"Are you sure?" Nanaki asked again.
Tifa looked at the stairs. The guards had carried the strange man up to the Shildra Inn, located above the pub. He had passed out on the table after his words, having used the last of his strength to speak to them. The town doctor had been called to treat him, and a faint buzz of excitement still threaded through the pub. It was rare to get travelers outside of the usual caravan runs between Corel and Cosmo.
But Tifa knew he wasn't just some traveler. Not with what he'd said. And not with what he was wearing.
She didn't have to see him again to know that the man's clothes were the same as those in her memories. The raiders had had guns, not the enormous sword that was still resting against the wall, but the rest matched up.
And they'd had the same eerily glowing eyes.
Tifa let out the breath she'd been holding. "I'm sure," she murmured. "It's the same. He looks just like the raiders who attacked us."
Nanaki rumbled low in his throat, a sound Tifa knew to be one he made when he was in deep thought. "Yet he has a PHS."
Tifa glanced down at her wrist. "I know."
That was the part that didn't add up. It was one thing for one of the raiders who attacked her home to show up all the way out in Cosmo Canyon. Having a PHS threw that into question. Each PHS had a biometric lock, which meant that they could only be removed by the person wearing it, or a highly skilled technician. They couldn't be easily stolen, even if the wearer was killed. No raider had that kind of training.
Nanaki gazed at Tifa with his one yellow eye. He had lost the other defending the village years ago. "You are aware of how things are dealt with here," he said.
"I..." Tifa had to swallow to find her voice. "Yes." She thought back to how she had first arrived in Cosmo Canyon. "I remember."
Though Cosmo Canyon had had dealings with the people of Corel for years, they weren't in the habit of taking in refugees. Cosmo was a remote village where every resident had to pull their weight in order to get by. But Tifa had had nowhere else to go after her home had been overrun. They had given her a chance, and she had repaid their kindness with hard work.
It was just...
Tifa looked up towards the inn again. If this wasn't one of those raiders— but what else could he be, even with a PHS? It didn't make any sense.
Was she strong enough to give him the benefit of the doubt?
Nanaki was still watching her, patient, and Tifa let herself take a breath, remembering Master Zangan's teachings on how to steady herself. She'd come here full of anger and hate and wanting nothing but revenge, and while Master Zangan hadn't belittled her those feelings, he had helped her to channel them into her training, to make them constructive instead of destructive.
"Okay," Tifa said. "I — I can't promise I'll see past everything. I'm not perfect. But I can listen to what he has to say."
Nanaki nodded. "Thank you. I know this is difficult for you. However, it is my hope that we will learn much from him, whatever it is he has to tell us." He stepped away, heading towards the bar. "Still, it will likely be quite some time before he recovers enough to speak with us. You should eat something."
Tifa gave him a weak smile. "I'll try."
Tifa and Nanaki relieved the guards in watching over their visitor several hours later. The Shildra Inn only had a few rooms for guests, as it was built directly into the canyon wall, but it was easier to reach than the doctor's house, which was up several flights of stairs and a ladder. Most people who got injured on the road to Cosmo Canyon ended up here.
The doctor had already come and gone some time ago; according to the guard, the man had no serious injuries, and was simply recovering from severe exhaustion. By the looks of him, Tifa guessed that he'd been in the canyons for weeks. No wonder.
Seeing him again, Tifa couldn't help but frown. She didn't recognize the man, she knew that much — not that she could have, if he really was one of the people who attacked her vault. They'd all been wearing helmets.
"You've got something on your mind," Nanaki said.
Tifa shook her head. "It's nothing."
She could stand here and wonder all she liked, but it wouldn't give her any answers. All she could do was wait.
It was another hour before a groan came from the bed. The man was starting to stir. He still looked worn out; it was the look of someone who had been traveling a long time and still had a long journey ahead of them. Tifa had seen it on plenty of caravaners.
She hadn't been mistaken. His eyes glowed. It was easier to make out in the room's dim light; his blue eyes had a faint green sheen. It made them look luminescent.
"Where am I?" he mumbled, looking around blearily.
"You have reached the settlement of Cosmo Canyon," Nanaki said.
The glow settled on Nanaki, and the man's eyes widened considerably. For that, Tifa didn't blame him; Nanaki was a lot to take in. He looked at Tifa; it was as if he were asking her if this was real. Then he rubbed his eyes. "Okay, uh," he said, "either I'm still dreaming or that mutant dog just talked a minute ago."
"I'm not a dog," Nanaki sighed. He was used to this reaction. Tifa had reacted in much the same way when she first arrived. It was hard to take in a sentient beast, even one as patient as Nanaki. "I am the guardian of Cosmo Canyon, Nanaki, son of Seto. This is my natural form."
"You're... really talking." He gaped at the beast for a moment, then laughed, breathless. "You know what, sure. I'll buy it. Not the weirdest thing I've ever seen. Nice to meet you, Nanaki. I'm Zack Fair, of Gongaga."
That wasn't what Tifa was expecting to hear.
No one had heard anything from Gongaga in a hundred years. People had gone looking for its vault, but no one had ever found any sign of it. People told stories about those who claimed to find it, but no one had ever provided any proof of the real Gongaga. It had become something of a myth in this region: the lost vault of Gongaga, swallowed up by the jungle, never to be seen again.
This had to be some kind of trick, didn't it? "Gongaga?" she repeated. "But that's— that can't be possible."
Zack looked back to her and took in the PHS on her arm, eyes widening. "Wait— you're from a vault too? Did they have a vault here?"
Tifa opened her mouth to reply, but before she could, Nanaki cut her off. "We'd like to hear your story first, please," Nanaki said. "Can you prove that you're from Gongaga? We have not seen anyone from Gongaga since before the war."
"Sure, no problem," Zack said. He unlatched the PHS and removed it from his arm. Inside, near the hinge, was a small inscription in raised letters:
Personal Handsfree System Model 3000 Mk IV
Manufactured by RobCo Industries
for Distribution by Shinra Electric Power Company
GONGAGA VAULT
Tifa stared at the words. This... this was proof. No one could fake a PHS; it was rare technology not manufactured since the war. They had only been distributed to vaults. She watched as Zack put the device back on and the screen lit up. It was real.
But if he was really from Gongaga, then... what did that mean?
"It seems you're telling the truth," Nanaki said. "However, there is much that still needs to be answered. When did your vault open? How long was it sealed?"
Zack let out a heavy breath. "Yeah, I guess it all starts with that, huh? When the vault opened. I was born in the vault, and when I was a kid, I thought we were never coming out. We had enough supplies to last for a long, long time. Or that's what we were told." He snorted. "What they weren't telling us was that our vault was slowly breaking down. Eventually, it couldn't hold out anymore, and neither did our supplies. We were forced to evacuate in 2100."
The timing sounded about right, as far as Tifa knew. Master Zangan had been one of the people who searched for Gongaga when he was younger, he'd told her, but that had been many years ago. Over time, the story had lost its luster, and these days hardly anyone thought Gongaga was still worth finding. There hadn't been any expeditions to find it in the past decade.
"See, getting out wasn't so bad," Zack continued. "There were some monsters and mutated animals outside the vault, but we had lots of weapons stocked up, and we'd done some drills for that. We were pretty much ready. What went bad was getting the supplies out of the vault.
"The Overseer and the tech guys had already figured out that we couldn't keep living inside the vault. All of the systems were going bad and losing power. The air filtration system was broken. We were running out of water. We barely had any food left. So the plan was to move back into the village and try to fortify it with supplies from the vault. We got about half of it out when our nuclear reactor gave out."
"Oh no," Tifa breathed. The dangers of a reactor meltdown had been drilled into everyone in her vault; it was a constant worry.
Zack grimaced. "The reactor was already on its last legs, but whoever built it — I dunno what they did exactly, but they set it up so that instead of going into meltdown and blowing everything up, it just shut the reactor down and put the vault into lockdown. Except, well." He rubbed the back of his head. "Some of us got caught inside. The vault door closed automatically, and I — we couldn't get out. The people who were down in the reactor level when it locked down... they were mutated. Changed into these horrible creatures. They— they weren't human anymore. And we had to..." He broke off. "Sorry. Kinda try not to think about it."
"It's okay," Tifa said.
"Is that where you got the glow in your eyes?" Nanaki asked gravely.
"Yeah, well, after getting trapped in an irradiated vault for close to a week, it kinda sets in," Zack said. "We managed to barricade ourselves from the lower levels, but we still ended up with heavy radiation poisoning. In the end, they had to break down the vault door to get us out. Only three of us survived. Me and my two best friends." He looked down at his lap. "Angeal and Genesis."
Zack was quiet for a moment, clearly recalling painful memories, and while both Tifa and Nanaki could commiserate with that, some things didn't add up. "There's more that I'd like to ask," Nanaki said. "Those clothes you're wearing, for instance—"
"Yeah— yeah, sorry," Zack said. "It's a long story and — well, some of it might sound crazy. But it's all true. And it's why I need to get to Nibelheim."
Tifa bit her lip. She hadn't missed the way Nanaki cut her off earlier, and she had a feeling that the beast wanted to get everything he could out of Zack first. She didn't disagree with that, but it was hard not to ask Zack everything on her mind. "We'll listen," she said. "Just start at the beginning."
Zack gave her a weak smile. "Well, after we got out of the reactor, the three of us were... different. There's no other way to describe it. We were faster, and stronger. I mean, when we were trapped in the vault, we'd had to fight against the ones who got really mutated. There was no way to survive otherwise. But the radiation, well... it changed us. That's the only way to put it. And it made the other people from the vault afraid of us.
"That was when we started training. We figured that if we were stronger, then it was up to us to protect the village. Gongaga is dangerous; every other day we were getting attacked by the monsters in the jungle. We had to ration our ammo, so we started training on the old swords they'd had down in the vault—" Zack cut himself off and looked around wildly. "Where's my sword? Did I drop it?"
"No, it's downstairs," Nanaki said.
Zack looked at him for a moment, as if considering whether he were telling the truth, then nodded. "Alright. So anyway, when we started using swords, it got easier. You've gotta have a good blade, and we went through a lot of bad ones, but it's better than running out of ammo against a gagihandi."
"A what?" Tifa asked.
"Gongagan lizard that turns you to stone. You gotta stab it in the eye. Like I said, you wanna have ammo."
"...Right." She wasn't even going to ask.
"Anyway..." Zack pulled at his shirt. "Things were going okay. We kept the village safe. We made sure the monsters stayed out. Not everyone liked us, but I had Angeal and Genesis, and they had me. Wasn't anything like being in the vault, but it wasn't all that bad either." He swallowed. "That's when the airship crashed."
Nanaki's jaw dropped. "That's impossible. Who could even— how—?!"
Zack shook his head. "I don't know. Whoever they were, they weren't trying to get to Gongaga, that's for sure. The airship was already in bad shape when it crashed, we saw it way in the distance before it crashed in the jungle. It was full of soldiers and robots." He smiled, humorless. "They had ammo.
"They took over the village within a day. They took some people as laborers to work on repairing the airship. The rest they assigned to the reactor. And as for me..." Zack pointed as his eyes. "They had this scientist who wanted to know where I got these. Same with my friends, Genesis and Angeal. He locked us up and did tests on us."
"When was this? What year?" Tifa asked. If this was true — if this was where the raiders had come from who attacked Nibelheim, then—
"2102," Zack said. "They crashed in March. They finished the repairs in 2104. I got left behind, along with a bunch of scientists who kept doing tests on me." His words were coming out faster now, as if he couldn't keep them bottled up inside, and desperation crackled in his voice. "I've been locked up for the past three years. It wasn't until a couple months ago that I managed to break out. There weren't that many soldiers left, or scientists. Me and the villagers managed to take them all out. That's when I found out they were heading for Nibelheim."
Tifa felt dazed. It added up. Verifying his story about the airship wasn't possible, but deep down, she knew it was true. The attack on Nibelheim had happened in 2104, but she'd never thought past her own home. Never imagined that the raiders could have attacked other vaults. She'd thought all they wanted was the supplies. What if they were still there?
"That's why I have to get there," Zack said. "I was the only one left behind — I don't know why, I guess they were doing different experiments on me. But they took Angeal and Genesis with them to Nibelheim. They're my best friends in the whole world. They have to be there. I know it's a long shot, but—"
"No," Tifa said. "It's possible." She met Zack's eyes. "Because I escaped Nibelheim on the day it was attacked."