"Thank you, sir," Zack said, his voice practically a whisper.

The General just nodded and then turned back to the screen as he couldn't continue to look at the boy anymore. That boy who had likely seen his fall if what he'd said was anything to go by, and who still trusted him to do the right thing.

Sephiroth could only hope that his faith wasn't misplaced.

xXx

CHAPTER 40

"So, Junon?" Genesis asked loudly, breaking the silence that had fallen in the wake of Sephiroth and Zack's recent exchange.

Angeal shot him an exasperated warning look.

"What?" his friend defended himself. "It's," he paused and took out his own PHS, "five minutes after midnight. The plan was to get as far as we could before stopping for the night at zero one hundred."

Angeal looked unsurely at Zack, who seemed to be lost in his own thoughts.

"Genesis is right," Sephiroth put in. He didn't really want to go on, either, but they had to push through this.

The larger SOLDIER still looked unsure and glanced up at his protege. "Zack?" he asked gently.

The boy blinked and Sephiroth wondered if he'd even been listening. Then he took a deep breath and nodded as he let it out slowly.

"Yeah. We should go on. We need to find out what happens."

"Are you sure?" Angeal asked skeptically.

Zack closed his eyes, then opened them and fixed his mentor with a steady gaze as he nodded firmly. "Yeah. I'm in this with you." Then he turned and sat down once again. Angeal seemed torn between being proud and worried, but he said nothing more, just nodding softly at Sephiroth before fixing his own gaze on the scene.

On the screen, they entered Junon and ended up at the lowest level.

"Why is it that we can only enter Under Junon here?" Genesis asked, annoyed. "It is possible to go to the upper tiers."

"True," Sephiroth said, "but they do have check-points that don't allow civilians to simply walk into the military-controlled part of the city without verified documents."

"Hmph," Genesis grumped as he slumped on the couch. Then he folded his arms and muttered, "As long as there are no more dolphins."

"How do we get to the upper city, then?" Angeal asked.

"Upper city? I played a section of my game in Junon, but I didn't know it was that much like Midgar," Zack said unhappily.

"It's a bit different, more like stairs along the cliff-side that faces the ocean, but sadly, yes," his mentor replied gently, patting his shoulder.

The boy just shook his head but said nothing more about it.

"Why not just try the elevator again?" Genesis suggested.

"The elevator they wouldn't let us on last time?" Sephiroth asked sardonically.

The other man shrugged. "Operators are different and, loath as I am to suggest I may be anticipating the game, there is currently no large event to speak of, and, since the game wants us to go there and our previous method of entry is gone, it is possible that the option is now available."

Sephiroth thought about that, conceded the point with a nod and walked up to the elevator. The man said he'd let them on for 10 gil.

10 gil. To get into a military city. On a supposedly illegal elevator ride.

"He's either been told to let people on or he's an idiot," Genesis muttered.

Just more game insanity.

"Maybe if he's only taking miniscule bribes, he thinks he won't get in trouble?" Angeal asked, although he didn't sound convinced.

The red-head scoffed. "Like I said, an idiot."

Still, it was easy to head up to Junon so he wouldn't really complain, he supposed.

They ended up in one of the many buildings that made up the ShinRa headquarters. Sephiroth had certainly been this way before, and he was thankful for his eidetic memory. If he recalled correctly, he just had to walk out the correct door and there would be a stretch of road that would lead to the underwater reactor in real life. There had been a sort of mid-way point in the game, too, and there had been multiple exits there, some of which they hadn't been able to explore either their first or second time here.

"Save point," Angeal said before Sephiroth could direct Cloud anywhere.

The silver-haired man paused, then nodded at the good suggestion. It would be worth it to save the game right now. He did so, and then exited the menu and turned Cloud to head out into the city. The first thing they saw was, indeed, the previously visited stretch of road and Sephiroth moved the blond on screen down towards the bottom.

"Hey, what's that man yelling?" Zack asked, pointing to what looked like a larger man in a tan business suit 'shouting' outside of a doorway again and again.

"Right now, we don't care," Genesis said, shaking his head. "We are trying to get through as much of the game as we can tonight, which means heading as directly to the reactor as the game will let us. We do not have time to speak to every person we come across, and frequently, if the game wants us to talk to someone or look at something, it will happen anyway."

"I agree," Sephiroth said aloud.

"I think you've agreed with me more in the last couple of days than in the rest of the time we've known each other," Genesis said wryly, looking amused. Sephiroth sent a smirk his way, liking this new camaraderie with his commander.

Before they even reached the yelling man, the screen faded out and showed a close up of Cloud running by. Then he stopped as Tifa and Yuffie walked out of him. In the background, Sephiroth could see some strange mounts and…

'I could be wrong, but it feels like we're missing something,' Cloud said with a shrug.

"Case-in-point for this game forcing things," Genesis quipped as he frowned at the screen.

"The cannon's gone?" Angeal asked, surprised. "How is the cannon gone?! It can't have been destroyed…"

"It was there on the world map," Zack said. "I'm sure of it."

Everyone in the room exchanged glances as the other two on the screen walked back into Cloud and control returned to Sephiroth.

"Game insanity," he muttered, then moved Cloud forward again.

The scene went back to where it had been before and Sephiroth had Cloud continue to run down towards the bottom of the screen. The next area had another stretch of familiar road that went under a bridge and into another part of the headquarters.

"Down there," Genesis said when they appeared in an underground t-junction. "I remember, we couldn't go the long way before, only straight across to the other side."

Sephiroth nodded, remembering the same thing. He had Cloud run down towards that end. Halfway there, they ran across a troop either being trained or led in some protocol exercise.

The man in red, probably a squad Captain, turned to face them as Cloud ran up to the group. The man yelled out about how it was time to see how well his troops had been trained. The troops, as one, turned around as the man whistled at them. Then he yelled 'charge'. Everyone charged away from them.

Sephiroth just stared at the screen, unimpressed. Genesis rolled his eyes and Angeal put a hand to his forehead. Zack let out a laugh. It sounded a bit forced, but the silver-haired man appreciated it more for that reason. Maybe Zack's exuberance didn't come as naturally to him as everyone thought. But he was trying. And that meant a lot right now.

The Captain yelled at and ran after his troops, leaving Cloud alone in the tunnel. He moved out of his fighting stance and shrugged.

Zack laughed again.

Sephiroth just moved Cloud down the hallway. They reached the end but the game didn't let them progress past the caution line. A dead end? Sephiroth frowned. It did look like a dead end, except for a gray… was that a door with a 1 on it? He'd never visited Junon's underwater reactor himself, so he didn't know if that was true to life or not.

Well, only one way to find out, he supposed. The door opened at his approach, so he walked Cloud through it.

They ended up in a small room… with the way everyone stood facing the door, it was likely an elevator, he realized. A woman stood inside by the door with two troopers side by side towards the back. As soon as the door closed, one trooper turned to the other and said:

'How 'bout whoever stays alive gets to take her out?'

Genesis threw his hands in the air. "Does ShinRa only employ idiots?!"

Zack snickered.

"Yes," Sephiroth said.

"Hey!" the Third said, mock glaring. Then he ended up snickering again. "You do realize that would include you, too, right?"

Genesis glared at the back of Zack's head then shot an unimpressed look at the General. Sephiroth shrugged. He'd only meant it half as a joke. Some of the people he ran across in this company…

After some more banter, they went into a fight. It wasn't a difficult win.

Then the elevator dropped off the screen.

"Oh! That's an elevator!" Zack said suddenly.

"So it is," Angeal agreed. He didn't sound surprised, but both he and Genesis looked as though they'd not known until right then either.

"What did you think it was?" Sephiroth asked. He'd figured it out from the occupants, but was curious about the boy's perspective.

"Just another room," Zack said with a shrug. "It looked way different than the other elevator we got on to get up to the plate."

"He has a point." Genesis shrugged.

Sephiroth just shook his head slightly and focused back on the television.

The elevator 'stopped' as it dropped onto the screen again and Sephiroth went to exit. On the way out, he talked to the woman, who was apparently whispering about how 'there went two perfectly good men.'

"Oh for Gaia's sake," Genesis muttered.

Zack snickered again.

Outside the elevator, they ran into another fight with two infantry men that wasn't a difficult win. Once finished with that, a dog barked (it sounded far better than the one in Icicle) guarding a doorway. The game didn't let them interact with it, and they couldn't get past (more insanity, as a dog would hardly be able to stop anyone enhanced to the degree of a SOLDIER). Perhaps, like Genesis noticed with the first elevator, they could get through later?

Time limit in mind, Sephiroth didn't spend too much time trying to figure out how to coax the dog to move. Instead, he just turned and had Cloud run down the hallway they'd exited into.

Their next fight was with a sweeper that seemed to be actually programmed correctly. Some of them had to be, Sephiroth supposed. That fight was a little more difficult to win than the other fights. That wasn't the only fight against machinery they had to battle on their way to the underwater reactor. Eventually, they came across a long stairway and at the bottom they noticed a save point. Sephiroth wasted no time in saving the game.

Then they entered an elevator similar to the one they'd used to get up to the plate from Lower Junon.

"See, that's an elevator!" Zack said.

Angeal snorted. "Yes, we get it."

The Third caught onto the placating tone and rolled his eyes, although he still looked more amused than anything. His resilience and ability to bounce back was a little awe-inspiring.

As the elevator descended, the screen faded to black again. Then it faded in as the elevator came to a stop. Sephiroth had Cloud run through the door and ended up in a cramped, metallic hallway that seemed to have been built in sections. On one wall, several pipes were fixed in place while more, colored pipes ran along the floor. At the very end of the hall, he could see a yellow and black striped door that he took Cloud through and the screen faded out again.

When it faded in, they found Cloud in an underwater corridor. It looked more like a glass tube than anything else, pieces fixed together with metal arches all along it. Outside, they could see the ocean floor with several fishes swimming in circles as the sunlight shone through the water above. A dolphin even swam by, reminding him of the 'minigame' they'd played with the little girl the first time they'd been in Junon. For such poor graphics, he had to admit he did find it rather… aesthetically appealing.

"I didn't realize ShinRa had been able to do something like this," Genesis said, interested. "If that's even remotely accurate, it's a shame that such a sight is locked away from the civilian masses. It seems I will have to find a reason to go and see this too…"

"We should all go," Angeal said, also sounding surprised and a little amazed.

"Even me?" Zack asked, eyes fixed on the screen.

Angeal chuckled and Sephiroth saw him ruffle dark spikes out of the corner of his eye. "Even you, Pup."

Zack swatted his hand away, but distractedly, gaze still on the scene. The view on screen was rather amazing. Sephiroth, again, agreed with Genesis: he couldn't begin to imagine what it would look like in real life if this were true…

Then they ran into a monster.

"What are monsters doing in here?!" Genesis asked, face falling into a scowl.

Sephiroth shrugged.

On defeating it, they got a decent amount of points.

"That's some good XP gain for that difficulty." The youngest SOLDIER lit up. "Hey! If there are tougher monsters here, then you should spend a couple of minutes and grind! It'll help with any upcoming boss battles!"

"We don't have time to grind," Genesis protested.

"You'll have a lot more time if you beat any bosses the first time around instead of having to go all the way back to the save point," Zack pointed out, "even though there'll probably be another savepoint before the boss fight… but we don't know that, and they're all close to leveling and that stat boost might make the difference."

"'Stat'?"

"Um, statistics, like attack and defense."

"Ah." He wasn't wrong.

Sephiroth and Genesis exchanged a look. Then the red-head sighed and looked at his PHS. "You have ten minutes."

Zack beamed up at them and Angeal smiled over at them as well.

"Is there… a proper method to 'grinding'?" Sephiroth asked.

"Nah. You usually just run around to trigger encounters. You should probably stay in the same area, though, if you don't want to risk triggering a boss or a cut scene. The load times would also eat into our time limit."

The Silver General nodded. Logical and sound reasoning.

Sephiroth spent the next ten minutes running around the tube and beating enemies (though making Game Cloud literally run around in circles just to fight felt rather like game insanity, considering they were supposedly in a race against time within the game as well as out). They ran across some very strange ones. Most of them resembled fish or eels of some kind, but one of them was a ghost ship. A ghost ship.

"What the actual—" Genesis started, but Angeal put a hand over his mouth and thumbed down to Zack. The red-head rolled his eyes but didn't finish the sentence when his friend removed his hand.

It was during one of these fights that Zack idly pointed at the screen. "It's been bothering me for a while… but… I'm pretty sure that's my victory move."

What?

"Zack?" Angeal ventured slowly.

"What Cloud does, when he waves his sword around after they win a fight. That's my victory swing!"

Sephiroth took a silent, controlled breath, and resisted sighing on the exhale. Should he say something?

"You waste time on fanfare displays?" Genesis asked condescendingly.

Zack shrugged. "Sometimes. I mean, it looks cool!"

Angeal groaned and put a hand to the bridge of his nose. "That's where I knew it from." Then he frowned at his student (not that said student saw it). "Zack, we talked about this!"

"I don't do it every time!" he defended.

Instead of arguing further, Angeal just put his head in his hands.

Once the ten minutes were up, Sephiroth made sure his team was healed and continued down the corridor. The room they entered at the other end was circular, built in cool colors and had one large, bright red light at the opposite side. Sephiroth had Cloud walk up to it (it ended up being a button of course) and push it. The wall along the back suddenly began to move, looking like tubes of water with bubbles floating up.

"Is that another elevator?" Angeal asked.

"I believe so," Sephiroth replied.

"Seriously?" Zack asked. "How many kinds of wildly different elevators are there? The clear tunnel was cool, but this is just silly."

"ShinRa extravagance," Sephiroth replied simply. No one argued.

Once the strange bubbling stopped, Sephiroth had Cloud run out of the elevator and into an enormous, industrial room that turned out to be a submarine port large enough for two full-sized military subs.

"Why is there a submarine dock in the reactor?" Zack asked.

"I'd claim game insanity, but ShinRa already has an underwater reactor for no publicly known reason, so they'd need some way of moving large supplies in and out," Genesis reasoned grimly. "It… does not bode well for some of the other things we've thus far waved off as Game Insanity."

"Wait, isn't this supposed to be underground, under the ocean?" Zack asked in surprise. "It's huge! How did they build it?"

Sephiroth had a couple of ideas, but didn't know for sure so he shook his head. Genesis shrugged, as did Angeal.

"Perhaps you could ask Tuesti when you speak with him tomorrow," Sephiroth suggested.

The boy seemed surprised. "Tuesti? As in the guy who operates the cat-moogle puppet? He's on the ShinRa board, right?"

"Yes," Angeal said, face grim. "You can't tell him about all of this, though," he added on after a moment. "You'll have to find another reason as to why you know about it."

Zack rolled his eyes. "Of course I can't tell him. But why are we even going to see him?"

His mentor didn't sigh, but he looked like he might at any second. "Officially, to get schematics of any reactors within a week's drive of Rocket Town. We have a mission to go there next week to do some scouting and reconnaissance in the area for Wutai presences.

"Unofficially? I want to see what he's like. Is he the type of man who would willingly help a terrorist organization to climb ranks in the company? Is he the type of man who would willingly threaten a child to get her guardians to cooperate? Or is he the type of man who really wants what's best for the world? Just who is Reeve Tuesti? I don't know, but I intend to find out."

Zack looked taken aback at this. "He… did those things?" he finally asked. "In the game?"

"Yes," Genesis said. "But he also protested – albeit slightly – the Sector 7 incident, and voluntarily provided us with some useful information. We may not have the full context," he admitted. Then he looked over at his friend and smirked. "You delivered your impassioned speech well. I will make a thespian out of you yet!"

Angeal stared at him for a few seconds while Genesis grinned back, then rolled his eyes. But he was smiling, Sephiroth noticed. He found himself fighting a smile at the interaction himself. It was amusing. Funny, he would have found it frustrating or annoying even a week ago.

On the screen, they'd run into more battles as Cloud walked along what looked like a catwalk. It didn't branch off, so he just ran straight across the room and into another small hallway at the other end. It had a save point Sephiroth took advantage of before they continued on.

The next doorway was guarded by two more enemies. That battle wasn't as easy as some of those before, but it wasn't terribly difficult either. Half-way through it, Genesis asked, "Why aren't you using the steal materia? These battles aren't bad enough that you have to use every move to deal damage."

He had a point, so Sephiroth tried it. He didn't manage to steal anything, though, and the next strike finished the guard off. He decided to humor Genesis for the next couple fights.

Which turned out to be fortuitous because in the next fight, Sephiroth managed to steal a ShinRa Alpha…

He wasn't the only one who noticed.

"Wait, they had a what on them?" Genesis asked, incredulous.

Sephiroth put it together first. "Those are SOLDIER Firsts," he concluded. ShinRa Alphas were expensive and difficult to make. Thus, they were only given out to the elite of the elite… aka, SOLDIER Firsts.

"What?!" Zack yelled. Angeal just stared in disbelief at the screen.

"They aren't even in the correct uniforms!" Genesis groused. "Not even close. I know Firsts can modify their outfits as they see fit, but we all still have the same base to work from! Not something tan with a helmet! That's Heidegger's infantry!"

Well, some Firsts did like to wear helmets, but they tended to be few and far between.

"Heidegger?! Are you serious?!" Zack asked, disbelieving.

The three Firsts nodded grimly.

The Third groaned. "Oh, man! This future only gets worse, doesn't it?"

"So it would seem…" Sephiroth murmured.

"Game insanity," Zack said, looking at the screen as if it had betrayed him. "I think I understand it now."

Genesis snorted, then dryly added, "I'll allow that it might be incompetence, if it's underlings taking what they shouldn't have and him not noticing."

"They're all using machine guns… SOLDIER Firsts rarely use guns in general, let alone machine guns…" Angeal muttered then sighed. "Genesis has a point, you know. Incompetence hypothisisis aside, if Heidegger has taken over the SOLDIER department by this point, it's possible that those aren't Firsts and this is preferential treatment for his own men…" he faded off, letting that unsettling thought sink in.

"Give me the controller," Genesis demanded, "I know we have a Sense equipped and I refuse to believe those are SOLDIER!"

Sephiroth ignored the outstretched hand as swapping players mid-battle did not seem like a good idea, but he did queue up a Scan, causing Genesis to withdraw his open palm, seemingly satisfied.

The Scan said they were 'Underwater MPs'. Well.

They already knew Hedigger to be foolish and selfish. Giving limited, high-quality gear to his own troops made sickening sense.

Honestly, Sephiroth was actually glad to be proven wrong.

"If one of 'em had one, the other one might too," Zack commented, looking conflicted. "It might be worth it to finish off the guy you got the first one from, and try farming the other – doing the same thing to him, I mean. But that first one took, what, seven attempts?"

Sephiroth appreciated the clarification on yet another unfamiliar term, although with the context and Zack's mention of games borrowing terms from elsewhere like with 'cameo', 'farming' probably meant close to what it sounded like. "Hm. I will focus the attacks on the first and try for the second, but I'm not going to stop attacking. If we get nothing, then we get nothing."

He ended up finishing off the second one without a successful steal, and so decided to equip the one bracer they got on Yuffie, which increased her 'stats' a fair amount. Good. The next time he could change her out, he could bring in Nanaki or Vincent and work on their stats.

A couple of rooms and some random battles later, they reached the core of the reactor. Tifa and Yuffie ran out of Cloud and the camera panned up to the top of what looked like an incredibly compact reactor core. As they just watched, like they had when the train had pulled away at Corel, a large, metal claw reached down inside said core and pulled out… well something glowing. It didn't look all that much larger than a regular materia to Sephiroth. Game insanity strikes again.

'They're gonna take it on that submarine!' Tifa said. Then she and Yuffie joined back together with Cloud and they rushed through the next door. They found themselves at the pier they'd crossed above earlier, but this time on the docking level.

'Did we make it?' Cloud asked, looking around. A turk stood in front of him – Reno, based on the ponytail. The camera panned up to one side and the claw that held a glass case with a red materia inside slowly moved by. (Genesis grumbled about the giant circulation fans in the background being backlit for no reason.) They watched as it lowered the case into the submarine doors and then lifted back up, empty. The doors closed and the camera panned back to Cloud.

Sephiroth had Cloud walk up to Reno, who asked what Cloud was doing and told him to help load without turning around. Help load what? Sephiroth wondered. Surely not the huge materia… Shouldn't they have enough hands for that already?

Then the Turk turned around as Tifa and Yuffie ran out of Cloud again.

'Cloud?!' Reno exclaimed.

Tifa commented on how they barely made it while Yuffie noted that she was sure Reno wanted her to do manual labor. (Even Sephiroth could hear the sarcasm in that.)

Cloud told Reno to 'Give it to us, or else. Which is it going to be?'

Genesis and Zack snorted.

"Like he'll hand it over," Genesis said.

"Right? I mean, Turks," Zack agreed.

"Precisely," Genesis said.

On screen, Reno said he didn't have time to deal with them, and then another very large machine came waddling down the dock.

"What is that?" Genesis asked.

"Creepy," Zack replied. "Probably one of Scarlet's."

Yes, that was rather likely.

'My priority is the Huge Materia,' Reno said and then ran off.

The following battle was one of the more difficult ones they'd fought. Fortunately, Sephiroth had a barrier materia on him and had Tifa cast that as soon as she could. That may very well have saved them as the first hit took more than half of their hitpoints. After that, though, it was a matter of healing them up and then they could finally get to doing damage.

The battle in and of itself took about eight minutes, give or take a couple of seconds, and while they'd come close to losing, they did win the battle. (Sephiroth wondered if the 'grinding' had indeed prevented a loss, and decided to give more weight to any further suggestions concerning Zack's knowledge of game mechanics.)

Unfortunately (albeit unsurprisingly), the red submarine had vanished by that time. Tifa said they had to go after it and then joined back together with Yuffie and Cloud.

That would never not be strange.

Once he had control back, Sephiroth turned left, to see if they would be able to view where the red submarine had gone, and noticed a treasure chest on the end of the empty dock. He decided they had time for a slight detour.

"Why is there a chest there!?" Genesis demanded.

More game insanity, Sephiroth thought and opened his mouth to say just that, but was cut off.

"Exploration reward," Zack answered, eyes still on the screen.

"A... what?" Angeal looked at his student.

"It's an exploration reward," Zack repeated, turning his attention to his mentor, puzzled. "Y'know, for going out of your way to explore?"

The three just looked at him.

"Haven't you come across them before?" he pressed.

"There are chests all over the place, in unfathomable places for unfathomable reasons that we cannot discern," Genesis grumped, but with a note of curiosity that there might actually be a justifiable reason for this.

"Oh." Zack paused. "It's another game thing, I guess… but you really don't know this one?"

"I think it would be safe to assume that if we question anything about the game, we likely do not understand it," Sephiroth replied tactfully.

"Huh." The younger SOLDIER paused again, clearly thinking. "Okay, so chests in games. In a game like this one, there's usually three possible reasons for a chest: narrative shortcut, visual guide, and, like that last one, exploration reward."

"Since you've explained the latter-most, what about the other two?" Genesis asked.

Zack hummed. "Visual guide's easy, like a monument or landmark, it helps you navigate."

"Those ridiculous icicles we fought in the Northern ice cave," Sephiroth realized. "I might have chosen the 'jump down' option after the first fight, if I hadn't wanted to get the chest." They might never have known they'd needed to make them fall to progress further. Or, in hindsight, they would have wasted more time backtracking to fight the icicles to progress.

"Icicles?" the younger SOLDIER asked, but then he shook his head. "Never mind. As for narrative... Oh, I know!" He jumped up and motioned for them to stand too. "Come on, up!"

More blank blinks.

"Why?" Sephiroth asked as Genesis simply scowled.

"You want an explanation, right?"

"Humor him?" Angeal muttered after a moment, even as he stood from the couch.

They stood and...

Zack pulled the cushions off. "Ha, thought so. Ta-da!"

Sephiroth stared. There, on the black fabric covering the innards of his couch, sat three copper coins. Gil. In his couch. Three of them. Why were there three gil in his couch? He hadn't even used his couch more than once or twice before this fiasco.

"Narration chests are generally a shortcut, or time saver in place of a thorough hunt or search for something hidden or tiny," Zack said as he moved the gil to the coffee table, then started replacing the cushions. "Game makers want you to interact with or collect them, but they need to stand out in a way so that you know you can. It's better to make it obvious, like a chest, than risk that something important might be mistaken as background or scenery. Also saves the cost of making unique artwork. Like palette-swaps."

'Palette swaps?' After a moment's contemplation, he decided he would ask later. They were still on a time limit and Zack had just explained a puzzling aspect they'd had nearly from the first hour playing. This new term was merely a curiosity, instead of something that contributed to their frustration with the game.

Angeal looked amused, while Genesis seemed thoughtful, but neither said anything and just took their seats back once the cushions were back in place, so Sephiroth followed suit and opened the chest.

It held a battle trumpet…

"What's a battle trumpet?" Zack asked as he settled back to the floor.

"It's for Cait Sith, I think," Angeal said.

Sephiroth nodded. That did, indeed, make sense. Or, at least, more sense than anything else.

On the next dock over, the infantry (or SOLDIERS, Sephiroth supposed) seemed to be scrambling all over the place. The screen changed to a view much closer to the other submarine and they found two more treasure chests; a scimitar and Leviathan Scales respectively.

"Leviathan Scales? What do those do?" Zack asked.

The three SOLDIERS glanced at each other to see if anyone had the answer.

"No clue, Pup," Angeal finally replied.

"And of course this entire time, the infantry on the ship were just running in place," Genesis commented dryly as Sephiroth went back towards the stairs that would lead them up to the top of the submarine.

"Game insanity," Sephiroth and Angeal said at the same time.

"Actually, that one was probably a programming error, causing glitching. I doubt they were supposed to do that." Zack chuckled. "You know, I gotta get a real game for you guys to play. I bet you'd be great at it! The Lezda series would be a great place to start! No future creepiness involved. Promise."

"Maybe," Angeal responded, sounding both reluctant and wistful.

Neither Sephiroth or Genesis said anything. Sephiroth wasn't sure he'd ever pick up a game again. This had been… difficult and didn't endear him to other games out there. Still, he didn't want to tell Zack that and potentially start an argument.

The next two fights were… easy, if (again) ridiculous because they only fought two of the infantry men at once, despite there being more on the ship.

"Because of course they'd only send enemies at the target two at a time," Genesis said. "I despair at this game."

"You aren't the only one," Angeal muttered.

Zack just shrugged helplessly. "Hardware limitations." He looked a bit sad though.

Once they finished the infantry fights, Sephiroth paused and made sure his party was fully healed. He went through and made sure that all the materia equipped could still grow and made a general note of any new materia that had been born.

Then he realized how tight his muscles felt and stretched before turning to the others.

"Would anyone else like to play for the last…" he paused and looked at his PHS, "half hour?" A little under, really, but semantics.

"Not particularly," Genesis said, sniffing haughtily.

"Fine, I will," Angeal said, holding out his hand.

Sephiroth handed the controller over with a nod of thanks and sat back.

"Well, on to the submarine?" Genesis asked.

"On to the submarine," Angeal agreed and climbed up.

xXx

AN: Do you guys have ANY idea how often I forget which character is playing the game. It's been shuffled around so much that Imagination and I have likened it to the skit 'Who's on First' by Abbot and Costello. "WHO IS HOLDING THE CONTROLLER NOW?!" "I DON'T KNOW... THIRD BASE!"

In any case, thank you to Imagination for catching all of those. :D Seriously appreciate what you do, hon.

Sorry this is a little late. Life kind of caught up with me, filled with friend's bridal showers (that were super last minute), new resolutions, enormous storms and drama. *sigh* I hate drama.

In any case, here's this. :) I do hope you enjoy it.

Discord: discord. gg/EVUrHMd4za (without spaces)