"Gemma?" Kayli whispered into her phone, standing on the roof of the ShinRa building. It was beautiful up there at night, what with all the stars shining down on her.
"Kayli? What's happened now?" Gemma asked.
"Um, I kind of have a boyfriend." Kayli admitted nervously, grinning.
"What!? Kayli! You're pretending to be a guy!" Gemma gasped.
"I know! But he found out I was a girl and then asked me out so, uh, yeah." Kayli shrugged even though Gemma wouldn't be able to see.
"How do you know he's gonna keep it a secret?" Gemma asked hurriedly.
"Well he said he would..." Kayli said feebly.
"Did I meet him when I came to visit?" Gemma asked, now excited.
"Yeah, his name is Davis. He was the one with the brown hair." Kayli explained, twirling a finger in her short black hair. "Oh and by the way, Rex – the one with the dusty blond hair – wanted me to talk him up to you."
"One of your friends likes me?" Gemma gasped again.
Kayli giggled. "Yeah, he does. Although just a warning – he also likes a lot of other girls as well."
"Aww, what a cutie! I bet he's just keeping some options open until one of them likes him back." Gemma sighed dreamily.
"Don't get your hopes up! He's a great guy, but I obviously don't know what he's like around girls." Kayli reminded her friend.
"Yeah, yeah." Gemma mumbled. "Anyway, so tell me how you were asked out!"
"Actually, it's pretty funny..." Kayli bit her lip to stop from laughing. "Rex and Cloud walked out just as he asked so they reckon he's gay. How hilarious is that? He's upset with me for not telling him they had walked out though, but I didn't even realise until Rex spoke!"
"Are you serious? You're kidding, right?" Gemma gasped out. She seemed to be doing that a lot.
"No I'm serious!" Kayli really did laugh this time and hoped no one was around to hear it.
"That poor boy... I really pity him!" Gemma sighed. "Anyway, shouldn't you be in bed? It's almost midnight."
"Yeah, I just wanted to call you and let you know what was happening." Kayli shrugged to herself.
"Then I'll talk to you again some time... in a while probably." Gemma said. "Bye!"
Kayli hung up and put her phone back in her pocket, heading over to the stairs to go back down into the building. She hoped she would be able to make it back to her room without being seen and questioned.
Thankfully, she soon found herself safely inside her room and tiptoeing over to her bed in order not to wake anyone up. She slipped under her covers and rolled over, closing her eyes and trying to fall asleep. She couldn't believe she had actually succeeded in getting this far in ShinRa already with only two people discovering who she was.
Why Sephiroth hadn't had her kicked out still eluded her but she wasn't complaining, and in another few minutes she was fast asleep.
"Ti-ime to get u-up!" Rex called in a sing-song voice. "Isn't the world a beautiful place? Too bad I share a room with two people who are li-ars!"
"Oh, shut up." Roy mumbled, rolling over and shoving his pillow over his head.
"But Roy, my song is about yo-ou!" Rex continued. "The one who said he wa-asn't ga-ay and then turned out to be-e ga-"
Rex suddenly had a pillow hit him in the head and stumbled backwards slightly, laughing at the reaction he had gotten. His stopped laughing when he realised it was Davis who had thrown it.
"Oh, you're awake too." Rex mumbled.
"Of course I'm awake! It's impossible to sleep with you making a racket like that." Davis grumbled. He was still in his pyjamas and had folded his arms across his chest in annoyance, his eyebrows narrowed in a glare.
"Sorry about that. I just thought everyone would be happy this morning what with the newest couple to be formed-"
"Rex!" Davis yelled, his face going instantly red. Rex chuckled and turned away, covering his mouth with one hand.
"If you want to deny it you're going to have to do better than that!" Rex teased, going over to his bed to grab his belt.
"Roy! Get up!" Davis ordered angrily, going over and pulling Roy's covers right off him. Roy yelped loudly and fell off his bed in an attempt at grabbing them back, his body then curling up again to try and get warm.
"Leave me alone..." Roy whimpered.
"Roy," Davis said, glancing at Rex and then lowering his voice. "Please..."
"No." Roy snapped instantly, turning his head to glare up at Davis icily.
"Cloud look! It's a lovers spat!" Rex commented, pointing at Davis and Roy melodramatically, with a hand over his mouth. Cloud was sitting on his bed pulling his boots on and glanced over very quickly before looking back down at his boots again.
"Rex, if you don't shut up I am seriously going to kill you!" Davis threatened, straightening up and putting his hands on his hips.
"Aww, no you won't! I'm your best friend!" Rex laughed.
"Rex, it's not funny!" Davis said. "I- I'm not gay!"
"So you asked Roy out because...?" Rex folded his arms and raised an eyebrow, waiting for a good reason from Davis.
"Finally! What I've wanted you to ask the entire time!" Davis exclaimed, throwing his hands into the air. "Now, my explanation is quite simple. You heard me wrong as I didn't ask Roy out, but I said 'Will you ask her out for me?'"
Rex and Davis stared at each other for a few moments in silence until Roy stumbled to his feet, looking over at them and chuckling.
"Feel stupid now, Rex?" he asked.
"You mean-" Rex blinked, dumbfounded.
"Yeah, that's what he said. And I said no. Because that's my sister we're talking about!" Roy put his hands on his hips too and smirked. He had to admit, Davis' version of what had happened was quite believable.
"Sorry, Davis." Rex muttered, turning away and feeling foolish. Davis shot a look of relief at Roy, who just shrugged in reply.
"At least that's all cleared up now." Davis said, picking up his uniform from his bed. He was about to begin getting changed when something occurred to him and he blushed bright red again, looking over at Roy.
Roy caught his eye and frowned before realising his problem and laughing quietly, turning around to give his friend privacy. Things would certainly be more interesting from now on.
Once the four room-mates were all ready for breakfast they left together and sat at the same table. Roy and Davis were next to each other, both feeling rather nervous and doing their best not to let it show in case Rex noticed something.
"Did you hear?" an infantryman standing near their table said to his friend. "Some of us are going to be sent with a couple of SOLDIERs to Modeoheim and others to Kalm."
"Are you serious?" Davis gasped, standing up and inviting himself into their conversation. The infantryman turned to him and grinned, nodding.
"Yeah! Genesis Rhapsodos is taking a couple of us to Modeoheim and General Sephiroth is going to Kalm." he explained.
"Do you reckon he'd pick me? He'd pick me, right?" Davis asked excitedly, practically bouncing in his thrill.
"Who knows?" the infantryman laughed. "Everyone wants to go so you'd better do your absolute best in your lessons today."
"Oh wow, I can't wait!" Davis turned to face Roy, Rex and Cloud and saw the same excitement on their faces as was on his. "I so hope I get to go!"
"If you don't sit down and eat you'll be late to your lesson and make a bad impression. Come on!" Rex grabbed Davis' sleeve and pulled him back down, although he couldn't hide his own smile.
After breakfast they had guns, so they headed there together and spoke excitedly of the upcoming missions which they hoped to be chosen to go on. The news had brought Cloud out of his shell a bit more and he was also adding how eager he was to go.
When they arrived at their destination they quickly shut up as they noticed their instructor had a glare on his face and didn't look happy in the least.
"It appears you've heard a rumour about some missions which some of you will be going on..." he began slowly, and all their hearts sank. A rumour? That was too bad. "This is, in fact, true."
Everyone began murmuring amongst each other, but were quiet again when the instructor cleared his throat in annoyance and raised his favourite gun slightly.
"I will personally be suggesting two of you to be sent to Modeoheim, but do not attempt to get the names from me as I will not tell." His eyes lingered on Davis for a moment and Davis could have sworn he saw him wink, but then he continued looking around the room at everyone else and Davis wondered if he had imagined it all.
"Now, if I hear one word from any of you about the missions this lesson I will send you outside and report you. Let's begin. Come and collect a gun and we'll have a go at shooting at smaller targets today."
Everyone slowly made their way to the front to grab a gun before moving back again and awaiting for further instructions. Rex and Davis were itching to talk about the mission and Davis also eager to tell someone he thought their instructor was going to suggest him for it, but they both knew they would get in trouble if they spoke about it and therefore kept their mouth shut.
The lesson went smoothly and without a hitch. It turned out that their instructor was not in a bad mood and was actually in the best mood he'd been in since they had met him. This meant that whenever someone made a mistake they were not yelled at and reprimanded, but told how to improve for next time.
"That was awesome!" Cloud said as they walked back to their room afterwards. "I think I'm actually getting the hang of it now!"
"Guys, guys, guys!" Davis said excitedly, interrupting Cloud. "He looked at me when he was talking about suggesting one of us! What if he suggests me? Do you think he will? I'm good with guns, he'll suggest me right?"
"If you get any more excited you'll put Zack Fair out of a job!" Rex laughed.
"Tell me about it!" Roy agreed with a laugh.
"Oh come on, just tell me if you think I've got a chance of being chosen to go!" Davis begged.
"Alright, you have a wonderful chance of going. Happy?" Rex asked, grinning.
"Be serious!" Davis said, shoving Rex playfully.
"I am!" Rex protested, chuckling.
Davis bit his lip excitedly and continued walking in silence. There was definitely a new bounce to his step and Roy and Rex exchanged a glance to snicker. If Davis got chosen to go they would be ecstatic for him, but they couldn't help hoping they would get to go as well.
When they reached their room, they were about to go inside when suddenly all of their phones went off to say they had received a message. They froze in their steps and blinked stupidly for a few moments until Roy took the initiative of pulling out his phone and looking to see what he'd gotten.
"OhmygoshI'mgoingtoKalm!" he squealed in a very girlish voice. Instantly the other three pulled out their phones and jaws dropped all around as they read their messages.
"Me too!" Cloud exclaimed.
"I'm going to Modeoheim!" Davis yelled, punching the air with a fist.
"Same!" Rex laughed, the shock on his face evident as he shook his head in disbelief.
"Wait, that means we're split up!" Roy said, pouting.
"So what? I'm going to Modeoheim!" Rex laughed and high-fived Davis enthusiastically. Roy couldn't help but laugh and then nodded in agreement.
"Whoa dude, Cloud, we're going to Kalm!" he exclaimed.
"What do you think we'll have to do?" Cloud asked, sounding slightly worried.
"Nothing we can't handle, don't worry." Roy said with a grin. "Sephiroth'll look after us."
Davis shot Roy a look and narrowed his eyes slightly in question. Sephiroth knew about Roy, so the trip to Kalm was sure to be interesting. Davis wondered what Sephiroth would make Roy do, knowing that he was actually a girl. Would he be allowed to do the same things? Surely he would despite his, er, 'condition'.
"Whoa! Guys did you see? We leave in three days!" Rex suddenly exclaimed loudly, staring down at his phone again.
"Serious?" Davis asked, looking down at his phone as well and his eyes widening as he saw it was true.
"This is going to be so awesome." Roy said with a smile.
"Whoa! Whoa! Davis scroll down the message!" Rex said, hitting Davis' arm to get him into action. Davis frowned and scrolled down obediently before his eyebrows raised.
"A Turk's going with us?" he asked.
"Not just any Turk! A female Turk!" Rex beamed. "Check out her name! Kissnei, almost kiss-me!"
"You jerk!" Roy laughed, whacking Rex upside the head. "Do you ever think of anything other than hitting on girls?"
"Uh, not much." Rex grinned cheekily.
"Rex, doesn't it say Cissnei?" Davis asked, raising one eyebrow.
Rex was silent for a moment before he huffed and turned away from them snobbishly, pretending to be offended.
"It's not my fault I can't always pronounce things correctly." he said, sniffing dramatically.
"Get over yourself." Davis said bluntly, walking forward and into their room which they had been standing just outside of the whole time during that conversation. The other three soon followed and Roy sighed loudly, going over and sitting on his bed.
"Kalm. I'm going to Kalm!" he laughed to himself and shook his head slightly.
"Hey, uh, I don't want to be the bearer of bad news but if we don't hurry up we're going to be late to field activities." Cloud said, his head buried in his schedule.
"At least you've got a point, Spike," Rex said with a small shrug, picking his helmet up from where it sat on his bed and shoving it on his head. "and have I ever mentioned how much I hate these helmets?" he asked curiously.
"No, I don't think you have." Davis replied, pulling his own helmet on as well.
"Well, I hate them a lot!" Rex said. "They mess up my hair."
"Same!" Cloud squeaked, a look of utter disbelief as he stared over at Rex. "I though I was the only one!"
Davis burst out laughing and put an arm around Roy's shoulders, leading him out of the room and the corridor.
"And here I was thinking you were girly." he said quietly, causing Roy to then laugh as well.
Standing on the grass outside, Roy, Davis, Cloud and Rex all were silent as they listened to their instructor speak to them. Their instructor called himself Brawn and was the same man who had taken Roy to General Sephiroth a while ago for laughing.
Since then, their group of Infantryman had gotten a lot better at running for long periods of time as they did it at least once a week.
"All of you except for you four excited looking kids in the front are going to be doing the same thing today. So off you go." Brawn snapped. Roy glanced over at Davis, who was glancing at Rex and Cloud before looking back to the front at Brawn. No doubt they were who he had been talking about.
Everyone else took off from around them and soon they were left alone with the man who frightened them almost enough to have nightmares.
"I hear you four are going to be leaving for missions in a few days." Brawn began. "To prepare you, I've thought up something a little different."
Roy swallowed nervously and watched as Brawn bent down to pick up some guns which had been lying at his feet. He handed one to each of them and then bent down to pick up some materia as well. Roy noticed Rex had suddenly become a hundred times more excited when Brawn picked up the materia, but they weren't given it and instead Brawn picked up another gun – different to theirs – and inserted the materia into it.
"You're going to start over there," Brawn pointed to an area off in the distance. "And then make your way towards me. I'm going to be shooting at you and you're going to be shooting at me. Do your best."
As the four of them made their way off in the direction they had been pointed, Roy and Davis exchanged a glance.
"He wouldn't make us do this if it risked us getting killed." Davis said reassuringly. "He'd get busted for it."
"At least we know we're not going to die then." Rex said sarcastically.
"What materia was that, anyway?" Cloud asked, glancing over his shoulder.
"Who knows. We've just got to remember to work together. What strategy should we use?" Davis asked, immediately getting into the technicalities. "We won't be able to start shooting right away or we'll just waste our ammo, because the distance is too far and it would fall short before reaching him. What he's got probably has more power though, so we'll probably be under attack as soon as we begin."
"How are we going to avoid being hit while we gain the distance needed to begin shooting back?" Rex asked, frowning. Davis grinned and looked down at the ground, the cogs in his head working overtime.
"Okay, don't slow down just yet. But when I say 'now', we're to all turn around, start running, and fire at him." Davis whispered.
"Whoa, I feel sneaky." Rex hissed excitedly.
"Won't we get in trouble?" Cloud asked, eyes wide in worry. Davis glanced at him with a grin and then looked ahead of himself again, counting steps in his head.
They were all silent for a few minutes as they continued walking, and then Davis shouted, "Now!" and they spun on their heels, sprinting back in the direction of where they had come from and opening fire.
Brawn hadn't been expecting their sudden attack, but he recovered quickly and returned some shots. The bullets which they fired at him all seemed to stop right in front of him like harmless beetles and fall to the ground, but what he fired at them didn't stop no matter how close it got to them.
"Strife! Left!" Davis yelled, noticing one of the blasts from Brawn's gun heading straight for the small blond boy. Cloud obediently dodged to the left and was unscathed, moving back afterwards and continuing to run with them.
Roy felt like he was useless, as he was finding it incredibly difficult to aim at Brawn while running and they hadn't gone over this in their guns class yet. Up until now, the only shooting they had done was while standing still.
Now approximately 100 yards away from Brawn, the four of them continued shooting and dodging the blasts that came their way. Just as Brawn fired another at Davis, however, he swiftly turned his gun and fired another towards Roy.
Roy had fired a few shots and then turned his head slightly to make sure Davis had seen what was coming for him, but in that momentary loss of concentration he hadn't noticed the blast heading for him as well and the next second as he looked in front of himself again he only had time to widen his eyes before it slammed him in the chest and knocked him over backwards.
At first, Roy only thought of the pain. Slowly, he found himself able to think again and thought that surely it wasn't meant to hurt this much. Especially not in his back. Why was his back hurting anyway?
"Roy!" came Davis' voice from above him, and he slowly opened his eyes to look up.
"Get up, Peters." came Brawn's gruff voice then, as he was standing to the side with his arms folded and looking unimpressed.
"Sir, I think I broke my back." Roy mumbled.
"What?" Davis exclaimed, eyes going wide in horror. "You could be paralysed for life!"
"Nonsense." Brawn snapped, reaching down and grabbing one of Roy's arms to pull him to his feet.
"Ow! Okay, not broken, but it really hurts!" Roy complained.
"No wonder." Brawn grunted. "You landed on your gun, dimwit. What were you doing to get it back there, ballet?"
Roy chuckled and then winced, putting a hand on his back.
"Can I take him to the infirmary, Sir?" Davis asked cautiously.
"Yeah, may as well. They'd better get him patched up before he has to leave anyway." Brawn took their guns off them and tucked them under one arm, frowning. "Good work out here, by the way. Nice tactic."
Then he turned stiffly and walked away to keep an eye on the rest of in the Infantrymen and the four friends were able to go back into the ShinRa building, all silently agreeing to go to the infirmary together.
"You know, I can actually see you doing ballet, Roy." Rex said in a light, casual voice.
Roy laughed and went to hit him but thought better of it, giving Davis a look and snickering as Davis hit Rex for him.