Geeze, I meant to have another chapter out way before now, but you know, life. I'm still planning to finish by the 31st, though! Let's see where all of this goes.

I.

The bright flicker of cerulean light lit the darkened bags under his eyes. The pale light's source, liquefied and decondensed energy, had splashed at some point, and very slowly burned a hole through one of the sleeves of his lab coat. He wasn't fazed by the spill. It had happened plenty of times before while synthesizing other trial serums. At the moment, his attention was held on something much more important.

If he didn't watch the reaction before him, the ingredients of his concoction wouldn't bind correctly. He only had so much to his disposal in the storage unit of the mansion. Adjusting the glare out of his glasses, he removed one test vial from a partially finished batch and readied to re-record what he had previously written on the label.

RED XIII_ Extraction 23-36-2 (SEGMENT 150)

ELITE SERVICE CANINE 182/ 1st CLASS SHINRA K9 #182_ Extraction 39-78-2 (SEGMENT 70)

PROTEIN X

BINDING AGENT 760

SALINE 3%

MAKOBIOORGANIC 75% Decondensed

Additional Notes:

Uncontrollable Variants Not Found in Mixture: prolactin, acetylcholine, serotonin

Blood and tissue life unknown. Desired activation at the standard start of REM. Best results requires a prepared subject. Miniature trials 1-6 suggest that cellular activation consumes copious amounts of adenosine triphosphate, and preexisting cell resources including water and raw sugar. If subject is injected, prepared or unprepared, then the researcher can expect dehydration and starvation in consecutive transformations. No other notes on affects can be taken at this time.

He placed his pen back under the metal lining of his clip board, and twisted a stopper onto the top of the vial in his hand. He removed his gloves, and slipped it into the slot of a centrifuge. The machinery's lid was promptly snapped shut.

II.

Cid ran his fingers through his hair and rubbed the strain from his face. He sat, hunched over, on the bottom step of the porch. He combed, groped, rummaged through, and just about threw over every stone cluttering the space of his memories. Why couldn't he remember?! If someone had screwed him over, shouldn't he know?!

Neither of them said anything for a long while. An hour had pasted to allow everything to sink in. And sink it did. Cid had the most awful feeling in the very pit of his stomach. At some point, Shera had padded back into the house, and brought them something cold to drink. Understandably, no one had bothered her when she did. The silence was broken when she sat again.

"What the hell do I do?" The Captain mumbled. He lowered a hand from his head and stared down at the stray hair he unintentionally pulled. He held up a few choppy strands between his fingers to a square of porch light cast over his thigh. Red at the roots.

"I don't know either…" Shera sighed. "We're all just waiting."

"For me." Cid's side glance was an unsure one. It was true. There was nothing else to wait for.

"We can figure this out." She drummed her finger nails along the ceramic outside of the mug she drank from. Shera could still taste the coffee that was in it earlier.

"I could become this thing at any second." Cid sighed low through his nostrils. He'd had enough of sitting. Handing his empty cup to Shera, he stood with a grunt and dusted off his hands. She leapt up a short moment after him. Shera hoped he wasn't planning anything.

"Barret and I think it has something to do with you sleeping. " She hooked her finger in the handle of one cup, and drank the rest of the water in the other. "It's…you've always appeared late at night."

"Don't I take naps during the day?" He paced. Cid was rubbing the scratchiness of his chin. It was strange to see him so fidgety and nervous.

He had her there. Cid did in fact take naps during the day. "They aren't long ones, Captain." Never more than twenty minutes at a time. That probably had something to do with him being a pilot. "Sleepwalking always comes with deep sleep. Did you…" Shera's question trailed.

"Did I what?" Cid paused his creaky pacing over the porch wood and faced her.

"Did you fall asleep last night? Out in the field?" She remembered him telling her how tired he was.

"Shit." He hissed at no one in particular. "I was leanin' against my spear after you left. I …I guess I clocked out." That's all he could remember. "I'm not sleepin', then." Cid decided then and there. He snatched the handle to the porch door and limped back inside.

"Not sleeping? Captain, you have to sleep eventually." Shera tried placing her hand on his arm, but he was moving too much.

"What the hell else am I supposed to do, huh?!" The conversation on the inside was partially interrupted. Cloud, Barret, and Tifa's backs stiffened, and they all avoided eye contact. Cid could tell they had probably been listening to the argument he and Shera had had an hour or so ago.

"Nothing happens when you take a nap!" Shera gave a frustrated huff and flung out her arms a bit with the suggestion. She tossed their cups in the sink and placed her hands on her hips. She wasn't really upset with him, not knowing what to do in any given situation made her just as on edge. She hated not knowing what to do, and the whole ordeal wasn't something any of them were taking lightly.

"We can take turns watching," Nanaki's throaty yawn cut through both of their voices "that is, if the Captain doesn't mind."

"Look," Cloud was trying to gauge how bad a mood Cid was in "no one likes to be baby sat, but you've got sitters. We don't mind watching if you take short naps. I mean, if we make it through the night without seeing…our target, then we'll have some sort of solid evidence. If not—"

"We'll try not to let the 'if not' get out of hand. We already have a backup plan." Tifa partially smiled. Her brows were still bowed in deep concern.

Cid rubbed the back of his neck. It hadn't been long at all, and he felt like his world was turned upside down. This was ridiculous. "Fuck! Fine." What else was there?

III.

Shera wiped drool from the side of her cheek with her sleeve. Tifa had gently tapped on her shoulder; stirring her from the light sleep she had been in. "Time to switch already?" She mumbled and pinched the fog from her eyes. Aside from a lamp, and the licking flames of Nanaki's tail, the house was dark and quiet if you didn't count the snoring.

"Yes, sorry." Tifa covered her yawn with her hand and waited for Shera to stand up from the couch so they could trade places.

"It's alright." Shera stretched out her legs and fixed her glasses over the bridge of her nose. She looked over Yuffie's hip to see that she was still asleep. Finding her footing on the hardwood, she held in a sneeze, and moved around the patchy armrest to unplug Caith Sith's charging cord. The flickering green light in his plush back dimmed, and Shera rolled the long lead up on the coffee table. "She hasn't been feeling any better, has she?" She whispered to Tifa, and the younger woman shook her head.

"Yuffie might have been paying half attention when I told her everything. She was totally upset about being stuck here, but I could tell she still had a really bad headache. I used the thermometer in your kit just in case. I really hoped she wasn't, but she started running a fever."Tifa sank down in the impression Shera had left behind on the couch, and found a comfortable position sharing the blanket Yuffie had been under.

"That's not good…maybe we should call the doctor again and make sure she doesn't have an infection. If she wakes up anytime soon, you can hand her some ibuprofen." Shera tugged the yellow scrunchie from her hair by a loosened loop and sluggishly retied her ponytail. "Is the Captain awake?" She could see that the door to the engineering room was open; light from the inside illuminated the wooden posts of the stairs.

"I woke him up before I woke you. He's got a little while before he can take another cat nap. So far, we haven't heard anything. I really think it has been him." The last of Tifa's statement was muffled in another yawn.

"Well, you can go to sleep." Shera keenly checked the time. It was two quarters past three in the morning. "I'll keep him company for the rest of the night."

"Warning you, though. He's a little grumpy."

"When isn't he? Did you forget I'm the he's-a-little-grumpy expert?" Shera dryly laughed and waved Tifa goodnight. Stretching her arms, and rubbing the stiffness in her shoulder, she slipped through the crack in the door to the work room. "Captain?"

"Hmn?" Cid's head bobbed upward. He had his elbows anchored into a sawdust covered table top, and his chin in one of his hands. He looked all kinds of worn out. Empathy filled her heart at the sight of him, and Shera pulled up the chair Tifa had posted herself in before her.

"Are you okay?" Shera tilted one way to try to view the rest of his face. Cid's expression was too riddled with fatigue to properly read. If he was upset, and he had a right to be, at least it wasn't something that she wasn't used to.

"M'alright." He mumbled. Cid gathered playing cards that were lined up on the table and stacked them together in a corner near a rusted table lamp. "Got any pills on ya?"

"Not on me. Do you need some?" She was ready to get them for him before she even had a chance to sit.

"Leg hurts, but forget it. Y'look pretty damn tired."

"You look pretty damn tired." Shera plopped down and folded her arms over the table top at his side. Not caring that sawdust was clinging to the fabric of her yellow sweater and the strands of her frizzed hair; she laid her head down over her forearms and made drowsy eye contact.

"Cause I am. Yer' turn to babysit me?"

"Mm hm, I have to keep you awake until you can sleep again. Did you and Tifa play cards?" Shera was gazing at the odd stippling of bright blue in Cid's irises. The pigment was much brighter than the blue she knew was naturally his. She hadn't seen it there earlier, but Shera suddenly remembered seeing it the night she had caught him sleep walking. So, she hadn't imagined it.

"Shera?"

"Hm?"

"Asked you what you were gonna do. You copy in there?" Here we go again. "Don't get ditzy on me. How are you s'posed to keep me awake if you're fallin' asleep?"

"Oh, I don't know. I figured you weren't interested in playing a game since you put the cards away." She realized she probably looked odd mindlessly gazing in Cid's eyes and averted her attention to his arms. They were tugging her away from her rattling seat and into his lap. Shera slipped her hands under the hold Cid had her torso in, and made room for the chin he hooked over her shoulder. He must have gotten tired of leaning against the hard, wooden table. He propped his weight against her, his chest to her back, instead.

"Hey, uh," Cid's voice was in Shera's ear again; filling her throat "m' sorry 'bout…I mean I shouldn't have yelled at ya. I was bein' an ass." Again. As usual. "You were just tryin' to tell me what's goin' on."

"You don't have to apologize. I'm not sure how I would react if I was in the same situation. I might not have wanted to believe it either." Shera pressed her mouth in a timid line. She could feel Cid's breath ghosting over the near corner of her lips in cadence with the gentle push against her back.

"Feels like I haven't been ownin' up. Man's gotta keep his word. You'd tell me if I ever hurt you, right, Shera?"

"Of course I would, Captain." She laid her head against his and Cid's short hair tickled the shell of her ear. "I think you can go back to sleep now. I'll wake you up a quarter till four."

She didn't have to tell him twice.

IV.

It was pleasant at first; a masculine purr filling her inner ear, and a heavy handed grip on her hips. The breathing over her shoulder was hot, and viscous, and labored. Ambiguous vibrations trickled from the base of her neck and snapped down her spine, causing her to shiver. Something snapped here, something snapped there. It was all pleasant until it wasn't. No snapping of the nerves. Those were sounds? The smell of dirt invaded her nostrils and she began to feel bush burs dragged across exposed portions of her skin.

So much pain and subtle dampness in the side of her ribs. Shera wrenched herself into full consciousness. It was dark, and if it wasn't, she still wouldn't be able to see. Her glasses were missing in action on her face. She wasn't moving her body either. It was being dragged by whatever had a hold of her pants leg. She screamed, or it would have been a scream if she didn't have a two pound block of horror wedged in her windpipe.

Nanaki's body dropped low to the ground. He spat out the fabric of her clothing, and whipped around to shush her before she could utter another sound.

"Red?!" Her voice came out in a rasp. Shera's heart was racing.

"Shush!" The canyon beast hissed and crouched lower. His belly brushed the damp soil below, and his body merged with the thicket he had hidden them behind. He stood perfectly still. In the dark, Nanaki could read the petrified look on her face.

WHAT HAPPENED?!

"You're being hunted!"

V.

The lethargy was creeping in. He had the sweet taste of blood on his canines, but the opportunity to feed his humanity, and keep it alive when the cycle ended was slipped away right under his wet nose; dragged off to some other portion of the woods where he would have to track it down. High off the scent, ignoring the voices, and the irrelevant musks of sweat, and the uninteresting thumps of heart beats that were chasing him. The blood, and pheromones were getting stronger just as the trees were getting thicker. Would he ignore the instinct to turn back around, or press on?

Fuck it. He leapt clear over a rope and pole he didn't even see and sure enough THERE WAS WHAT HE WAS LOOK FOR.

Something much smaller than him snarled and bared its teeth; body crouched over and viciously guarding who he'd almost made a meal out of before the moon had begun to set. He howled back, much louder with taking on the thief's challenge, but his roar was rivaled by the firing of a triple barreled gun.