretching and plopping down on it.

Cloud pulled a large pot off a shelf and emptied two cans of some kind of chowder into it. He loaded the stove full of wood. As though this was as natural as breathing, Cloud leaned forward, hand outstretched to the wood, and, after a greenish glow emitted from his wrist, out of nothing, flames began crackling and wood started popping.

"How the..." Lain muttered, "how did you do that?"

"Haven't you ever seen materia used before?" said Cloud, looking over his shoulder at her. Lain shook her head, nonplussed. He shrugged, as though making an effort to no longer be surprised at her ignorance. Lain in turn decided to try not to be surprised by anything for now; she'd be very interested to see who was walking around this city they were heading to, Edge. Knowing her luck there'd be people with fishbowls for heads walking around, like in Abarat or something.

"All right, I guess I'll show you," Cloud said, turning away from the stove and standing from his previously kneeling position. Lain stood as well, hooking her thumbs into her belt loops. Cloud procured a small green sphere from one of his metal gauntlets. She hadn't noticed it before. "There are different kinds of materia; this is a magic one," he held up the green sphere. "Magic materia is green, Summon is red, Command is yellow. This is a Fire materia, which lets me cast Fire spells, like what I used to light the stove."

"How do you use it?" Lain said, enraptured. If she hadn't just seen Cloud do it, she would have told him to stop pretending and realize that she was, in fact, seventeen, not some fantasizing little kid.

"You have to equip it first. Materia can be equipped to weapons or armor. I'd have you do it, but you don't seem to have any of either. Here, look," Cloud said, and held it against his gauntlet again. The green materia glowed before absorbing back into the gauntlet as though it were able to compromise its own solidity. It glowed as part of the gauntlet for a moment, then dulled out of sight.

"Crazy shit," was Lain's only comment. Cloud ignored her and went back to the stove where the soup was now bubbling and giving off a nice smell. The magic-using blondie whisked the pot off the stove and procured some rough bowls and a couple spoons, serving first himself, then asking, "Hungry?" It seemed a bit strange that he should ask, after all, it wasn't as though he could very well consume two whole enormous cans of soup by himself. Never the less, she nodded, and he filled a bowl for her as well.

The chowder turned out to be some kind of creamy potatoey concoction quite heavy-handed with hydrogenated bits of parsley. It wasn't something that Lain felt she had had before. It was hot, which made certain that she ate fairly slowly, though she was still eating a hint on the quick side of normally paced. However, when she went to the pot for seconds, Cloud was already on his fourth bowl, eating extremely quickly. This amused her slightly, and made her feel rather better, as she'd always been the one who ate the most fastest out of her group of friends.

A while after she had stopped eating, though, her stomach started to make rather unpleasant gurgling noises, and Lain started to turn a bit paler than normal.

"Say, Blondie," she said, completely forgetting in her discomfort that her given pseudonym wasn't actually to Cloud's taste, "what's in that soup?" Cloud shrugged and picked up an empty can. He read off the ingredients boredly.

"Cream, potatoes, clam juice—"

"Oh fuck."

"What?"

"I'm allergic to clams," Lain said, grimacing as her stomach gave another unpleasant gurgle. She muttered angrily to herself, "why didn't I remember to check...why didn't I notice..." in a pained tone. The discomfort in her abdomen intensified, along with an uncomfortable lightness in her stomach that meant certain doom.

"I think," she said thickly, getting to her feet while watched by an only mildly concerned Cloud, "I'm going to go outside for a little while." She heaved and staggered toward the door, and at least had the sense to stagger across the road so that when she threw up, it wasn't right outside their front door that the smell would be coming from later. About ten minutes later, Lain was still retching unevenly, her body thoroughly displeased with the whole situation. Most of the contents of her stomach were pretty much gone.

After another five minutes, Cloud emerged from the shack. He watched her for a moment before asking whether or not a Cure spell would help. Lain told him that if it would do anything to change the current situation, then yes, it would help. When Cloud used said Cure spell, Lain felt a pleasant uplifting sensation, along with the revelation that she was briefly surrounded by a twinkly green glow...then sank back into feeling utterly miserable. She did notice, however, that a few scratches on her hands from various causes had disappeared. Lain informed Cloud that his Cure spell was completely useless then started trudging back to the pit-shack. Cloud, wisely, did not reply.

When Lain had even grown comfortable enough to be getting sleepy, Cloud had the grace to offer her the futon for the night in light of her unfortunate food incident, which Lain accepted gratefully. Cloud chucked her a pillow from the couch, and Lain slept under her trench coat. Lain fell asleep fairly quickly, not having fully realized how tired she was until her head hit pillow.

Lain woke up rather painfully the next morning to a fat, freshly minted beam of sunlight aimed right at her face. She smacked her nose on the wall when she rolled away, groaning, then cursed in a grumble that never the less carried threw the entire room. Finally, when she reached out for her shoe and hit something on the wall and rolled away with a cry of "Holy shit," Cloud, who had been snoring lightly, woke, turning groggily to see what on Earth she was doing.

Lain was engaged in what looked like heavy combat (armed with her left shoe) with a spider the size of a puppy. They were circling each other, each with murder in their eyes. Without warning Lain swung her shoe down with the canvas part of one of her green high tops and crushed one of the spider's legs, earning a hiss from the spider. With the thing partially incapacitated, Lain proceeded to pick up one of Cloud's discarded epaulets before he could stop her and smash the whole spider. After watching it murderously for a moment as though it would rise from the grave, Lain fell backward onto her butt, followed by her back so that she was lying on the floor with her knees propped up, arms spread as she tried to regain her shattered sleep with a sound reminiscent of some sort of irritated giraffe.

Cloud sent her a very annoyed look as he forced himself to get up, solely motivated by past experience's knowledge that if left alone for too long, monster (and in this case spider) ick would stick quite unpleasantly to the hard leather of this certain piece of armament. He then went about the very serious business of cleaning the shoulder guard.

Lain popped open one eye—for it was all she could muster—to see what Cloud was doing. The methodic way he went about this whole shoulder-guard-cleaning thing made her arrive at the conclusion that not only was he uber duper strong and skilled in the sword department, but also that A) the idea of puppy-sized spiders wasn't all that new to him (or he was just too tired to care) and B) he was quite used to cleaning up after their blood and guts. Which pointed to military, serial killer, hick, or any combination of the three. Either way, not someone to fuck around with. Which she knew to start with. Congratulations, Lain, you've now given yourself even more reason not to piss off Blondie. Excellent use of time and brain cells.

After consuming a half ton of power bars, Cloud made it clear that it was time to be going, by way of simply walking out the door. Lain, who had at first assumed that he had to take a piss, had to run, scrambling over herself, to jump on the back of the motorcycle as she heard the engine rev. Toying with the idea that Cloud might have actually left her if she'd been too slow as she clasped her arms around his torso, Lain decided that no, he wouldn't have left her stranded. Despite seeming mostly disinterested in her, Cloud didn't strike her as the type. More like he wanted people to think he was the type so he didn't have to mess around.

Lain saw Edge a while before they reached it. The highway had leveled into one long, flat road that stretched very far down, branching off in several places, and thus Lain got a pretty good look at the distant image of the gray-looking city before the drove into the city limits.

Edge looked nothing like Lain had ever seen. It was distinctly industrial, made mostly from metal beams that supported the main infrastructure of the whole city; like those huge metal pieces on bridges that go across the top periodically—only crisscrossing over each other with no definable pattern. There was a rather disorganized air about the whole place. Sidewalks were much less noticeably separate from the street than Lain was used to. Crosswalks were less defined, and stoplights were less frequent. There were plenty of cars, but no visible traffic jams anywhere—that was certainly different. Cloud drove more slowly in the city than he had on the wide-open roads, which gave Lain more opportunity to look around her and an easier time of keeping her eyes open. They rounded a corner, and Cloud pulled to a stop outside what looked more like a business than a home. Closer inspection proved that Lain was correct; a sign that read Seventh Heaven hung neatly over the door. From the look of it the place was a bar. A nice bar, one whose slick, polished surfaces screamed of cleanliness and select clientele. Cloud pushed open the door casually, ignoring the Closed sign in the glass door, a small bell tinkling in reply as he walked inside, followed by Lain.

"Hn?" A woman appeared from behind the polished bar counter, straightening up and brushing a lock of fine, straight black hair from where it had fallen over one eye, which turned out to be a dark shade of brown that almost glinted a little bit maroon. Everyone had funky eyes! She was a bit shorter than Lain, but obviously older, more mature. Not to mention she was just a little bit more drop-dead gorgeous than Lain had ever aspired to be.

When she saw Cloud, the woman's features brightened, mouth lifting upward in a graceful arc to form a wide, genuine smile that seemed to light up the already sunlit room. It was a simple gesture, one that Lain suspected the woman used every day, but there was something special in the way she then said, "Welcome home, Cloud." And then it was perfectly obvious to Lain. Oh. Right. Boob-lady wants Blondie. Or maybe already has Blondie.

"Hey, Tifa," Cloud replied, a smile of his own quirking at his mouth. Lain, feeling very much like Emma, surveyed the way he spoke, the way he smiled, and came to the conclusion that Cloud liked Tifa as well, but for some reason they weren't together. Fascinating. Lain would have to remind herself to care sometime. Meanwhile, Tifa had now noticed Lain, and had tilted her head to one side.

"Hello there," she said kindly, "who're you?"

"Uh, I'm Lain," Lain said off-handedly. "I sorta broke into one of Cloud's pit stops a while before he showed up." This didn't appear to clarify things for Tifa, and she looked from Lain to Cloud, as though waiting for either to say something else. Something seemed to twitch in Cloud's face, a barely perceptible motion in the direction of further inside the bar. Tifa seemed familiar with this and turned immediately to Lain.

"Here, Lain, have a seat," she said, pulling out a barstool that was extraordinarily comfortable when Lain sat down. She then whisked behind the bar. "Can I get you anything to drink? Well, you're too young to drink, but would you like a soda, juice, water? I have pretty much everything back here." Lain, surprised at being suddenly accommodated with almost no questions asked, hesitated for a moment before saying, "Uh, Sprite'd be nice. Thanks." Tifa poured the soda into a slim glass, added some red ice cubes.

"Sick," Lain asked, looking at Tifa, "how's that work?"

"Cranberry juice," Tifa said, giving what looked like her version of a smirk (it was really too kind to be a real smirk, but you had to give the woman credit for trying) Lain grinned and took a sip, and in that Tifa seemed to decide that Lain could now be left on her own. "'Scuse us for a moment, Lain," she said, and walked briskly from the room, followed by Cloud.

Lain sipped her Sprite, smirking at the glass, then tipped her barstool for about a minute trying to make the air pumping out of the vent behind the bar hit her just right and tried to suspend all disbelief for the moment. She was in a city called Edge, at least Cloud if not everyone else didn't know what the fuck the U.S. was, and only a phone call would tell if there was any way of reaching home. What else was there? Oh no, duck and cover, Rhino stampede on the upper level of Earth. Lain almost chuckled to herself, taking another sip of Sprite. I bet somebody's an alien around here. She could've gone on, but was glad to be stopped by the reentrance of Cloud and Tifa. Cloud looked nondescript; Tifa was smiling.

"So, Lain, locating your family geographically seems like it's out; do you have a phone number you can call them at?" Tifa said. "We have a phone here you can use."

"Okay, cool," Lain replied, allowing all four legs of her stool to resume their place on the ground as she sat up straight once more, then stood at Tifa's indication that she should follow, following Tifa up a short set of stairs to a small table cluttered with papers that seemed to pertain to a delivery service, as well as a framed photograph of Cloud, Tifa, and a brown-haired kid who looked like neither Cloud nor Tifa. Cloud looked nondescript; Tifa was smiling. The boy was grinning widely, but was looking up at Cloud. Next to the picture was a white handset with a curly cord and a slim receiver that Lain lifted tentatively, listening to the dial tone before dialing her home number. It seemed to wait forever before dialing, and then gave her a message about not being able to connect or some bullshit like that. Lain's middle finger hung up and dialed her mom's cell phone number. Same thing. Then her dad's. Same thing again. Finally with an air of resignation Lain called her brother's cell phone. Even that got the same message.

Lain muttered a few obscenities under her breath and looked at Tifa. "None of the numbers I have work." Tifa tilted her head, frowning slightly. "That's strange," she said, picking up the receiver and dialing eleven numbers quickly. Almost immediately a ringing sound emitted from somewhere on Cloud's person, and he flicked open a shiny black phone just as Tifa hung up—"the one time you decide to pick up, Cloud?"—and Tifa said, "well, it's working for that."

"Your phones are eleven numbers?" Lain asked.

"Of course," Tifa said, "it's the same everywhere because of the lower number of phones since Meteor."

"Mine are seven." Tifa looked very confused now.

"That's strange. There've never been seven-number phone numbers, as far as I know."

"...Okay?"

"Cloud, give me your phone for a second," Tifa said, holding out a hand. Cloud got out his phone again and handed it to her without a word. Tifa flicked it open and dialed, resulting in another ring coming from the landline. She then handed it to Lain. "Try this one." Lain dialed, and got the same message again. She flicked the phone shut and tossed it to Cloud, who caught it and slipped it back into one of his many pockets.

"Well. That sucks," Lain said dejectedly. "What do you guys want to do? I've been a pain in the ass already." She didn't look at Cloud for the "yeah, I know," expression that she was expecting.

"No, Lain, it's our pleasure," said Tifa automatically, "I'm just sorry we can't get ahold of any of your family. Do you have any relatives who live anywhere else besides...Seattle?" It seemed to take her a minute to remember the name.

"All my family except the dead ones are in America anyway," Lain said, "and if you guys seriously don't know where that is, then I'm fucked."

"All right," said Tifa, apparently thinking to herself as she spoke. "Then how would you like to stay here for a while? Maybe help me out at the bar a little for some spare cash while we try to figure out where you need to get to?" It seemed she was going to go on, but Cloud spoke suddenly.

"The way things look right now, there's a really solid chance you'll never see your family again. It'd be good for you to have a place to stay while you learn how to live here." Cloud's words hit her in a strange way. Blondie had just told her, very seriously, that in all likelihood she wouldn't see her family again, and had completely skipped the dealing with it step and gone to learning to live without them. Now, Lain was a teenager. She never liked to think that she depended on her parents more than she could get away with not admitting to. But what Cloud was saying—without any pretense of sensitivity; just practicality—was completely different from Lain's realm of perception. The fact that Cloud was taller than her seemed much more apparent now than when Lain had first met him.

I'm alone. With strangers. Nice ones. Fuck. This is weird. Why do I feel like time is passing really, really slowly? Why are Blondie and Boobs staring at me? I've only been lost in thought for a couple seconds... Right? Oh shit, am I having an existential crisis or something? Aw fuck I don't need more therapy shit... Goddamn it, stop staring at me, Boobs! And Blondie, what the fuck are you looking at?

"...Lain?"

"Yeah?"

"Are you okay?"

"Sure, I'm fine."

"So how about staying here with us for a while?"

"Great. Why not?"

"Okay. Say, how 'bout Cloud goes to pick up the kids from school and when he gets back we'll introduce you to Marlene and Denzel?"

"Okay."

"Okay."

Wait, what?