Writer's Note: THERE WILL BE A FINAL FANTASY VII REMAKE. I REPEAT, THIS IS NOT A DRILL; FFVII WILL BE REMADE FOR PS4 AND YOU CAN BET I WAS SHAKING AND SCREAMING WHEN I HEARD THE NEWS. So I replaying FFVII on PS3, re-watched Advent Children, listened to the whole soundtrack on repeat, and am writing again. If I don't finish Green Dreams by the time that remake is out I will never forgive myself.

Chapter Thirty-Nine: You're a Wolf, Boy, Get Out of Town

Nibelheim was one of the last places on the planet Cloud wanted to see again and now he was there twice in three months.

He jumped off the back of the delivery truck as it pulled into the main square and stood by the entrance to the town, trying not to look at any of it. As though being here and seeing Nibelheim could be two different things—in the same way that he felt like two different people here. A part of him was still the child who knew which gable was whose, which walks would be shoveled and who didn't bother, and the exact dent at shin height on the front post of the town's sign. He'd repeatedly kicked it as a kid because that sign had been the invisible line between him and anywhere else.

The rest of him was a stranger here now, and the town that had once smelt of pine, minerals, and frost was now tainted by the smell of burning skin and acidic smoke. The windows of the houses were like cut squares of light to a world he'd once known, but the flames flickering in fireplaces in the living rooms of those same homes reminded him of the burned Nibelheim he'd known. He took a breath and didn't know if it was wood smoke or burnt hair that he smelled but neither scent was comforting.

Cloud's gaze flicked to the indent in the rusting metal sign and darted away.

"Is that…?" An old woman with her shopping paused in the street to gape as Cloud briskly walked through the main square. She might have said his name but Cloud ignored her, unable to remember whom she was or having any desire to, and continued down the street. His cheeks and nose were blistering from the January frost and his fingers were completely numb, but it didn't compare to the cold inside him. He never wanted to be back in Nibelheim again.

Once upon a time he could have named every occupant of every house on this road, but as he curved around the center plaza and its circle of evergreens, he realized that even he had forgotten the people of Nibelheim who had died in the fire. The thought prickled, but without his mother here and with Tifa soon to be gone, Nibelheim held nothing for him. He was so removed from it now that it felt as unreal as the Potemkin village it had become before.

His gait didn't slow until he jerked to a stop just before the walk to the house. His house. No, not his house anymore. His childhood home was… tended to. Instead of looking ramshackle after being abandoned for the winter months, someone had obviously shoveled the walk and heated the inside because the windows weren't frosted, but instead cheery and bright. Cloud refused to look in the window and chance seeing another happy family where he and his mother had once been.

He didn't know how long he stood there staring at it until he heard the click of a door opening nearby. "Cloud?" an uncertain voice asked from the next house over, and he turned slowly to look at her. "Is that you? Cloud Strife?"

It was Tifa standing on the steps of her house. Her hair was longer than he remembered, and her outfit more fashionable than practical. She had the softer face of a woman who hadn't been throwing men out of her bar for a year, and it wasn't the face of the woman who had fought monsters both from this planet and others with him. Nonetheless the furiously built shell that Cloud had created inside himself on the long ride up to Nibelheim cracked.

"Tifa?" he asked.

"It's me! Do you remember me? Planet, you must be a SOLDIER now, huh?"

The girlish way she spoke jibbed with his memories of her. This wasn't his Tifa, the one who had a life and career of her own and had been one of his closest friends despite his reluctance to ever act like one.

Cloud turned away. This was why he didn't want to come back to Nibelheim.

"I'm really sorry, Cloud, for your mother," she continued, not noticing or ignoring how he gave her his back. "Everyone was upset when they brought her back. She was… she was brave in the end."

"…"

"…Cloud?" she repeated softly.

He walked away. One night, he told himself. He'd spend one night in the inn to close his mother's affairs and find out the details. Before, his mother had been alive to see his disgrace when he came back to Nibelheim a foot soldier. Now she was dead and she hadn't been able to see her son become anything worthwhile. He couldn't decide which was worse.

Cloud had horrible nightmares that night, waking up sweating and hoarse, and then drifting off again only to jerk awake once more to the same haunting images. It was a bad start to a worse day. When he left the inn he found he was the gossip of the town, and when he went to Mayor Lockhart's house half of Nibelheim came out to see him. The children who had bullied him as boys were now awestruck adults. The elderly who remembered his mother arriving with a baby boy in tow and no husband to speak of talked behind their hands. The small town madness Cloud had grown up with had become more garish and disgusting than he had remembered.

Since Cloud hadn't come to claim anything the visit with the mayor was brief, and all but the most obviously personal possessions had been sold in an estate sale along with the house. What few things were his included a small photo album, a baby blanket covered in clouds with his name on it, and a necklace made of seashells set with one large pearl—the only gift his father had ever given her, except for Cloud, she would say. Elanor Strife had not left a will, but nonetheless the meager contents of her bank account and the sole box of possessions were given to him by the unsympathetic mayor.

Before he left though, Cloud turned the full force of his mako-bright eyes on the mayor. "Tell me what happened."

Tifa's father was pale and thin, with eyes too slight for his heavy jaw. He had frightened Cloud as a little boy, but now Cloud understood that Mayor Lockhart and the three hundred people of Nibelheim lived under the abiding fear of the outside. He was very small compared to the demons Cloud had faced after Nibelheim.

The mayor shuffled his papers nervously as he talked, eyes skittering about Cloud's outfit and sword. "She was up in the mountains, near the mako cave—not a good place to be, not at that time of year. She must have slipped and fallen. We'd been having ice storms as usual so not entirely surprising. Jacob found her at the bottom of the ravine gathering firewood. She'd been there all night and was in bad shape. She, well," the Mayor wiped his forehead with a handkerchief and looked unsteadily into Cloud's eyes. "She woke up a few times, but she was hypothermic, had a head wound and fractured back… She wasn't young, Cloud, as you know. And well, four days later she slipped away."

"What day?"

Mayor Lockhart had to check, and Cloud watched him steadily as he dug through folders and finally produced the death certificate. "November 8th."

Two days after the SOLDIER Exam was completed in the mountains. His mother must have fallen while he was in the very same mountain range.

The death certificated creased and folded in Cloud's fist. Lockhart watched the paper crumple nervously and banged his knee against his desk when he stood up to see Cloud out.

Cloud strode down the street, unable to see the townspeople gawking or hear how hard his boots hit the ground. He wanted to be alone to gather himself and he wanted to escape this place full of dead memories and echoes he didn't want to remember. He was starting to feel overwhelmed, and as he thought about his mother lying dying in a frozen ravine alone, he couldn't stop replacing her face with Aeris' in the lake and Zack's on the cliff. He'd failed someone in this time now, and not years apart, travel through space and time, or hope could dull the punch.

Tifa called his name three times before Cloud was able to hear her above the rattle in his chest as he breathed—did he want to cry or scream? "Cloud, up here!" she called again.

He glanced back to see Tifa standing on the boarded up well near the edge of town, the tree-line a bare ten feet away. The well had been covered up for as long as Cloud had been alive, and he and Tifa had climbed all over it as kids. It was there too that he'd said goodbye to her when he'd first left for SOLDIER. That was another memory he did not want to remember anymore.

"Cloud?" Tifa repeated, jumping down to the lower level with a bang. He jerked and looked away from her and the well. "I'm glad you stayed," she said.

"I'm not staying." He shook his head but refused to look at her. He felt edgy and raw, like a runner about to burst from the start line if one more thing pushed him.

"Cloud, you're in SOLDIER now, and congratulations! …Do you, do you remember what we promised here?"

He turned around and walked away.

"Cloud! Cloud wait! I'm going to tell my dad I'm going to Midgar next year! Cloud!"

He couldn't stand her girlish voice, the numerous promises he'd made and failed to keep, he couldn't stand being here any longer. He pushed through the undergrowth and into the forest, ignoring Tifa's calls.

He climbed for hours up the ridges of the mountain, cutting his own path in most places when he wasn't cutting down beasts. None of them gave a very good fight though, and by the time he'd gotten into the icy, snowed-out parts of the mountains the very roars of the dragons were close enough to shake his bones. It was exactly what he wanted, feeding the fury inside him at the fear and helplessness he hated. He couldn't save his mother. He couldn't stop Nibelheim from dredging up all the memories he didn't want to remember. He couldn't be civil to Tifa. It felt like he couldn't even do what he'd come to this time to do because he'd dilly-dallied for so long. Couldn't couldn't couldn't… just like the old can't can't can't he'd heard the first time.

He set down his bag and with vicious practicality pulled out two of the syringes of mako he still had. Cloud had to close his eyes as he prepped the syringe; the color of the mako swam behind his lids and made him dizzy to think about, but the rage ate even those feelings. He wanted to run until his legs gave out, claw his own skin off, and pick up his sword and cut and slash and slice until his muscles gave out under him; until all the emotion was gone.

With the roar of a dragon and a flash of fire from the next mountain peak Cloud stabbed himself in the arm with the first syringe. He couldn't even feel the burn of the mako from the adrenaline in his system.

When the vial was empty he threw it over the mountainside, panting and clenching his jaw as he prepped the second one. Already the mako was lighting up the veins in his arm, and he too felt like roaring with anger to hide his fear as the dragon called out again. The second jab went deeper, and when he pulled the syringe out and threw it away blood welled up from the entry sight. He smeared it with his thumb and felt the first rush of the mako. The mountain air didn't sting his throat so much, and his fingers started to lose some of their numbness, tingling with anticipation. All his senses sharpened and now it wasn't just his anger that pushed him aloft into weightless combat—it was mako and skill.

With a sword in each hand, mastered materia locked into both hilts, he kicked off from the mountainside and focused on one thing and one thing only: killing a dragon.

Time shuffled by and occasionally seemed to halt altogether for Zack. Sephiroth was busy with work and sounded like he wanted to get as much done as inhumanely possible so he could free his schedule to hunt for Cloud. Cloud was still gone at nine days and counting without a word. Zack had been stuck on Heidegger duty for most of that time, and otherwise had taken to actually reading his reports and training with Seconds to make time go by faster. When Zack's PHS finally lit up with a message – "Coffee at 10?" – he was actually looking forward to his fake date with the intern.

Her name was Claire. She was a redhead with a mind that would either propel her up the ranks of the scientists or screw her completely depending on her morals. Zack had been able to charm her into running a DNA analysis on the hair he'd gotten from that red-caped man. The First didn't care if she did end up being a mad scientist when she handed him an envelope with a wink.

"So whose is it?" she asked, nodding at the envelope with the flash drive inside it.

"Gonna have to run that and find out," Zack said with his most attractive smile, rolling his coffee cup between his hands. He remembered the instinct even if his fingers didn't get cold anymore. He could tell his choice of coffee shop was cold though from how she'd kept her scarf and gloves on.

Claire appraised his hands with a bold look in her eye. "Well I did, but nothing came up. Was it just an excuse?" she asked.

"Naw," Zack said with a wink, and she smiled back.

He walked away twenty minutes later knowing he'd feel a little guilty when he left on his next mission without seeing her again, then claim to be too busy to see her after that. Zack had other worries though, namely which computer would be safest to run this DNA on. He considered a number of them before realizing he had a Turk's computer handy already.

Reno didn't take kindly to the First appearing at his door, but Zack pushed his way in. "This is for Cloud," he explained, plugging the flash drive into the computer. Cables were poking out the back from where Reno had clearly rebuilt the thing, probably to stop any surveillance on it, but it ran smoothly and within a few clicks Zack had the Shinra database running.

"Look, Cloud's an idiot sometimes, I get it, but I'm not standing in for him while he's gone," Reno started, only to be completely ignored. "And I'm not a doormat," he complained.

Zack sat back as the program ran, analyzing the strand of DNA for matches in the Shinra system. Between his clearance and Reno's illicit clearance, they should be able to cover most anyone in the system. Zack couldn't be sure this would ping anything, but the clear enhancements the caped man had rang of either Shinra interference or Fuhito of AVALANCHE. Either way he'd have his answer.

"Cloud's been MIA for over a week now," Zack said casually, looking at Reno who was sitting on the edge of his bed. "Do you know where he is?"

"Probably in Nibelheim crying over his mother's grave," Reno spat back. "'Least that's what the bereavement request said."

Zack side-eyed him. "Any idea why he didn't tell you where he was going?"

Reno narrowed his eyes at Zack. "Because he knew I'd find out." There wasn't any doubt in Reno's voice.

"But he didn't think you could help him?" Zack asked, genuinely curious. He knew Cloud didn't want him and Sephiroth mixed up for their protection—whatever that meant—but he'd pulled Reno in willingly. So why wasn't Reno out there with Cloud?

Reno scoffed. "I'm more help to 'im here. I'm a Turk, not a SOLDIER. Not meant to be picking fights."

"Cloud's picking fights? With who?" Zack asked.

Reno cursed and looked pointedly away. Zack chewed on his cheek for a moment but didn't press. If Cloud really was picking fights, then he probably wasn't in Nibelheim; he'd destroyed whatever might be there the last time. Was this in some way related to those triplets he may have let loose? Or something else Hojo related? Or what about this red-caped man?

What was Cloud doing? Zack thought, refusing to feel hopeless about it. Was this in the name of his mentor's life? To fulfill a legacy? For revenge?

The computer beeped before Zack could get lost in the same existential question cycle he did every night laying in bed since he'd met the blond. Befriending Cloud did that to people.

The search had come back with a match—a Turk. Shinra-enhanced then, Zack thought triumphantly, which simplified things. Zack scrolled through the basic profile only to find some unanticipated information. "Well, he's a Turk, but… a very dead one. Also he can't actually be in his 50s…"

"What?" Reno asked, slipping off the bed and stealing the mouse to scroll up to the top of the page that Zack was on. It was a profile for Vincent Valentine, complete with a picture of a shaggy-haired, sullen man in a blue Turk suit. Reno recognized the name immediately.

"Cloud ever mention him?" Zack asked, leaning back in the stolen office chair.

"Guy's been dead for decades."

"He is very much alive and I'd stake his, mine, and your life on Hojo being involved in that," Zack argued, nearly breaking Reno's knuckle when he pried his hand off the mouse. "Last mission… last mission… security and protection duty of classified personnel, details of threat, classified, date and place of death: April 27, Nibelheim."

Zack exhaled with careful control. "So he did let someone out of the tanks," he murmured to himself.

"What the hell are you talking about?" Reno said, jerking on the back of the chair. "And what are you doing here looking this shit up? What's this got to do with Cloud?"

"A lot more than he's telling you or me," Zack interjected. "And I needed a bug free computer. Hey, do you have a printer?" It didn't matter anyway because Zack took pictures of the screen with his PHS, snapped the flash drive out of the computer before Reno could swap it with an identical one, and left with his patented mega-watt smile.

Reno slammed the door in his face and checked the elevator feed to be sure the First was leaving. The moment the elevator hit the next floor Reno shot Cloud a message.

Your first showed up still a dick. knows about valentine and you

Nibelheim was so remote that everyone still had landlines and most PHS service failed completely half an hour outside the village. It was fortunate then that Cloud had left a steaming dragon's carcass in the Nibel mountains and literally jumped on to the first truck driving out of Nibelheim. It would almost have been faster to walk with the way the car inched through the snow and ice, but each skid down the road took him that much farther from a town he sincerely hoped to never see again.

So it was that a day later Reno's text found him in the Gold Saucer, which had excellent PHS service and little information regarding the three intruders who'd killed several guards. Cloud closed his eyes when he saw Reno's message and was quietly thankful that he wasn't there in person to hear the "I told you so" about Zack going digging for information. How the First found out about Vincent Cloud had no idea, but this almost didn't surprise him anymore.

That didn't stop Zack from messaging him four more times that day and calling twice asking about Vincent, where Cloud was, and if he was all right. Cloud refused to do more than glance at Zack's number before ignoring. He couldn't quite delete them though.

Vincent did not mention meeting Zack when he messaged Cloud early the next morning, but his news was much more urgent. He'd tapped into some Turk reports and learned the Triplets were on the move. The latest report was only forty minutes old and pointed directly at Mideel.

The Gold Saucer had one other thing going for it besides excellent PHS service: giant parking lots populated by fancy cars owned by Shinra shareholders and executives. Cloud had no compunction about stealing the fastest motorcycle in the lot. It didn't have any of the modifications of Fenrir, but it purred beneath him as he sped out of the city for the docks. Just before he hit the last gear he sent his own message to Vincent.

Zack on to you

The news that Cloud was not only getting into fights with some unknown entity, but that he was working with a formerly dead Turk of considerable skill put Sephiroth in a perplexing mood. He already felt like he was missing enough holes in Cloud's story, but the Turk was another wrench. Any information the Turk had was twenty-five years out of date, before Cloud was even born, so they were working together because the Turk could scout and physically back Cloud up. Those were things that respectively Reno, Sephiroth and Zack could do. And yet they remained out of the loop and now completely cut off. Sephiroth felt… annoyed at Cloud's rejection of their friendship. That didn't seem to encompass the feeling entirely, but he'd never really felt this sensation before.

"What if Cloud's not seventeen?" Zack said suddenly, interrupting the silence as Sephiroth looked at the pictures Zack had taken of Valentine's profile. He didn't dare look the man up himself with how bugged his computer was. The Turks and Hojo would probably be very interested to know why he cared. "Valentine didn't look a day over thirty and he's obviously a hell of a lot older. What if Cloud's older than seventeen? I mean, has anyone actually gone to Nibelheim to check? Did anyone ask for an original birth certificate? If he's from such a small town it'd be easy enough to forge one. In fact, him being way older would explain a lot. Maybe he and Valentine are the same age. They might have known each other from before Valentine went down, and that's why they're working together now. Both with grudges against Hojo would make sense."

Sephiroth sighed and tamped down on the urge to pace. Zack had fortunately caught him on his way out of the office dressed for training. Sephiroth didn't think he could sit still much longer with how fast his thoughts were going. "Enough, Zack. I have done nothing but think on this for weeks now. Cloud had caused me nothing but headaches and…" he grasped for the word to describe the wound in his chest from being told of Cloud's new ally but couldn't find one.

"Seph?"

Brushing it off, Sephiroth picked up Masamune and gestured Zack at the door. Zack's eyes narrowed.

"Headaches and…?"

"I do not like his lack of trust for us. I do not want to be coddled by a Third Class SOLDIER, skilled or not. We have offered him every opportunity of help and friendship and he has rejected us at every turn. I'm—"

"Hurt," Zack supplied, but stopped whatever else he was going to say when Sephiroth pulled away sharply. The man was clearly aware of how vulnerable that one word made him and didn't like the feeling.

They both hesitated at the door before Sephiroth stepped through and closed it behind Zack, metaphorically shutting the door on that conversation. "I am going to see if I can have words with this Vincent Valentine," Sephiroth said.

"You sure you'll be able to find him?" Zack asked. "He didn't seem the sort who wants to be found."

Sephiroth didn't particularly care if he found Valentine tonight, but when he got on the elevator going down alone, he opened up his PHS again to look at the pictures of the Turk's profile Zack had sent him.

There were too many loose threads with Cloud and too little that Sephiroth could do to solve them. So far he had Hojo and Cloud as the only places he could go to for answers, and neither of them would be willing to share for almost any price. Sephiroth privately thought he could get Cloud to talk, but it would cost him more than he was willing to give—and he refused to imagine what destroying his relationship with Cloud would mean. Hojo was a dead-end as far as he was concerned.

Valentine presented a new opportunity. Formerly a Turk, making him talk would be hard, but it was a possibility that couldn't be left untouched. Not to mention that Sephiroth could not quite get the image of his face out of his mind. He couldn't have known the man even as a babe, but there was a familiarity to it that made Sephiroth uncomfortable.

From the garage Sephiroth took one of the private jeeps to a drop-point, one of the handful of areas in the plate where it was open to the city below. Most SOLDIERs didn't get down this way, but Sephiroth was too much a celebrity and in far too strange a mental place to bother with the train. He dropped hard on to the roof of a building fifty feet below the plate, and continued jumping down to lower roofs and balconies until he was in the underbelly of Midgar.

Sephiroth didn't think going back to the Sector 7 church would so easily turn up Valentine a second time, but kicking a few low-level fiends around in the trainyard did surprisingly get his attention. Or more likely, Valentine was looking for him. Sephiroth was not wholly surprised. Why else would Cloud leave his best asset behind in Midgar if not to keep an eye on Zack and him?

"Sephiroth," the man said in a gravely voice, slightly bitten off at the end. It was hard to tell if it was a greeting, warning, or simple a statement.

"Valentine." Sephiroth inclined his head at the pool of shadow that was the man. He'd felt those red eyes on him for the last hour but hadn't been able to pinpoint from where. The man obviously had a lot of training and significant enhancements. Not that Sephiroth feared he couldn't beat him in a fight.

"You know Cloud," Sephiroth started.

"…"

"How do you know him?"

"He knows me," Valentine said, still scrutinizing Sephiroth's face. Sephiroth couldn't see much of the Turk's except for the sharp line of jaw and a steep nose.

"You know where he is," Sephiroth said.

"Why do you care?" Valentine responded, finally stepping out of the shadows. He was clothed exactly how Zack described: black outfit, red tattered cape, gold shoes and claw, and a melancholic expression.

"Cloud is my friend."

"Is he?" Valentine said drily. "Then listen to him. Stay out of it."

The ex-Turk turned around and disappeared into a train car, his footsteps disappearing long before they should have for Sephiroth's hearing. Sephiroth kept thinking about that meeting long after he'd wiped out anything moving in the train graveyard and returned to his office desk. There, he weighed the risks and opened up a private network, an encrypted web server, and then went through a dozen more security hoops he could think of just in case, before running a search for Valentine. The exact same profile came up after an extended wait.

Then on a whim Sephiroth couldn't explain the origin of, he opened up a private folder on his server. Inside was the DNA analysis of the unnamed man who Hojo had simple labeled as "Male Sperm Donor". Sephiroth hadn't run it through the system. He hadn't wanted to know the name of the man who had abandoned him; the man he'd feared had been a scientist no better than Hojo.

This time he did hit search.

Four days after Zack's abrupt commandeering of Reno's computer, Reno, Rude, and a handful of SOLDIERs stood on the walls of Fort Condor wondering how everything had hit the industrial-sized fan.

The reports had all agreed that the three identical men—codenamed the Triplets because no one could find their origin or names—had been headed for Mideel. Their exact motive was unknown except that they were searching for family, and even that was disputed. A "mother" and "brother" were the only cited words, but no one quite knew who or what that meant.

No one really knew anything about them, as it turned out. That was why Reno was holding a gun and his nightstick in each hand and shooting frantic looks at Rude.

"When can we get out of here? When's the damn extraction?"

"On its way," Rude grunted. He kept twitching his head just slightly to glance at the SOLDIERs, a tell giving away how nervous he was too. They were way out of their depth and they both knew it.

The first attacks had started on the outskirts when a patrol was wiped out suddenly. All of them were Thirds assigned to Fort Condor. They looked to have been trampled and ripped apart by fiends, but there were suspicious tire tracks nearby. Two hours later three silver-haired men were spotted from the watchtowers making their way up the path to the fort. Seconds were sent down to confront them. None came back.

"Oh man, oh man, oh man," Reno muttered loudly, staring down at the carnage happening below. The three men were hardly a hundred yards from the front gates now and fighting waves of soldiers.

Watching the Triplets fight proved to Reno that they were hopelessly outmatched. Not only were the three men separately deadly, but they also worked together seamlessly, tag-teaming any squads that confronted them. They used each other to leap up, to dodge attacks, and to knock SOLDIERs between them like a pinball, utterly without remorse. It was like a sick gameto them, and Reno had seen some messed up shit but watching these guys on a rampage was terrifying.

Not to mention they alone were only doing half the damage. They could summon some kind of hellish demon wolf with a skull head and paws with foot-long claws and blade like extensions. The beasts ripped to shreds whoever the three men didn't kill themselves, leaving a trail of dismembered bodies behind. Others along the wall were raining down fire in between curses, but it didn't seem to frustrate the Triplets much. Someone detonated a landmine, but all it did was blow some demon wolves to smoke and make it even harder to see what was going on below.

The First in charge of the fort was starting to look really pissed. Bors had the command of all of these men and he was losing them rapidly, sometimes three or four in a minute. Reno could sympathize with his anger, but he also wasn't going to die with them like the First looked ready to do. Reno and Rude were Turks; they weren't meant for this kind of fighting.

"They've reached the wall!" someone shouted from the edge, and Reno cocked his gun as he ran over. Something came clawing and scrabbling from below just as he reached the edge, and he looked down into the maw of a beast as someone nearby shouted, "Above you!"

The monsters were materializing out of thin air as they were summoned, coming out of smoke and landing as blood and bone. Reno went white-faced as the one climbing the wall lumbered over the lip and stuck it in the face with a punch, shattering teeth and cracking the protective skull. The wolf demon shook off the blow and lunged, scattering Reno, Rude, and the Second who'd called the warning. Reno's nightstick was barely strong enough to ward off a swipe from one paw as the three of them worked to take it down. A well-timed blow from the Second was enough to cut most of the head off, turning the thing back into smoke.

There were more upon them before they could breathe. Two more identical monsters, attacked, parried, swiped, and ducked around them, one of them finally getting under the Second's sword. The thing bit down on his leg and dragged him to the ground before Reno and Rude could jump in. To the man's credit he didn't scream, but he had to be in agony as he pulled out his knife and rammed it under the skull protecting the beast's head. He'd nearly ripped it off there, and the awesome strength of the Second would have wowed Reno if another monster hadn't appeared at that exact moment. The SOLDIER was on his own as Reno was thrown to the ground and his nightstick jammed into that face full of teeth. The electricity shocked the creature long enough for Rude to kick it off Reno and deal a brutal blow to the spine that crippled it before it turned into smoke.

"I am not qualified for this!" Reno yelled as Rude dragged him up and started to run along the wall. More of the creatures were everywhere, and they were constantly fending off renewed attacks. By the time they reached the stairs at the back of the fort, Reno was cramping up on his left side and he had a gash on his leg he didn't remember getting. As they ran he saw only glimpses of the battle. People on the wall were being swarmed by the fiends while below the First whirled and lashed with his whip and blade against two of the Triplets. Seconds nearby were trying and mostly failing to hold off the third member who wielded a double-bladed sword and was slashing through them with frightening brutality.

"This isn't good!" Reno yelled at Rude over the sounds of an explosion, covering his face with his arms. When he chanced a glance at the battlefield he saw a huge rip in the earth where the biggest silver-haired man had set off a small earthquake. Two more infantrymen were dead and the Triplets swapped positions so now the First had the gunman and the swordsman attacking him. He was slowly being forced into the stairs below. His allies were dwindling if the body count looked as bad as Reno thought.

"You're right," Rude said instead of a deadpan quip, confirming Reno's fears. It was a bad sign if Rude couldn't be sarcastic with him.

Another Second and more Thirds were dead on the parapets behind them as they climbed to the helipad. They could still hear yelling and the sounds of a Thunder3 but neither Turk could afford to look back. At the top of the helipad was a wolf monster ripping the head off an unfortunate infantryman.

"Shit," Reno said, readying his nightstick. Rude stepped into position.

The beast was cruel and quick, and Reno could barely keep up. He'd clearly lost some of his edge after leaving SOLDIER training, and Rude's hits were doing only enough damage to win them time. The two jumped back after several fruitless minutes where they didn't leave a scratch and only barely avoid being gutted themselves.

"Alright, you go low, I'll go high, and maybe I can jam the—"

Machine gun fire burst onto the platform, blowing chunks of flesh out of the monster until it smoked up and disappeared. Whipping around to look at the helicopter Reno nearly whacked Rude in the face with his nightstick. The beating of the rotors was deafening when it got into range, but Rude started signing with his arms to the pilot not to land. A rope ladder was instead thrown down and Reno jumped on before Rude could even grab it, scrabbling up like a monkey.

"Anyone else alive down there?" the pilot yelled at Reno when he'd buckled himself in and given Rude a hand up. Reno looked down from the side of the copter but it was hard to tell what was going on. Battlefields were chaotic at the best of times, and the inside of the fort was cramped for fighting. Nonetheless someone was still giving the Triplets a hard time down below.

Rude grabbed a gun and leveled it down the ladder while the man at the machinegun opened fire inside the fort's courtyard, giving whoever was left some space. It was hard to tell who was left alive, but as the ladder swept near the staircase Bors lunged and caught on, his purple uniform stained brown and red and smoldering. The pilot immediately pulled up and away before the three invaders could jump on too.

Rude dragged the First on board and sat him down in a seat. The man was missing his eyebrows from an explosion, several teeth, and his right ear. He kept breathing hard even though ever breath made him wince and hiss against broken ribs.

"They wiped out my team," Bors managed when he'd had some water and a few Cure spells cast on him. He still wasn't breathing easily but at least most of the superficial scrapes were gone and the bloody hole of his ear had stopped bleeding. "Never seen anything like it."

"Except Sephiroth," Reno said. At Rude's glance he shrugged. "What? Everyone's thinking it. Three silver-haired guys who wipe out Seconds like they're made of paper?"

The First shook his head in denial then groaned and squeezed his eyes shut. "No sharp turns," he said in the general direction of the pilot. Then the inside of the helicopter fell into an ashen silence, as it seemed to sink in on them all at once what had happened. Three survivors of a fort that held fifty men. All of them covered in blood and gore and thoroughly traumatized.

"Well this sucks," Reno said, his wit and sarcasm his only barrier between normality and a breakdown. Turning in his seat he grudgingly snapped some photos with his PHS of the wreckage of Fort Condor and sent them to Tseng with the quip, Wish you were here.

Sitting back though, he had to wonder if destruction like this was anything like what Cloud had witnessed in his future. The blond had talked about the annihilation of Midgar; of the burning of his entire hometown; of an earthquake rending Mideel in half. Reno thought he had a much better understanding of why the blond was trying so hard to stop it now. Thinking of that, he sent one picture to Cloud's PHS with the line three silver haired did it

Cloud was unfortunately nowhere near Fort Condor as this was happening. He had been forced to take a boat back to the Midgar area because of checkpoints going into Junon. "Dangerous and Wanted Criminals" had been spotted in the area, and tellingly Third Class SOLDIERs were doing the patrols. Hollander or Genesis must have been here recently. Cloud considered trying to get through, but he didn't want to bring any attention to himself when no doubt Sephiroth and Zack were keeping an eye out for him. So he was barely an hour out of Midgar's port when the picture of the smoldering remnants of Fort Condor reached him. He stopped his stolen bike dead in the desert to look a little harder at it.

50 dead probly, was the next message from Reno, followed by only first survived fight. Having fought Kadaj, Loz, and Yazoo on multiple occasions Cloud wasn't surprised by the numbers. SOLDIER wasn't ready for anything that could compete with its enhancements. That's why Sephiroth had cleaned through them so quickly.

Cloud snapped the PHS closed and squeezed it in his hand. Did he still go to Mideel? If a First Class SOLDIER could barely survive fighting the Remnants could Cloud defeat them? Before, in another time, it would have been an easier answer, but now he didn't know. If he didn't go there though, he had nowhere else to go but back to Midgar, which would be a dangerous prospect. Yes, he'd have access to mako, but he'd also have Zack and Sephiroth on his heels if they didn't just lock him up until he talked. He'd take a seemingly hopeless fight over that.

Decision made, Cloud turned back on to the road that looped around Midgar. It was the same road he'd ridden in a yellow pick-up truck with Zack long ago. The memory made him bite the inside of his cheek to stem whatever else might slip through the cracks.

It took most of the day to reach the cliff overlooking Midgar, but Cloud slowed to a stop a distance from it, parked the bike, and walked the last few hundred yards. He hadn't been here since before going back in time.

It looked the same. The ground was dusty and cracked for want of rain, and the rocks gathered together in clusters, sandy and giving off waves of heat in the sun. Cloud couldn't quite find the niche where Zack had tucked him that fateful day, but he felt like he could nearly see the footsteps where the soldiers had marched, hemming them on to the cliff's edge.

Beyond the edge was the outline of Midgar, Shinra's Headquarters jutting up into the sky like a finger to a god. Cloud thought it was a mirage at first when he looked across the cliff, but where Shinra HQ rose sharply on the horizon something else was there too in his direct line of sight.

It took Cloud a moment. And then another before he realized he'd stopped walking.

It was a sword planted blade-first in the ground. Even from a distance he knew that wasn't Galatine, the one that Cloud had left here before. It was a differently shaped hilt, the curve of the blade more pronounced, the color just a bit more white-silver.

It was First Tsurugi's main blade.

How? Why?

Cloud didn't even realize he'd propelled himself forward until his hand fitted around the grip, every groove and crevice perfectly matching his hand. The hilt was bulky and square to accommodate the five swords that could be attached, and the blade was double-sided and tapered to a point at the end. Pulling it out of the ground smoothly, Cloud hefted the weight with one hand then two. It was a bit awkward and heavy with just one, but with two he held it in the ready position and felt the twitches of a smile on his face. First Tsurugi. His sword. With a familiar flick of a finger the blade split down the middle to expand into its battle-ready mode.

The twin razor-edged swords he had gotten at the port slotted neatly into the hilt, and while incomplete First Tsurugi was halfway there. His blade was nearly ready for battle.

The thought made him pause, and Cloud looked down at the sword in his hand. Was he almost ready too? He didn't like to believe in signs or read too much into coincidences, but this had been arranged for him somehow, just like it had before, when he'd found the complete First Tsurugi days after Meteor. Had Tifa been right in the time before, that she was always with them? Was she still here despite bending time itself?

Aeris?

He tilted the blade enough to see his reflection on the shined edge. The mirror image wasn't clear, but a mop of blond hair and bright mako-blue eyes looked back at him. The same face he'd seen before in Galatine and Ultima Weapon.

I have to do this, he thought. If SOLDIER couldn't deal with the Remnants and Cloud didn't dare let Zack or Sephiroth get involved, then only he could handle it. He was the only one with the strength to do this.

In a pouch buried at the bottom of one of the motorcycle's compartments were the last two syringes of mako. Would it be cruel irony to do this here? Cloud wondered vaguely as he pulled them out. Or was this fitting really? Here he had promised to live for them both, he and Zack. And he'd messed that up royally.

Enough.

Cloud pulled out the syringes and prepped them, feeling more clear-headed than he ever had doing this, which made it that much harder. Even when he held his arm out, vein apparent, and held the needle to it, his fingers trembled and more than once Cloud had to look down at the blade in the dirt and look into those eyes. Those were his eyes. To save the people he loved and to shut down the corruption in the world he had to do this even if mako made him want to be violently ill at even a glance.

Deep breaths. In and out. Relax the muscle. And… in.

It felt like warm honey pooling in his arm as he depressed the syringe. Cloud had to look away as he did it, breathing raggedly into his other arm. One down. One more to go.

The second one was no easier. His hand shook harder this time, and he had to lay his arm on his lap to steady himself enough to inject. He stared ahead at the smoking city of Midgar and thought for Zack and Sephiroth as he pushed more mako into his bloodstream.

He didn't remember falling asleep or when it began to rain, or even if it had rained. It might have been hours since he'd arrived, or perhaps the longest minute of his life, Cloud couldn't tell. The dirt under his cheek was rough and sticky, and with each exhale he breathed some in until he sat up coughing. Cloud felt woozy and sick, like he might throw up. It took precious minutes for his eyes to focus, for his head to clear enough to look farther than his own lap, but when he did he regretted it.

It was Zack. His face was bloodied, hair askew, and uniform patchy with bullet holes. Cloud vomited on to the ground until his stomach wouldn't heave anymore, but every time his eyes wandered up they landed on Zack. When there was nothing else to throw up, Cloud crawled closer.

Zack? … Zack?

Cloud could barely hold himself up high enough to look down at Zack, but he did his best with shaking arms, staring down confusedly and then with growing horror into glassy blue eyes. "Za…?" he tried, coughing over the name, starting to breathe harder and faster. ZACK?

The buster sword laid tossed aside three feet away. Zack couldn't reach it to hand it to Cloud. He couldn't hand it to Cloud because there was no light in those eyes. No trust. No love. No friendship. Nothing.

Cloud collapsed face-first on to Zack's still chest and couldn't even find the tears he wanted to shed.

"I was supposed to be your life," he cried into that bloody uniform, now cracked and hard from dried blood. How long had Zack lain here? A day and night like his mother? An eternity like Aeris in the lake? "I was supposed to be your pride and your dream. I was you, Zack. I was going to save you; be the hero you were for me."

After that the hallucinations got blurry, more easily lost to unconscious memory. Kadaj, Loz, and Yazoo were there sometimes, taunting and laughing at him, reminding their brother of being a puppet of Jenova. Sometimes Sephiroth was standing on the cliff looking alternately worried for him or wild-eyed and mad with power. Other times there was Aeris, who never said anything but watched over him as he cried and screamed, over Zack's body, Sephiroth's, and even over his own. Eventually Cloud got so tired and so confused that he curled up into a ball and wished that it would all just stop, that the itching would stop and the memories would stop and Sephiroth would be normal and Zack would be his friend and AVALANCHE would be safe and it would all be right.

But it wasn't. And when he woke up a day later, covered in bloody scratches from his own fingernails, dried urine, snot and tears, Cloud felt a little more destroyed inside. He didn't know if he had the strength to keep doing this, but he didn't see another way—he needed to be strong enough to defeat the Remnants and Jenova, right?

His promise to keep Zack and Sephiroth out of this was getting harder.