Warnings: Zack speaks, therefore he swears

Chapter 4 : Those Who Fight

The troopers went thankfully back into the main corridor spooked at the idea of someone who'd slept in a coffin for nearly three decades and look barely older than any of them. Zack was pumped; he couldn't wait to tell Cloud he'd found his 'vanishing Turk'. It was impossible to guess what Valentine was thinking, between the hair, the collar and the eerie red eyes.

Back in the group, Sephiroth had drawn Masamune and was holding it with one hand while carrying Cloud with the other. Cloud's wings were oddly low, as if he didn't want them to interfere with the swordsman's line of sight. They were also moving gently and Zack realized that he was using them to support some of his own weight, so that having 70-odd kilos of extra weight on one side didn't unbalance Sephiroth while he was fighting. How the doctors could say Cloud wasn't reacting to the outside world was beyond the First's understanding.

Mind you, Cloud had done a pretty good imitation of a complete vegetable when Hojo's crew of morally-deficient torturers were around, maybe these medics were basing their opinion on the records from the lab. Maybe they were all morons. Zack could live without them, either way.

Tifa and Captain Biggs were also at the ready so Zack tilted his head to question his CO, his former CO on why he felt the need to be armed. "Bugs," was the short answer. Zack nodded understanding. He escorted the ex-Turk over to the ex-SOLDIER as the silver-haired warrior sheathed Masamune and re-settled his corporal's slight weight—he really was too thin, the General thought.

Sephiroth saw his SiC's companion and asked his own question with a lift of an eyebrow.

"General, I'd like you to meet Vincent Valentine, formerly of the Turks. He knew your human mother." That bombshell left the two slim fighters blinking slowly in shock. Zack grinned to see them, like fraternal twins, eyelids moving in stereo.

He moved to his little blond friend and placed a hand on his arm, skin-to-skin, "Hey, Cloud, I found your man and he was definitely in a 'funny bed'. Guess what else?" He paused but there was no response. "He's your missing red-eyed Turk you told me about. The one Mr. Gruber used to scare you village kids. You remember telling me about that?" One wing came up to brush against Zack's cheek. As a spontaneous gesture of affection it was great. As a response to a direct question, it told him absolutely nothing. "That's okay, Spike. You'll meet him when you're better."

"You are Lucrecia's child?" the red-eyed enigma logged the information that Sephiroth was cradling a young man with wings against his chest, but decided it was unimportant.

"I was created by Professor Hojo who injected an unborn foetus with Jenova cells."

"Then you are Lucrecia's child." Sephiroth wondered what he was supposed to do with the information. "Did Hojo never mention Lucrecia Crescent, Dr. Lucrecia Crescent, his wife?"

"Dr. Creepy was married?" Zack exclaimed.

"He never discussed his personal life," Sephiroth said with more restraint but his curiosity had been caught by the title the stranger had given his human mother. "I was an experiment to her?"

Valentine looked away, "I think… I believe he talked her into it."

"But she was willing," Sephiroth wanted that clarified. For years he'd wondered if his birth mother had been some unfortunate woman, kidnapped off the street and forcibly impregnated. Or perhaps she'd been some mercenary woman who'd sold her body and her baby for gil. Instead, she'd been a scientist.

"Yes," A short answer and somehow a devastating one. She hadn't fought for him, hadn't fought to protect her child but had sacrificed it, sacrificed him to the god of scientific experimentation. She'd been as bad as Hojo.

"I'm sorry to break this up, but we need to get moving. I still have more charges to lay and, as long as we're down here, we have no way to know what's going on at the reactor or anywhere else." Tifa's pragmatic assessment broke up the painful conversation. It was a welcome end to it and Sephiroth quickly had the group moving. Vincent chose to walk beside him and Zack but the swordsman decided that he wasn't going to bring up his parentage again.

"How is it that you knew Seph's birth mother and yet you look barely older than me?" Zack asked.

Vincent didn't answer right away, busy inspecting the long gun he'd retrieved from under one of the other coffins. "You weren't the only experiment in the ShinRa mansion." And that, Sephiroth imagined, was all he'd learn from the shaggy-haired Turk.

"What's the matter with him?" Valentine said to change the subject. He wasn't really interested in the boy but guessed from the way that he was being treated, and the overheard whispers of the medical people, that just about every one else in the group was for one reason or another.

"Mako addition," said one medic. "Mako poisoning," said another.

"Hojo," Zack said and explained everything.

He could've stopped there but there was so much bubbling around inside him, it had to come out occasionally. "Hojo decided he was intriguing. He dissected him personally. And I was right there. So close I could've almost touched him and I couldn't… I couldn't…There was nothing I could do." Zack kept his gaze down, ashamed and submissive. "I couldn't protect him."

Sephiroth could feel both Zack's distress and Cloud's. It was ridiculous that they would feel responsible for the actions of a madman. They'd been wounded when the General had fallen into the mako, he remembered that clearly.

He had been preparing to cast a Firaga on the creature called Jenova. Cloud was in his odd trance, and Zack was cutting the creature out of her harness. Neither of them had been watching the entrance and so they were defenceless when Hojo entered with a troop of regular soldiers. They'd shot Cloud, and when he'd fallen, eyes wide in shock at being pulled from wherever he'd been, he'd instinctively torn his hands from theirs, clutching the gaping exit wound in his belly.

Sephiroth had been immediately bludgeoned by Jenova's voice, and the Firaga, which should have disintegrated her, only managed to damage her. He'd charged at Hojo, determined to protect his companions, but Jenova's voice had been too strong and he'd crumpled halfway down the wide pipe. He'd dropped Masamune. He remembered the spinning shine of his sword as it fell and fell and fell.

Zack had seen what was happening, he hadn't needed the Professor's triumphant question "Do you hear her, Project 'S'? Do you finally know your purpose?" to realize what the true danger was. He'd charged down the pipe to rescue the General. The troopers, thinking he was going to attack them, had opened fire. By the time the dark-haired SOLDIER had reached his CO, he'd been shot so many times his uniform top was just threads, but he'd still managed to push the silver-haired warrior over the edge to fall into the mako stream and escape. Sephiroth could hear the gunfire all the way down, but it didn't drown out Hojo's angry cursing.

He would not allow Zack to feel guilty because they'd been wounded and captured.

"I wasn't there for either of you. I was too weak to resist Jenova. I failed you."

That brought Zack's head up, "You didn't, Seph. You came back for us."

Sephiroth hid his smile in Cloud's bizarre and beloved hair. Three years later and Zack hadn't changed. He so easily defended in others the actions he condemned in himself. "He might have left you alone if he'd had me. You and Cloud could've jumped into the mako to escape."

"No, no. That would've been… it would've been disastrous. You said Jenova was telling you to destroy everything and everyone. With you, she could have done it. Without you, she was, is, a scary boogeyman."

"I may agree that, logically, it was the wisest course of action but that doesn't negate the fact that I left my best friends at the mercy of a sadistic madman." He shifted Cloud's slight weight and reached out to grab Zack's arm. "I once told you that no amount of Jenova cells could make you a monster, and if you weren't a monster then neither was I. Now I'm telling you that if I can't be guilty of not protecting you both, then you can't be guilty either."

He gave Zack's arm a light squeeze before releasing it, "If we tell ourselves that enough we might begin to believe it." Zack snorted but before he could comment the spiral staircase was reached.

Zack suggested, and the General agreed, that he would stay behind to start the countdown while the rest headed up and out as fast as they could manage. As a SOLDIER First Class he would be faster than the fittest of the normal humans. He'd probably catch up to them before they were even out the door. Tifa gave him some final instructions on how to rig the timer and they were off.

Zack listened to their retreating footsteps; he thought he heard a 'meep' from Cloud when they reached the exit. Outside, escape, it was right there, within reach. He looked down the wide, rough-hewn corridor, remembering that first journey so long ago. He'd been worried going in and nearly panicked coming out because Sephiroth hadn't been Sephiroth. The second-trip down had been filled with worry, yes, but also with hope and fun, because Cloud had been there, insulting him and watching his back and being his friend. They'd brought Sephiroth out, sane and mostly back to normal.

They'd been so sure they could fix everything; get rid of Jenova and figure out what Hojo was up to and come out without a scratch. He'd been excited when they'd finally set out for the reactor, happy for Cloud and Seph who'd grabbed a bit of loving for themselves, teasing them like he always did. Except that they hadn't won. Wounded at the reactor; Hojo and Jenova free, three years of pain, blood, puke and more pain... the walls here were coated in agony and inhumanity.

They couldn't blow it up enough to get rid of it all.

He figured enough time had lapsed; they should be almost at the main doors by now, so he flicked the switch and watched it settle into a steady rhythm, blinking out the seconds. He ran up the stairs, and out the door, his movements practically a blur. He'd been right. He was faster now, much faster than he remembered being. Fucking Hojo.

Seph and Tifa had the group halfway across the large foyer when the attack came. It was odd four-legged crawler thing, similar to the guard spiders that Genesis had used but smaller and quicker.

Zack had just come around the corner onto the mezzanine when it broke its cover on the ceiling. "Get everyone out of here, General," he yelled, "I'll handle this." He was looking forward to a real fight. The stuff they'd encountered in the tunnels had barely let him vent any of his frustration and rage. This thing looked like a better therapy object.

"I will assist you," said the gravelly voiced ex-Turk, pulling out his long-barrelled pistol and firing with inhuman precision.

Zack was going to argue but the metallic bug jumped from the ceiling, aiming for the crowd of medics, soldiers... and Cloud and Seph. With an incoherent shout of rage, Zack raced for the railing and launched himself at the thing. He twisted so his feet were out ahead of him and caught the bastard right on its main body, driving it away from the scurrying party and into the far wall. He reached out and placed his hands against the wall, pushing himself away from it and the machine. It gave him enough distance from the thing to land cleanly, diffusing the impact by bending his knees just as Angeal had taught him so many years ago.

The spider guard landed on its back, but it didn't take it long to flip itself around, and it didn't take it long to power up and fire a plasma cannon. Fuck, it was fast.

It chose to target the ex-Turk who was calmly and steadily firing at it, sending sparks flying nine times out of ten. Zack ran up to it swinging his huge sword at one of its legs, but it scuttled forward and his sword just glanced off the tough metal.

Valentine jumped up and over it, twirling so that he and his gun could continue firing in that precise rhythm: shoot, shoot, shoot, pause-shoot, shoot, shoot, shoot, pause. The only time the rhythm varied is when the red-eyed man reloaded, and even then it was accomplished rapidly, just a couple of flicks of his gun and, voila, he was back to shooting.

Definitely a Hojo survivor, Zack thought as he charged in. Maybe they should get shirts printed with a tacky, pun-laden slogan on the front and hand them out. It could be like a club.

This time he got a better hit on one of its legs, he could almost see wires through the metal armour.

Whatever metal they were using now it was a big improvement on the stuff they'd used three years ago.

"Do you always talk so much when you fight?" the gunman asked. Only then did Zack realize that he'd been saying everything out loud.

"Yes, he does. Just ignore it," a smooth baritone instructed, "He doesn't even hear himself." A flash of heat passed him. Sephiroth had cast Firaga. It hit and there was the smell of burnt metal but no other damage that Zack could see. A Thundaga would have been better.

The spider ran backwards, launching out some rocket-powered grenades that forced both the ex-SOLDIER and the ex-Turk to dodge and roll out of the way. By the time Zack was back on his feet the thing had disappeared.

"On the wall," Valentine said.

Zack looked up in time to see the flashes from the machine guns. He used his big Buster to block the bullets and gathered himself up for a jumping Octaslash, a move Sephiroth had pioneered long, long ago.

"Fifteen minutes to detonation," Sephiroth said. He was near the double doors, using Masamune to deflect the bullets away from the retreating unaltered humans. He still held Cloud on one arm, and the blond was again using his wings to hover so that the General wasn't overbalanced—all with that vacant, brain-dead expression on his face.

Zack released the extra power of Octaslash through his Buster and the machine started to spark. The unaugmented humans were out of the building now, "Get Cloud out here, Seph. Vince and I've got this."

"I would leave if he'd let me," came the dry response.

The machine dropped to the ground, falling legs-up once again. Since he was in the air already, he decided to come down with the force of a Death Jump on the bastard.

"There's still plenty of time," the ex-Turk agreed, calmly reloading, "and my name is Vincent."

From his high angle Zack could see how the gunman had been aiming for essentially the same spot. The result of having all those bullets impact in the same area were dozens of small holes, making one huge weak spot in its armour. Where the hell was the gunman getting all that ammunition, he wondered.

"I'm stronger than I look," was the calm reply.

"Not exactly the question I asked, Vince."

"Vincent," the gunman corrected.

The damage was enough on one side that he should be able to come down in exactly the same location. He screamed as he dropped, using that energy to power up his blow, and sliced cleanly through the side of it. Hydraulic and other fluids spurted out and there was a mechanical scream as processor tried to compensate for the damage.

"Ten minutes," Valentine announced, taking out the sensor arrays while the dark-haired SOLDIER was in the way of his primary target. He was hitting close enough that Zack could feel the splintered plastic flying past his cheek. He moved to the side, making a sweeping cut to a leg joint as he passed, doing only minimal damage.

"Will the charges in the lab be enough to finish this thing?" Zack asked.

"Unlikely," his General answered, "There is too much stone between it and them."

"Right, let's make it go boom." The thing managed to right itself again and shot at them with its plasma canyon. It moved away from them, trying to hide under the balcony. They'd done some major damage because the thing was dragging one of its legs and moving like it was drunk.

It launched some more grenades. Zack caught one and tossed it back, laughing because that kind of stuff only happened in only the lamest of action movies.

"Duck," Sephiroth ordered quietly, and Zack dropped without thinking. The Firaga that flamed through the spot where he'd been standing was easily ten times hotter than the previous blast, and when it landed it didn't burn the regular orangey-yellow colour. It flamed white, and blue and red and moved over the surface of the machine until it found the gaping hole and then it just, crawled inside. There was no other way to describe it. "Shit," he muttered, impressed and freaked. That just wasn't normal.

Smoke and the smell burning insulation filled the large space. It was finished but that didn't make it less dangerous, in fact it made it more so as it fired its machine guns frantically in any direction it could. It skittered and jumped in its death throes making it nearly impossible to target. Even Valentine was down to, oh, only 70% accuracy.

Zack charged and, jumping on the body, sliced through the central stem with all its delicate control circuits. Now it really started to fizz and pop.

"Cloud wants us to go now," Sephiroth's voice cut through the buzzing.

"Right," Zack yelled his agreement, "Let's mosey, Vince."

Vincent straightened in surprise; sure that Cloud was the comatose youth in the silver-haired swordsman's arms who could only grunt. However, the one called Zack was jogging over to the door where his companions waited. How very intriguing, he thought, and followed them out. "It's Vincent," he corrected again.

The tone didn't change and Zack wondered how many times he'd have to call him Vince or Vinny to get the red-eyed man's voice to change.

"Maybe I'd just shoot you."

"Shit, I have to learn to keep my mouth shut."

"That would be an improvement," Vincent agreed.

All three of them could move when they wanted to, and they wanted to, infected by something from the winged-boy, Vincent supposed. The boy was proved right, however, because they were barely past the gate when there was a hollow boom as the machine blew. Glass from all the windows flew out from the building in a deadly arc. If they'd been inside, they'd have been flayed.

AN: I spent a great deal of time this weekend thinking about chapter lengths. With each story I've increased the average word count: in Falling Up it was 2000, in Making It Work it was probably around 4000. With Mad World I was aiming for 5000+ words per chapter. Which I did, but what I found was that the length intimidated me and it was taking me longer and longer to write each chapter. I also felt like there was less 'flow' between them.

To make a long story short (too late!), I'm no longer going to worry about how many words I've included. Expect shorter chapters. =)