Chapter 7
The town of Edge looked peaceful early in the morning.
Not nearly as peaceful as the Ancients city, but serene in its own way. The only reason Kadaj knew this was because he had been leaning against the window of the room Big Brother had given them last night, trying his hardest not to fall back to sleep. The Fit had left him tired, as all his fits did; but it had been such a long time since he had had one like this. He was awake only by sheer force of will, and just as soon as his brothers returned safely from downstairs he would gladly go back to sleep.
It hadn't felt right letting his brothers leave the room without him, but if he was being honest, if only to himself, then he knew there was no way he could have made it down the stairs without falling flat on his face, making it up them last night had been difficult enough. He had managed it though, and without having to lean on his brothers to do it. He could not afford to show any weakness, not to any of them.
Their entrance into the bar Big Brother lived in had only solidified his worries about this group of people, and it had made him all the more certain that they should go, get as far away as possible. Perhaps they could return to the City of the Ancients. They had been happy there, and it was big enough to hide in, should anyone come after them. But first he had to rest, he had to regain his strength. He had to wait for the shaking to stop, and it was far easier to do that here, despite being surrounded on all sides by the enemy, than at the place Big Brother swore was not a Lab but was.
It would also be far easier to get away from here than the Lab, with all its camera's and soldiers around every corner.
Tifa… he was sure that was the name Big Brother had introduced her as, had told them, when she'd come to leave some food in the room, that they were welcome to have whatever they wanted, in terms of food, and even Kadaj, in his post Fit paranoia believed her to be sincere. Which was the only reason he had agreed to let his brothers leave the room to get them some food. Loz would protect Yazoo if something did happen, and he would be able to hold his own for long enough, just until his brothers could reach him, he had enough faith in himself for that.
Big Brother… Should he call him Cloud now? After all, they weren't related, and nowhere near as close as he Loz and Yazoo were. They weren't even of the same blood, despite the Jenova cells in each of them. Yes, perhaps Cloud was a better choice of address, less intimate, and far less trust inducing
Kadaj shook his head in an effort to clear his mind, and to keep sleep at bay. He turned away from the window and looked down at the tangle of sleeping bags before forcing his eyes up and to the door. Surely they had been gone long enough. It didn't take that long to pick out a few tins of food and take them back. He bit back a groan when he realised that he had let Loz and Yazoo go down and scavenge, neither had a good track record when it came to doing things quickly.
It was still early though, so hopefully they would return before anyone else got up.
He left the window and sank gratefully down into the chair Loz had moved close by for him, his entire body felt heavy. He tipped his head back until it thudded lightly against the wall, with just enough force to shock his brain more awake. He hated Fit's, hated the way they made him feel. They could be treated by drugs, but Kadaj didn't know the correct combination of them, and he figured that most of them had been experimental and had likely been destroyed with the labs and the scientists. They were his control mechanism, a way to leave him unable to fight them, and for that he hated them, the scientists.
He had almost gotten used to not having the fits anymore, since Moth… No, since Jenova had been in his head he hadn't had a single one. It was the only thing he could now honestly be thankful to her for, and even then he hated her for letting him experience so long without them. But he was glad she was gone, and was horrified when he thought of what he and his brothers had done while under her spell. He was not so much horrified by what he himself had done, after all, it was more in his nature to do things like that, but she had come far too close to twisting his brothers into the beasts their scientists wanted them to be, and he had let it happen.
That was the part Kadaj hated the most, the fact that he had let it happen. How could he have ever believed that allowing her to change him into Him, Sephiroth, would benefit his brothers? He snorted in some amusement at the thought of the great Sephiroth, the perfect one, looking after Loz and Yazoo, it would have been a disaster.
He blinked his eyes back open and glared at the ceiling. What were those two doing down there? It felt like he had been waiting for hours. If they didn't come back up in the next five minutes he was going to look for them.
The next time his eyes opened it was to yelling, loud and shrill and coming from beneath the floor. He looked blearily around the room, and was immediately seized by fear when he realised Loz and Yazoo weren't back. When the yelling cut off with a piercing scream of attack Kadaj was on his feet and opening the door before his body reminded him that he was still too tired and weak to be doing this. But when he heard the crash of something below him smashing he shoved the feeling aside and stepped out, stumbling the few steps down from the room.
He was brought up short when he almost smashed into Cloud, and was surprised when the older man reached out to steady him.
"Yuffie's not in the kids room!" Tifa called from the doorway of said room.
Cloud sighed and looked at Kadaj. "I'm going to assume Loz and Yazoo are downstairs too?" he asked.
Kadaj nodded warily, but defended their actions quickly. "She said we could!" and pointed over Cloud's shoulder towards Tifa.
Cloud blinked and looked confused for a moment and Kadaj braced himself to try and break out of his admittedly light grip to try and reach his brothers first. It looked like they would need to be making their escape sooner than planned.
Cloud glanced down the stairs to the bar and something close to a wry smile appeared on his face. "Oh, I know exactly who's to blame for this, and it's not your brothers." Cloud gave him a reassuring nod and let him go before quickly taking the stairs down at a speed Kadaj envied right now.
Kadaj wavered a little as he stood, surprised by how easily Cloud had dismissed the idea of Loz and Yazoo causing the trouble. He started when he realised the woman, Tifa, had come to stand beside him, she offered him what might have been a friendly smile, but the winch that crossed her face as another crash was heard downstairs quickly told him it was forced.
"I'm thinking you want to get downstairs too." She said, her voice deceptively light and cheery, and Kadaj didn't like it, it wasn't the same kind of fakeness as the scientist had used when testing him, but it was still fake, and Kadaj found that grating, but he nodded, because he did want to get down the stairs.
She didn't offer to help him, though he knew it was painfully obvious that he was far too worn out to be doing this. After a few steps he dismissed her as non-threatening, and focused his attention on the sounds of the fight below. Cloud had joined those below and was calling for them to stop, but he was met only by the sounds of splintering wood and falling bricks.
"Not my bar!" he heard Tifa beg. "Please don't let them be ruining my bar!"
Kadaj finally reached the bottom step, he ignored the door to the bar in favour of looking into the kitchen, and he breathed a sigh of relief when he saw Yazoo inside, looking bewildered. He ignored the sharp intake of breath from behind him and entered the kitchen. Yazoo reached forward and caught him before he could fall.
"What happened?" he asked.
Yazoo pointed to the small counter off to one side, where a plate of pancakes sat, the one's he and Loz called 'Yazoo's surprise' because they were made of such a mismatch of ingredients which always seemed to work well with each other.
"Pancakes?"
Kadaj looked over his shoulder to see Tifa fuming, a far more honest reaction, and one that put him at ease, simply because he knew how to deal with that, but before he could say anything, though whether he was going to defend his brothers or simply say 'Yes' because he was just too tired to do anything else, Yazoo had gently pulled him in closer and nodded slowly.
"She—" Tifa spun on her heel and marched out and into the wreckage of the bar.
Kadaj closed his eyes for a second and shook his head, hoping to clear it enough to let him make his way out to see what had happened to Loz. These people couldn't be trusted, they could turn on Loz in an instant. He just had to…
"Sit." Yazoo said softly, pushing him back and into a chair. He said nothing else, but that wasn't any surprise, Yazoo rarely spoke unless he absolutely had too most times, that he was speaking at all was a miracle given the past few days.
"How can you be so calm?" Kadaj found himself asking. "And what are you doing?" It was possible he was just seeing things, but Yazoo was back at the stove and cooking again.
"Too many mouths." Was the cryptic response. "Loz is fine."
He didn't want to, but Kadaj was soon lulled to sleep by Yazoo's unconcerned behaviour, and was soon dozing fitfully, unaware that the moment his eyes closed Yazoo turned, worried, to look at the mess beyond the broken door. He wasn't worried about Loz, the part of him that didn't exist wouldn't let him be worried about such an insignificant thing.
There was something much bigger coming
*x*
It was the clang that woke him, or rather, not so much the actual clang itself, but the sound of something wrong with his ship. It dragged him up and out of his well earned rest. With a muttered curse he sat up, shoving that ridiculous claw of Vincent's aside, cursing again when it caught on his t-shirt, he immediately started to untangle it.
"Need some help?"
Cid glared balefully to the man lying beside him, who still had his eyes closed. "Nah, I'm doing jus' fine on my own thanks." The sarcasm in his voice was heavy. He smiled in victory as he managed to free himself. "We gotta get you a hand like Barret's. I can't keep doing that every morning."
Red eyes opened to slits, and Cid could feel them watch him as he pulled his goggles on round his neck. "You're not going to change?"
He looked back at Vincent and frowned, glancing down at himself. "Somethin' wrong with what I got on?" he asked. Vincent's eyes drifted down to his pyjama bottoms, his meaning perfectly clear without words. Cid looked down again, his bottoms were perfectly comfortable, and he happened to like the little rocket ships. Someone had bought them as a joke for him, obviously the joke was now on them. He waved his hand at Vincent, reaching up to push his goggles into their customary position. "Everyone knows better than to be commentin' on my clothes. An' you ain't one ta talk with yer getup."
He made his way to the door, looking back when he heard Vincent getting out of bed. "Ain't no need for you to get up ya know." He said, frowning as a yawn crept up on him, when he opened his eyes again after it was to find Vincent already pulling on his cape, which looked ridiculously funny worn over the good black trousers and jumper Shera had bought for him. He grinned but said nothing.
Vincent frowned at the grin when he saw it. "There is no reason for you to get up either Highwind, your crew is more than capable of handling whatever problems arise in your ship."
Cid rolled his eyes. "I wouldn't trust 'em as far as I could throw 'em. Maybe when I get the fleet up an' running properly I can get some of them engineering one's on board. 'Till then I'm all my birds got." He pulled open the door and stepped out. "An' how many times I gotta tell you, call me Highwind once more and I will clock ya one!" he called out as he left.
He was ten steps from his room when he realised he didn't have his cigarette's on him, and with his third, and most colourful round of cursing of the morning he turned back, only to be brought up short when he realised Vincent was right behind him, a moment later he realised Vincent was carrying his cigarettes, he reached out to snatch them.
"Yer a lifesaver Vince."
Vincent let the packet go, and Cid knew his bemused smile was being hidden behind the collar of his cape, which was fine, because Cid knew it was there and that was all that mattered. "Don't go climbing around on the hull without a safety harness this time." Was all he said, brushing past and continuing down the corridor, as if he had somewhere to be.
Cid frowned after him, taking out a cigarette and lighting it, shaking his head as Vincent disappeared round the next corner and out of sight. "Fall one time and I never get to live it down, not like I never saved his ass enough times for him to return the favour." He muttered. Taking the opposite corridor to the one Vincent had disappeared down, Cid made his way towards the wheel room. To get there he had to pass the door to the outside, which was open, and three of his crew were standing around it, peering down.
There was shouting coming from below. Curious he made his way over, smirking at the way the three nosy parkers jumped and saluted, trying to look like they hadn't just been eavesdropping on what was admittedly a rather loud argument going on below. Ignoring the three for the moment he stuck his head out to see what was going on.
It surprised him for a second when he saw that it was Tifa who was doing most of the shouting, most of which was directed at Yuffie. Cloud and that Loz one, were standing just over to the side. Curious now he grabbed hold of the handle on the wall beside the door and leaned out, Tifa yelling like that was so unheard of that he just knew something serious had probably happened; and in the current clime, with all the anger about the clones going around it was better to nip this sort of thing in the bud.
"What th' Hell is going on that ya hadda wake me up for?" he yelled down, drawing all their attention to him. "Aww, Hell, never mind, I'll come down." He pulled himself back in to find the three crewmen holding the rope ladder out to him, each of them looking a little too eager for him to go. With a suspicious glare he took the ladder and dropped it over the side.
As he climbed down he could hear Tifa once again start leathering into Yuffie, and he could well imagine what she had done, picked a fight with the clones most like, even though she'd been warned off doing it. But then, Yuffie was never really known for her brains, still too much a little kid. Hell, they were all little kids when it came to just about everything. It was like being some sort of father or uncle, hanging with this group. Or at least that was what it always felt like to Cid.
Even when he was Mayor of Rocket Town he hadn't had to deal with half the stuff he did when he was with this lot; even Barret, who was older than him by a good three years, on occasion behaved no better than a kid without a grasp on his temper. Now Cid didn't claim to be a perfect man, or even a good one, but he'd at least learned how to fend for himself without needing someone else to step in and sort things out.
He didn't hold it against the rest of them, they all had their reasons for being the way they were, most of those reason's dark, and none of them had ever been shown the right way to deal with it, which was simply, Move on, because the futures always brighter than the past. The only blip on his otherwise spotless slate, was the Shera and the Rocket incident. But to his credit flying that rocket into space had been his dream, and one he was undertaking in the name of his mother, who had died just months before the space programme became a big thing on ShinRa's agenda. He'd thrown himself into working on those Rockets, determined to make it into space, until the incident he hadn't ever really let himself grieve for his mother, which was why he was sure he had clung to his anger at Shera for so long.
He landed on the ground with a thump and turned. "Wha' happened?" he asked.
Tifa was making a desperate attempt to curb her temper, out of everyone she was the most like him, able to deal with her emotions and not dwell so much on the past. "There was a fight Cid, no need to worry about it." She told him.
"Come on now, you think I'm an idiot? Yer yelling Tifa, you don't ever yell. An' not only that, but yer yelling outside, where anybody can get an earful and take a look over the fence." He nodded over towards Loz. They had decided last night that it would be better to keep the clones presence muted, at least until the memory of what they had done had time to settle a little in the minds of the others in Edge.
He saw the moment Tifa understood what he meant, and she looked apologetic and worried all at once. She immediately turned her attention from yelling to ushering Loz and Cloud back in doors. It was only then that Cid realised something was wrong. He quickly reviewed what he had said and nodded, turning his attention to Yuffie. She had passed up a perfect opportunity to mock him, and from the way she was trying studiously not to make eye contact he knew she'd done something he wouldn't like.
Very slowly he tipped his head back to look at the Shera.
There was a long scratch under the prow of the ship, with Yuffie's pointed whatever-it-was-called sticking in. The electronics for the wheel room were in that area. If she had damaged them he would kill her.
"Yuffie." He said, as calmly as he could.
She squeaked in response and dived behind Tifa, who shook her off with a glare. "Oh no, you wrecked my bar, if he wants to kill you I'm not stopping him."
"But it wasn't just me who—"
"You picked a fight with him over pancakes! The blame lies totally at your feet here."
"But Tifa-!"
"Yuffie?" Cid said again, very carefully dropping his cigarette butt to the ground and crushing it under his boot. "Do you have any idea what I'm going to do to you if you've hurt my baby?"
"It's a ship, Cid, not a baby, and it's nothing a bit of paint won't fix…" she tittered uneasily, she only ever used his name when she was genuinely uneasy about something, normally when she knew she was about to get her ass kicked for pulling some stupid stunt on him.
Cid took one step forward, and that was all that was needed to send Yuffie off like a bat outta hell towards the front of the bar, skirting the building. Cid grinned, self satisfied. Let her worry, because she'd need all the time she could get to come up with a way to talk him out of what he was going to do to her if she had damaged his ship. He turned his attention back to the others.
There was a thump behind him, and Cid turned to find Barret standing at the bottom of the rope ladder, glaring over his head at Loz, who Tifa was trying to usher back inside through the new hole in her wall. Cid fought back the urge to roll his eyes and sigh. Today was beginning to look like a bad day, a real bad day.
*x*
Nanaki often lamented being of a different species to the others in the group; it made it easier for them to overlook him. He didn't blame them for it, it was just one of those things that happened, and he knew they didn't mean to. The fact that the only one he was eye level with was the robotic cat also wasn't very helpful, because unless it was Reeve's voice coming through those speakers, Cait Sith's input was often overlooked too.
Which was a shame, because the robot was quite insightful in his own right.
But despite the frustration of being so often overlooked for his opinion in matters, it was being overlooked that afforded him the chance to observe, allowing him a deeper insight than the humans would have seen.
He had been sleeping outside, stretched out over the grass behind the bar when the violence had erupted. Knowing better than to become involved in a fight like this he stayed back, watching. He was quick to see that although Yuffie was putting all her effort into doing some kind of damage to Loz, Loz himself was simply playing.
There was no other word for it. He was fighting and he was enjoying himself, like he was playing a game and not trying to protect himself from the onslaught of blows. Oh, he fought back, but there was no real force behind any of his hits. Nanaki watched until Cloud and Tifa had finally managed to break them up, but he did not step in, content for the moment to watch, to observe and to learn what he could of the clones.
Loz was instantly contrite, and clearly confused. It was clear to see that he realised that the damaged caused was obviously a big deal, but he had been enjoying himself, something Nanaki doubted the clone had had the chance to do often. It was also clear that Tifa's anger at Yuffie was confusing him greatly as well, Nanaki knew Tifa well enough to know that she would not single one of them out for no reason.
When Cid landed on the scene, Nanaki took this to be his cue to leave, Cid was much like himself, the voice of reason, albeit in a far more aggressive way than Nanaki himself, which meant he was far better suited to dealing with the other humans when they were irate.
Nanaki made his way inside, sighing to himself when he saw the wreckage. There was a gaping hole in the wall, and the bar itself looked like it had been hit by a tornado. At the far side of the room the long haired brother, the one they called Yazoo was straightening a table and arranging a large number of chairs around it.
"Yazoo stop it." Kadaj muttered, and Nanaki looked at him, seated on the chair closest to the wall, leaning his head back, clearly drained.
"Too many people." Yazoo responded cryptically.
Kadaj sighed, clearly the words did not confuse him as they did Nanaki. "Why do you even care? We won't be staying here much longer, and once we're gone we won't be coming back. You never get attached to anything, so why are you starting now."
Yazoo stopped arranging the chairs and faced his brother. "Because it is important."
Kadaj sighed, and either he accepted Yazoo's explanation, or he was just too tired to argue further, because his eyes closed and his head dropped back.
Nanaki remained silent, slinking into the bar slowly; but he was surprised to see Yazoo's head turn and his eyes fix easily on him. Their gazes locked for a short time before Yazoo broke the gaze and returned to what he was doing. Nanaki came closer, watching him carefully, curious.
Yazoo set the table, quickly and efficiently, and was just placing a plate of pancakes onto the table, after having deposited a number on a plate he had set down close to Nanaki, when everyone poured in through the hole in the wall.
Faced with breakfast not a single one of them knew how to react, though Loz did quickly make his way across the room to get himself into the best possible position to protect his brothers. Breakfast was muted affair, not even Marlene, when she bounced downstairs not long after could lift the mood any.
Only when the three had retreated back upstairs afterwards did the atmosphere change and a heated round of quiet arguments began.
