"Easy," Sephiroth said. "Quiet, be quiet. No sudden moves." He was leaning forward slightly, staring intently out the windshield.

The Ahriman on the hood stared back through its armored visor.


"The packaging lied. This isn't an easy process," Sephiroth griped, glaring at the small mirror propped on the ground before him. He clenched his hands, making the clear plastic gloves crinkle. His wet and newly darkened masses of hair were slicked back and hung behind his shoulders, which were covered with two towels to catch the mess. A trickle of mousy brown ran down the side of his face, and he impatiently wiped it away with a tissue. "Was this really the best option? The instructions insisted I wear gloves to protect my hands from the dye, yet I am expected to believe it's perfectly fine to leave it on my scalp and hair for half an hour?"

The two men had driven past sundown before coming to a wooded spot in the foothills that Sephiroth had deemed suitably isolated, that also had a decent stream running down from the mountains. They had opted not to set up a full camp, but instead would sleep in the truck's cab. Sephiroth had not been willing to wait any longer for the allergy test, again proclaiming it "stupid," and had begun the process of dyeing his hair—in the dark, with only the moon to provide light to work by. He'd been griping ever since.

Zack gave a tiny shrug at Sephiroth's latest complaints. "Hey, man, I've never dyed my hair before. I don't know what's normal. But I suspect the gloves simply keep your hands from getting dyed, too."

"It smells."

It did smell terrible. It stank of ammonia, hydrogen peroxide, alcohol, and a host of other noxious substances. Zack wondered if the dye chemicals smelled as bad even to non-enhanced noses. Probably. He busied himself with getting dinner out of the truck.

"And it's drippy," Sephiroth said. "It was a thick cream when I mixed it and put it in my hair. Why did it get so drippy?"

"I have no idea. Look, just have something to eat." Zack offered a ration pack: Teriyaki Chicken With Broccoli and Chocolate Cake. Sounded great, he thought, until you remembered it was a military ration pack.

"I can't eat like this." Sephiroth held up his plastic covered hands. He looked over at the container with Angeal's head, resting on the ground next to him. "Stop laughing at me."

"I didn't say a word," said Zack.

"Not you. Angeal."

"He would find this funny, wouldn't he?" Zack looked at Angeal and, emulating Sephiroth, spoke to him directly: "I agree, Angeal, it is pretty funny."

"I wish I'd listened to you in the first place," Sephiroth grumbled.

"Me or Angeal?" And wasn't it sad that Zack no longer considered that a strange question to ask?

"You. You talked about getting a room at a backwoods inn. I am in agreement with you now. I dread rinsing this concoction out in that stream."

Zack clamped his jaw shut and refrained from saying "I told you so." He didn't think it would go over well.

"Shut up, Angeal," Sephiroth said to the specimen container. "You know I hate it when you tell me you told me so."

That statement was sufficiently complex and flat-out weird that Zack didn't want to think too hard about it. At least "Angeal" had said it. Someone needed to.

Later, after Sephiroth had rinsed, washed, and conditioned his hair, the two men, with the specimen container sitting between them, ate dinner and hunkered down in the truck to rest. Despite repeated rinsing in the cold, clear stream water, Sephiroth's hair still stank faintly of the dye. At least it was brown. The dye had worked.

Zack wrinkled his nose and burrowed into his blanket, wondering how many fish that dye had killed when Sephiroth cleansed his hair. Probably not too many, he decided. The chemicals should have gotten pretty diluted.

He listened to Sephiroth reminisce with Angeal about old times, teasing him about someone named Sharon. A girlfriend? It sounded like Sephiroth, Genesis, and Angeal had, at the time, been... Oh wow. They must've been around Zack's age.

Weird. Seemed to Zack that they'd always been old guys. Yeah, Sephiroth was younger than Angeal and Genesis, but he was still older and a lot more experienced than Zack. The three had been authority figures, icons—heroes one could look up to and emulate. It was hard to imagine them as teenagers like him. It was harder still to imagine them as less strong, less competent, and more impulsive than they'd been at their best. As Zack wanted to always remember them, even if that option was beyond him now. They weren't as old as Zack's parents, not really, but they were definitely old.

Well, maybe not old-old. It wasn't like they were thirty or anything. But old enough.

Zack dozed off.

He dreamed of wings, a whirlwind of wings and claws, and teeth and giant eyes and long, scaly tails. Bat wings. Not white wings, not like Angeal's. Not his. Monsters. Monsters and monsters and more monsters that wore Angeal's face, but not in place of their own. Their own faces were blank, masked with armor—weird, unearthly fusions of flesh and metal. Gray and gold. Angeal's face on their foreheads, eyelids shut tight, seeing through monster eyes...

Bitter, metallic odors. Giant eyes. Angeal's face on the foreheads. Bat wings. Gray and gold, flesh and metal. They surrounded him, scratching and snuffling, but not attacking. Not attacking...

Their master kept them at bay. Their master...

"Zack."

The monsters snorted and huffed, trying to get their master's attention. They scratched, and grumbled, and made hoarse cooing sounds. Monsters cooed?

"Zack."

Was that Sephiroth?

The monsters rumbled and pawed at the truck.

"Zack," Sephiroth said again. His voice was low, hushed, as though he were afraid of waking Zack—or was he afraid of waking something else?

Zack's eyes flew open and he sat bolt upright.

"Easy," Sephiroth said. "Quiet, be quiet. No sudden moves." He was leaning forward slightly, staring intently out the windshield.

The Ahriman on the hood stared back through its armored visor. In the fading moonlight, Zack saw it flex its claws. It was a gentle movement, just enough to make a scratching noise, but without pressure to damage the paint. Its bat wings fluttered restlessly. It bowed its head to the former SOLDIERs, and the gold-framed image of Angeal's face, eyes closed, came into view front and center.

"Angeal copies," said Sephiroth, unnecessarily. "I've counted six. All Ahrimans."

Zack looked out his side window and saw two more A-Ahrimans crowding the truck. He heard something skitter and thump on the roof.

"They aren't attacking?" he whispered.

"They've displayed no hostility. They're just sitting here and staring at us. They got here right before I woke you up."

"Why? What are they doing here?" Stupid question, Zack berated himself. Who could read a monster's mind?

Sephiroth answered anyway: "If Hojo's Reunion theories are correct, they want to be with their master, and they've finally caught up with us. Caught up with him."

Zack's gaze flashed down to the specimen container. Within it, Angeal's eyes remained closed in unconsciousness.

Six A-Ahrimans. Six. Six? Six!

"Sephiroth, these are the ones that saved me!" Zack said, excited to recognize them. He lowered his voice at the glare Sephiroth shot him. "I mean, there were six that flew me out of the Shin-Ra building. You said you...you disposed of the rest of Hojo's specimens, right?"

"There might be others that he kept in another location, or more that Hollander made," Sephiroth said mildly. "But it does seem much too large a coincidence for this group to be otherwise."

"Yeah, it must be them. But they flew off before. Why are they here?"

"According to Hojo's theories, they all maintain a subconscious telepathic link between themselves and their master. His Reunion theory claims their Jenova aspects will utilize it to draw them together."

"And their master is Angeal."

"Yes. I suspect I broke the link temporarily in Hojo's lab when I rescued Angeal. It must have reestablished itself at some point. Perhaps his tissue regeneration activity has strengthened the connection."

There was that word again: "Rescued." Sephiroth really believed he had rescued Angeal. Probably, Zack thought, the link had been severed when Sephiroth had severed Angeal's head from the remains of his tortured body. The shock must have been transmitted to the surviving copies. And pain as well? Sephiroth had also killed the other copies. Had they all felt that, too? Even Angeal's head?

Zack swallowed against a sudden rise of bile. He stared hard at Angeal's specimen container. With halting words, he asked, "Could...Could Angeal have somehow called them here?"

"Called them?" Sephiroth echoed.

"Like, maybe to help us? He'd want to help us, right? It's something he'd do."

"It is."

"Maybe, maybe it's something unconscious. Something left over, something that bled into the link when he helped me escape the lab?" Zack was grasping at straws. It was too horrible to contemplate that Angeal might be even slightly conscious. If he was, how long had he been that way? Better to think the monsters were acting on some mindless instinct or subconscious impulse.

"Is he really unconscious?" Zack couldn't stop himself from asking, hating the waver he heard in his voice. "What if... What if there's some kind of weird shared awareness with his copies?"

"Angeal is unconscious," Sephiroth stated flatly. "But just in case..." A materia in his bangle glowed, stronger and stronger, bathing Angeal's head in the radiance of a powerful Sleepel spell.

The A-Ahrimans remained, staring at the men inside the truck. The one on the hood yawned and scratched itself, as though it had a sudden itch. The two crowding Zack's door also let out noisy yawns, displaying row upon row of jagged teeth, but otherwise didn't move.

"Interesting," mused Sephiroth, looking from the pair of yawning A-Ahrimans outside his own door to the one on the hood. "That does seem to confirm the idea that they are linked in some way, though not strongly enough for my casting on Angeal to also put them to sleep."

"I don't like this," Zack muttered, wrapping his arms about himself. "I really don't like this."

"I admit I also find it disturbing. It does align with the way Genesis is able to control his own copies, though."

"Do you suppose the copies and Angeal can all communicate? Like, both ways and with each other in some kind of living network? Maybe that whole 'two-way conduit' stuff Hollander talked about works with more than just cells and biological traits?"

"We shall have to ask Hollander when we see him." There was no trace of doubt in Sephiroth's voice. He unlatched his door and opened it.

"What are you doing?" Zack gasped out. "Sephiroth, you can't go out there!"

"They will not harm me," he returned serenely. "Nor will they hurt you. They are part of Angeal, and he is with us."

Zack smothered his protests. A-copies had been quick enough to attack in Reactor Five and in Modeoheim, but it was true that in those cases Angeal hadn't been present and probably also hadn't been inclined to control or even communicate with them. He'd hated what his body had become. He'd called himself a monster and tried to deny that part of himself. Zack, knowing what he did now of the truth, couldn't blame him and wouldn't condemn him for the identity struggles that had almost destroyed him.

Perhaps Angeal's own attitudes about controlling his copies had changed since then. He'd deliberately used them to save Sephiroth and Zack back in Hojo's lab. Maybe there was some kind of shared mind or group consensus among the A-Ahrimans about helping Zack and Sephiroth? Angeal would want that, even if he wasn't consciously directing the copies at the moment.

Sephiroth stepped out of the truck, leaving the door ajar. The two A-Ahrimans closest to him backed away, giving him space. The rest moved around him and swiveled their shielded eyeballs to stare. Even the one on the roof fluttered down and hovered, staying at a respectful distance but also focused on Sephiroth.

"I wonder how much of Angeal is in you," Sephiroth said to them, raising his hands, palms out to show his peaceful intentions.

Six A-Ahrimans did a good impression of gaping at Sephiroth through their visors. And then, as one, they all started making hoarse coughing noises. One flew close by him, alarming Zack and making even Sephiroth flinch. The A-copy did no harm, but it also grabbed a lock of Sephiroth's newly dyed, brown hair. It tugged lightly, dropped it, and fluttered away, all while making those weird sounds. The others coughed and sputtered. Another did a flyby, churning up air by flapping its bat wings and stirring the "Mousy Brown" strands in its wash. A third circled overhead, darting down and up again to watch the hair swish in its manufactured breeze. More coughing and choking came from the group at large.

If Zack didn't know better, he'd swear they were all laughing at Sephiroth. More specifically, at his new hair color.

Sephiroth came to the same conclusion. A disgruntled look spread across his face. "Too much of Angeal's personality gets imprinted on his copies," he stated, folding his arms over his chest in disgust.