I.

Sounds and varying intensities of light invaded her senses. There were heavy footsteps behind her and a presence looming above. Shera licked dryness from her lips and uncurled from the tight ball she had been in under her comforter. She wasn't fully awake when her eyes cracked open; awareness far behind her body. Shera barely registered that morning had come.

"Ain't you hear me callin' you? I've been looking all over the house for this thing, and you got it." Cid swayed back to avoid Shera's forehead smacking into his. He peeled her stiff fingers from the grip of his spear after she snapped to attention, and held the pointy, dangerous bits up and away at his side.

"N-no, I'm sorry." Shera stammered and massaged her eyes. Tiredness was evident in the slight bags under her lids. The encounter last night had sensitized, and stolen her ability to tune out sounds in the house. She kept expecting the unwanted visitor to return and claw its way in. Her hands fell to her lap, and she blinked away the blur of a poor night's rest to give Cid proper eye contact. "Where in the world were you last night?"

"You see the note? Went out for a beer at the bar. Kinda lost track of time at the counter talking about digging up some scrap parts." He began to ramble. "M' gonna start collecting for that ship I told you I was workin' on. Got to fix the Bronco, too." Cid scowled. Shera was giving him a weird expression. "What?"

"When did you get back?" Shera was mentally questioning what Cid had on. For one, his chest and torso were bare, and two, he had on a pair of grey sweats she hadn't seen him in in years. She folded away the covers and righted her glasses. Shera rubbed itchy indents in the palm of her hand. Ringlets of materia slots were pressed into the calloused insides of her knuckles. She'd been clutching that lance all night.

"Came back 'round three somthin. Why?" Cid placed a hand on his hip. His other loosened in grip, and the butt of his spear fell with a thud to the hardwood.

"I saw last night, what our neighbor must have seen the night before. I don't know how she didn't have a heart attack! I almost did." Shera combed her fingers through her disheveled hair; pulling out a knot or two. She gathered the locks up, and tied them into a pony tail with the yellow band around her wrist. "Some of the porch is scratched up where it was. It was back near the woods when I walked out. It growled at me, and then took off before I could move again."

"What the hell?! You alright?" Cid took a half-pace back to give Shera some room to stand from bed. He scratched at a bit of tapped down gauze over his hip.

"I couldn't sleep very well after it vanished, but I'm fine. I had to borrow your spear just in case."

"Better that than nothin'. I ain't get to see the back porch." With the amount of alcohol in his system when he came home, Cid didn't notice a thing.

"I should probably go downstairs and take a look with you now that there's some daylight." Shera stretched and a few of her bones popped. She watched Cid scratch at another bandage. Some of his old dressings appeared irritated and messed over. "Don't scratch." She placed her hand over his wrist. "I can change those after I'm more awake."

II.

"Yes…" Shera pressed the house phone under her neck so that she could utilize both of her arms. She stood in the center of her room; passing warm, freshly washed clothes from a wicker basket to a drawer. "At six? I'll certainly be there…No, the Captain and I are fine. Nothing is stolen or missing." Shera nudged a drawer shut with her knee. "Thank you very much. See you then." She puffed out her cheeks and clicked a button to end the call.

"Juuust great." Shera was now obligated to attend a town meeting within the next week. Which, was considered a rare occurrence. Rocket Town only called meetings to decide over new shop or housing additions. She'd figure out some way of coaxing the Captain into going with her later.

Clicking her tongue, Shera left her bedroom in the direction of Cid's. She knocked on the door, waited to make sure he wasn't inside, pushed it open, and placed the empty basket down on his unkempt bed. She had a mind to make Cid wash his own clothes, but no, only one new responsibility at a time. Shera knew it was better to ease him into things instead of dumping all the chores he'd dodged for years on his head at once.

"Is he thirty-three, or thirteen?" She pressed her tongue to her cheek and scooped discarded articles of clothing from the floor. A black shirt (which had been white at some point) in his clothes pile was soaked in steering fluid and made his whole room smell waxy. Shera's nose crinkled. It was the first to go in the basket.

She collected underwear, patchy socks, numerous dirty shirts, some other shirts that had probably been clean but were now dirty by association, and work pants. She assessed the dark green fabric with her fingers; poking and wriggling her digits through oddly placed rips in the pants legs. Threads looked like they had popped right out of their seams. Cid was so hard on clothes. Hard and forgetful.

Shera was counting; some of his clothes were missing: three more work shirts, another pair of pants, and his flight jacket. The clothes she did have were all covered in annoying little clumps of organic fibers. Cid was always covered in something that put the washer through hell.

At any rate, all of it felt like more investigating. That was beginning to wear her out.

III.

"This meeting is now called to an order! Er, what's first on the agenda?"

"If he would look at the damn paper, he'd know." Cid muttered. He slumped in the hard, wooden court bench he was forced to sit on. Shera was half listening to the beginning of the meeting, and half listening to Cid complain off to his side.

It was astounding how many people were there. Every familiar and unfamiliar face in Rocket Town trickled in one by one to take their individual seats. She wondered if they were really there because of pure unease, or a mass amount of nosiness. This was a titillating mystery. Of course, it went without saying what the majority of the meeting would be about.

"Why the hell are we here?" Cid complained again. The coordinator conducting the meeting seemed a bit out of sorts. He shuffled through the agenda before asking for some suggestions from Rocket Town's understaffed community board members. They were ex-ShinRa employees who decided to stay behind like the Captain and his First Mate.

"We're going to break from the usual conduct, and begin opening up the floor for discussion. As you all know, there's been a nightly problem, and I've heard from many concerned voices." The Head of Board spoke. She scratched beneath the bun of her hair with a pen. "To start things off, I'd like to hear some accounts of this 'midnight terror'." She heavily air-quoted with her fingers. A few residents raised their hands. Shera didn't offer her hand just yet.

"You not gonna say nothin'?" The Captain muttered. He couldn't actually raise his hand; he wasn't the one who saw the mysterious creature.

"I'm going to wait." Shera pursed her lips. She was inattentively picking fuzzy little fibers from her sweater.

Mrs. Debora stood up from a pew with a huff and dramatically dabbed her eyes with a tissue. "My poor Pookie! My poor Pookie Cat was the first victim. I heard his precious yowl for help, and by the time I was able to get outside, he was gone. Nothing but c-cat hair and b-b-blood." Her tears turned hysterical. Cid rolled his eyes. This was going to be a long meeting.

"Who else?" The Board Head was jotting down notes after Mrs. Debora sat again. She acknowledged the next person.

"I was going to let my puppy out to use the yard." The widow from the other morning took her turn. "I snatched up my dog and ran as fast as I could because it was tearing after me. I thought I was going to die!"

"Doesn't she live next to us? Where was I when all this went down?" Cid leaned over to mutter in Shera's ear. "You were asleep." She rasped back.

"You didn't actually see the creature?" Head Honcho asked.

"No." The older woman shook her head. "I couldn't stop in time to see what it was. I was running for my life, you know!"

"Understood. Anyone else?" They wrote down what little information could be gathered from the widow's sighting. Other hands rose and they all disclosed, hopefully truthful, accounts of sighting the nightly terror. Apparently, this week's victims were two sheep, a yard goat, and a fully grown chocobo.

The meeting room was relatively silent while the woman clicked her tongue in deep thought. She turned over her notes once, then twice before speaking again. Everyone was giving each other very wary looks. Cid was bored out of his mind, and Shera still neglected to raise her hand.

"Am I the only one noticing a pattern here?" Head Honcho chewed a pen cap.

"A pattern, Ma'am?" The meeting's coordinator was confused.

"A cat. Two sheep. A goat. A chocobo. Connect the dots." They explained with a sigh. "Animals, and in increasing order of size." She placed her writing utensil down and stood from her perch. Head Honcho stepped down a small section of stairs to the seating floor. "This nuisance requires a lot of raw meat. It's hungry. Isn't it?" Murmurs between those seated filled the poorly lit court.

"Something should be done about it before our problem advances in severity. If not, we'll eventually find some of our residents on its menu, won't we?" She rubbed her temple. "I would like to nip this predicament in the bud A-S-A-P; however, I don't want to pull together a plan without having a good look at what we're dealing with. From what I gather, this isn't your common woodland pest. I should probably start the next segment of discussion with asking if we have any volunteers to—Yes? " She paused when a hand slowly rose off to the side of the room. Everyone turned their heads and gave the raiser their full attention.

"It's between seven and ten feet tall. Maybe eight hundred to a thousand pounds. It could walk upright on two, and down on fours, Ma'am." Shera felt a little uncomfortable with all eyes aimed in her direction.

"You saw it, Ms. Joules?" The Board Head's brows knitted over her eyes. She wondered why Shera hadn't mentioned anything before.

"Yes. I did." Shera adjusted the high collar of her sweater. "It left before I could see any more of it, but it looked to be some sort of dog? Their eyes glowed blue. Like—"

"Like Mako?" As a prior ShinRa employee, the Rocket Town official knew a thing or two about Mako. Things made more sense to her now.

Shera confirmed with the gentle nod of her head.

"What about you, Captain Highwind?" Everyone shifted over a space from Shera to Cid.

He wasn't as uncomfortable as his partner with having a surplus of attention. "Don't know a damn thing. Ain't seen it myself." On the inside, though, he had his own suspicions. He pulled a cigarette from a carton in his pocket, and lit it with a lighter. His speech was muffled by the filter wedged between his molars. "Do know that we can take care of it, though. Whatever it is, I've probably seen way worse."

"And by 'we' you mean the little 'group' you've participated in?" Whispers were passed in the room again. Maybe, if the vigilante group had tackled Meteor, this wouldn't be too much of a hassle?

"Sure do."

"Well," the committee official took a moment to mull it over "let's vote on it. All in favor?"

The vote was unanimous.

IV.

Being back up in the air and traveling from place to place with his friends felt pretty good. Leaving Shera at least two of his spare lances, Cid packed up some of his things and took off with AVALANCHE again. Same old head hunting, minus all the crazy individuals. No Sephiroth. No time limits. Just easy business.

There were nights that kept Cid awake and wondering. He pulled down a hammock from his personal cabin and lied awake wondering what Shera was doing at home. Probably pissed off at him. He knew she wanted to come. Probably sitting with every window locked. Neither liked the idea of her being alone, but people back in Rocket were slowly learning to check up on each other. He trusted she could manage just fine on her own.

Almost every morning pissed him off. Everyone would get up-and-at-em for the day, only to have the hype delayed for a highly needed repair. No parts broke consistently (that pissed Cid off even more). Deep gashes here. Something ripped off there. This busted. That busted. He really needed a new ship. The Highwind was an old girl. Old and still damaged from the last fight she endured. At some point, Cid began to wonder if the Highwind was truly breaking on her own. The notion he brewed in Rocket Town resurfaced from the back of his mind.

The Captain found it curious (everyone (even Cait Sith for fucks sake) found it curious) that Nanaki tended to be missing in action a majority of the time. If you wanted to see where the red beast had gone off to, you had to dig and comb through every nook and cranny of the ship. He was spookier than a hoarded house cat. What's the goddamn deal?

"How's the front line cadet?"

"All quiet on the front, Sir. Not a single attack." Shera's voice crackled with the frequency of the radio.

"Shera, I think somethin' is up with Red." He scratched the stubble of his chin and responded through a receiver.

"I was worried about him, too." Cid could hear her sigh.

"I mean…er, I could be wrong. M' really hopin' I'm wrong, but he ain't bein' himself." He lowered his voice. "Somethin's been tearing up the ship, too."

"Come again?"

Cid looked behind him to make sure no one was up late and wondering from compartment to compartment. "Something's been busting up the ship. It's already going to hell, so I thought it was just age gettin' to her. Not thinkin' that anymore."

"Ms. Lockhart and Barret radioed me yesterday and mentioned something like that. At least one or two areas damaged every morning?"

"You heard 'em right. You thinkin' what I'm thinkin?"

"Unfortunately."

"You go on and head to bed, alright, babe?"

"Alright, Captain. Goodnight?"

"I'll be back before you know it. Night, Shera."