The nice thing was that they wound up not having to supply an explanation to Nero. The boy tended to treat every remark as an order. When Vincent suggested he talk to Cissnei, Nero took it as law.

Cissnei was small and unassuming at first glance. It had served her well when she was active-duty, but not everyone was cut out to stay in the business for the long haul. She had gotten injured in the line of duty several years ago. Veld had been in hiding at the time, but that hadn't stopped him from personally delivering flowers to her hospital room. She had transferred laterally not long after that. It took a Turk to diagnose a Turk, and so far she'd done a good job looking after the family.

Although Veld had never actually had the experience, he felt as if he were dropping off a small child for the first day of school. Nero seemed remarkably calm; perhaps didn't understand what talking to Cissnei meant. If he had, perhaps he'd have been less amenable.

As it was, all three of them arrived at Cissnei's office at the appointed time. The room was notably lacking in the stereotypical psychiatrist's couch. Indeed, it looked more like someone had squeezed a small coffee shop into the space.

"Hi guys," Cissnei greeted them pleasantly. "Chief, Valentine, good to see you. And you must be Nero." She extended her hand to shake, but Nero had already grabbed his shoulders and shuffled a half-step back.

"I better not," he mumbled, trying to be polite. "Nice to meet you."

"Well, if you don't need us…" Vincent began, edging toward the door. Although it had been suggested more than once that he see a counselor himself, Vincent had no desire to recite his sordid past to anyone, PhD or otherwise, particularly not to Cissnei. There were certain things a guy just couldn't tell a woman, not to mention the fact that she was half his age. "Think you'll be okay, Nero?"

The boy seemed confused, but nodded. "I'll be fine, Sir."

Cissnei waited until the older men had departed before gesturing for Nero to take a seat.

"Nero, I'm sorry about earlier. I wasn't trying to invade your space," Cissnei apologized.

Nero shrugged. "It's okay."

"Are you cold? I can adjust the thermostat."

"No, I'm okay."

"Is there a reason you're keeping your arms crossed like that?" she inquired politely.

"Oh!" Nero put his arms down, hands tightly folded in his lap. "I just didn't want to warp you somewhere weird."

Cissnei cocked her head, confused. "Warp?"

"With my shadows." Holding out one hand, a sphere of darkness appeared, swirling above his open palm. "I don't have a lot of control over it."

Cissnei blinked, but nodded, otherwise unfazed. "Do you warp things a lot?"

"Sometimes?" Nero shrugged. "It used to happen more often. I wore a straightjacket and a rig so I could still do stuff without disappearing anything. Guess I'm just used to assuming the position."

"Do you still need the rig?"

Nero shook his head. "I lost it. I can manage, mostly. I just have to be careful."

"Do you have a lot of trouble with your shadows?" she asked, genuinely curious.

"Not like I used to. I mean, it's not great, but I can manage."

It went on like that, Cissnei asking questions, leading him down various trails of logic. Nero did his best to answer, and before long she smiled and said they were done. They'd had him speak to someone like this the first time he'd been brought in. The doctor had been male that time, and wore a suit and tie just like Cissnei, instead of a white coat. Doctors always wanted the same thing: to see what was going on inside you. Except Cissnei and the other guy weren't medical doctors, they were mind doctors. Psychologists. Nero wasn't entirely sure what that was, but the leading questions made him suspicious. The very fact that he was here gave him all the answer he needed: they thought there was something wrong with him.

It wasn't easy to guess at what she wanted to know, to tell her what she wanted to hear. He needed to convince her of something, but what? He wasn't crazy like some of the poor sods down in Deepground. He'd had any number of mentally unstable people in his unit, but they'd fit in perfectly fine. Many of them had been among his best subordinates. Deepground, for the most part, had suited them. Nero wondered how they had fared up here on the Surface, before they'd been recruited.

Then it hit him. They hadn't.

Maybe they'd been shoved in front of a psychologist too. Maybe people had thought there was something wrong with them as well. They were broken and needed to be fixed, or at the very least trained to act...to act… "Normal" was the only word he could come up with. To wear clothes and shut doors and let people hang all over them in public. Nero had never been a very good liar, but he was a decent actor. However, acting like this whole surface thing agreed with him was asking too much.

Smiling and nodding in front of Cissnei, giving her edited versions of Deepground life, of what was going through his head, the truth struck him like a fist to the gut.

He didn't belong here. Didn't want to belong here.

If Weiss and Rosso, Azul and Argento had been up here with him, it would be a completely different story. Azul and Argento had lived on the surface for half their lives. They knew the rules, all the strange subtleties, what to do and what not to do. They could have been their mentors and teachers, as they had always been. Weiss and Rosso would have been just as lost, just as confused as he was, and at the end of the day, when he couldn't stand it any more, he could go home to them and be himself and not be scolded for it. He swallowed hard, forcing the knot in his throat back down.

He missed his family. He missed Deepground.

He wanted to go home.

"Does he pass?" Reno asked. Leaning over Tseng's shoulder made it difficult to read Cissnei's scribbly handwriting.

"The short answer is 'yes'," Tseng replied, shuffling through the pile of notes. For one hour long interview, there was a disquieting amount of paper. "He's remarkably functional given what he's been through. He isn't psychotic, he isn't even violent. He does, however, have a hell of a lot of conditioning to overcome. We put him in a situation that had the potential to go bad quickly and it did."

"He's a good kid," Reno agreed. "Gotta say I wasn't expecting him to go for blood like that. Normally he's pretty chill."

"Well, gun to one's head, I suppose," Tseng observed. "I don't suppose he's ever been taught to play nicely with others."

That gave Reno an idea.

"He's banned from the simulator for the next few weeks, right?"

"Yes," Tseng confirmed. "Why?"

"Have him scheduled for the gym instead. I got an idea."

Nero was familiar with the weight room and the training simulator, but he'd never been inside a room like this before. The floor was expansive, made of highly-polished light-colored wood divided into sections by different colored lines. A mesh tube hung suspended near the ceiling at either end of the room. The high ceiling was set with multiple fluorescent lights, though in deference to his sensitive eyes, only half of them were turned on.

"S'up Nero," Reno greeted him. Four other Turks dressed in athletic wear stood clustered with him. Rude and three other rookies from his class: Jericoh, Cassidy, and Otoko.

"Ever play three-on-three?"

"Um," Nero began, unsure how to answer that. Veld had briefed him regarding innuendo, but he wasn't sure if this instance was applicable.

"Sports," Reno clarified, hefting an orange ball chased with black lines.

"No," Nero answered, glad he'd kept his silence.

"Okay, catch," Reno shoved the ball at Nero with both hands. Nero caught it somewhat awkwardly.

"The idea is to get the ball through the net. Each team has a net, and you try to keep the opposite team from putting the ball through your net. No weapons, no blood. If you get rough, that's called a foul and you're out of the game."

Nero listened attentively as Reno explained some of the finer points of the game: how to score a basket, what was legal and what wasn't, and so on.

Rather than chuck him in cold, Reno, Rude, Jericoh and Cassidy split into teams of two and played a quick game while Nero and Otoko watched. It involved a lot of running and jumping and trying to steal the orange ball without actually touching anyone. Nero could see how this might be perceived as fun.

"Think you can handle that?"

Nero nodded. "Yessir."

By the end of the day, basketball had made it onto the so far extremely short list of things on the surface that weren't terrible. The list included the food, and the Turk cadre. Nero still hadn't made up his mind about Veld and Vincent. They had been really nice, but every bit as mercurial as the Restrictors, if far less violent. Sports alone did not merit him staying up here. The problem was that the surface had its own set of incomprehensible rules, and everyone expected him to abide by them. He'd been spending so much time trying to learn surface culture that he wasn't left with much time to search for his team.

Veld and Vincent had gone out of their way for him. Nero understood that they had allowed him into their home at great personal inconvenience. Staying there meant more nonsensical rules, but that was the price of having a soft bed and good food. Nero still wasn't used to feeling full; going to sleep without being at least a little hungry. However, he'd willingly starve if he could sleep with Weiss and Rosso on either side of him again.

He was very grateful, touched really, that they'd gone to such lengths for him, but he wasn't like Shelke. Shelke had not been born in Deepground. She remembered this strange world, and had missed it. She had never stopped dreaming of escape, of one day finding her sister. Shelke had come from the surface, she could survive, even be happy here. Nero wasn't sure he'd ever be able to manage that, especially on his own. Vincent seemed to think they were going to be best friends. Nero had no idea why Vincent was so hung up on this, or why he kept trying to get all touchy-feely with him. Although he'd tried on several occasions to put his arms around him, Vincent had never pressed the issue, so Nero was reasonably sure that was not the price for staying in their house. It was weird, and not a little bit creepy.

Things would have to change. He was wasting so much time trying to learn to live on the surface, he was forgetting about his duty to his underground loved ones. Deepground might be a smoking crater to Veld and Vincent, but they had no idea how far down the facility went. They didn't understand that they'd only taken out the vehicle bays and automotive shops- which was probably why there were still fires burning among the chunks of broken concrete. The JOEs, JANEs, Mothers, children, doctors, experiments, everything valuable was deep underground, miles beneath the streets of old Midgar, barely touched. Well, okay, maybe "barely touched" was overstating things. Nero knew for a fact there was quite a bit still standing, still intact. There was every possibility that there were survivors still down there and that Weiss and Rosso and the others were among them.

Nero didn't doubt that the WRO intended to excavate the crater. However, they would wait until the fires put themselves out, until they could send a team to penetrate from the top down. This would take weeks if not months, and it had already been too long. If they waited much longer all they'd be retrieving was corpses. Nero was not about to let that happen.

He would have to tell Vincent and Veld that he was leaving; that he was thankful, but that this was not something any of them could do long-term. They should not have to look after him as if he were an ignorant child, and he should not have to depend on them like a charity case. He was the only one who could go down deep enough, knew the endless maze of halls and corridors well enough to know where he was going. He was grateful, but he was leaving. Finding his siblings was more important.