A/N: Be aware Minerva is a different kind of entity from us with a different perspective of the world! Check note (1) at the end of the chapter for clarification, as the first discussion in this chapter requires this particular reference to grasp fully what happened.

Heritage

With a sigh, Tseng stared out his balcony window at the cloudy, green-tinged sky, still wondering if he'd really made the right decision to tell Veld and Kariya what he had.

The issue with Felicia was unavoidable, because that would have come up eventually, and he preferred Veld have warning of what he was going to see then, rather than waiting and have it take the man by surprise. He also didn't regret giving the older man that information—and Veld had taken it well, also realizing a lot more had happened than just the one point.

What he wasn't so sure about was telling them about his mother and the other half of his blood. To this day, he didn't know why or how he'd survived so much more suffering than all the rest of his family, just that he had. What was it about him which allowed such a thing to happen?

:Are you certain you wish to know the answer to that question, Leviathan's Blessed Child?: the woman—Minerva—asked him quietly.

:You can answer it?: he asked her in surprise.

:I am able to,: she agreed.

He closed his eyes and leaned his head against the cool glass of the balcony door, pondering the question, assessing the pros and cons of knowing. What would it change? In all honesty, he didn't think it would change much, other than helping him to figure out more about his own skills. Did he want to have even more points—oddities—in his own life to turn up, to force him to face them? Was it necessary to know? Leviathan's gifts gave him some interesting abilities, but those were static, and even people who weren't Wutain had them. Anything else he had was unique to him, and there was potential it would mean more things he'd have to work out or train.

Finally, he told her, :As much as I have misgivings about finding out, it's probably better if I find out now, while I'm still mostly sane.:

A sense of amusement returned to him, then she said, :Certain of my spirit children, the Eidolons, are particularly attracted to a specific other. For example, fire elementals and wind elementals are often drawn to one another...There is only one variety of holy elemental, and only very recently two shadow elementals. Ark is far too new to have ever mated with a human or an Eidolon to produce offspring like you. Alexander is attracted to Odin, and Odin is attracted to Alexander. What attracted your mother so strongly to your father was partially his kindness and strength, and partially the genetics of his grandfather in him, his grandfather who had been an Odin. You also have some active Odin genetics, though your Alexander ones are strongly predominant. And you yourself have attracted an Odin because of it.: The last bit Minerva said sounded impishly amused, leaving him puzzled. He'd attracted an Odin? (1)

"Are you feeling all right, Tseng?" Kariya asked from behind him, tone worried.

His mind did a sudden leap of logic from 'Kariya' to 'Death God of the Battlefield' to 'God of Death' to 'Odin'—and he lifted his head enough that he could bang it on the balcony door in frustration with a groan.

"Tseng?" Kariya asked again, that time in alarm, and the Wutain felt a hand on his shoulder. It was warm and comforting, and he somehow knew he was safe.

Spinning around, he looked up at the older man in annoyance, asking, "Were you ever going to tell anyone you're a Goddess-damned Odin?" It was only after he said it that he realized he hadn't said 'Leviathan', he'd said 'Goddess'. He could only guess that was Minerva's influence.

Kariya blinked, then blinked again, then chuckled. "Who told you that?"

"You aren't denying it," Tseng replied with a raised brow.

"I'm stuck like this, and am closer to the same thing you are as things stand," Kariya shrugged. "Basically, human for the most part, with just a few quirks. Knowing you were half Alexander explained a lot, though. It doesn't change the fact that what made me look at you was the strength you showed me that day two years ago—not your blood. I only found out the latter today."

The younger man looked annoyed again. "I've done enough explaining of personal life details. It's your turn."

After a moment of looking startled, the orange haired man's gaze became thoughtful, then he nodded. Turning back to the chair where he'd been sitting since returning after a trip he took with Heidegger to the Cadet exams, he sat and said, "That's fair after all this. Sit, then, and I'll explain how this happened."

Tseng made his way to the chair he'd sat in that morning, sitting again as he found himself thankful Veld had needed to leave to see to the rest of the Turks. Once he was settled, he looked at the other man expectantly.

"...Like your mother, my Odin aspect is a free-roaming Summon, or was until this happened," Kariya began, his gaze moving far into the distance as he replayed those old memories. "It was nineteen seventy when said Odin went to Junon. Technology fascinated him, and Midgar hadn't been built yet, so Junon was the next most advanced place with Shinra's developments. He and I met then, though I'd had no idea he was an Odin when he started giving me a hand—my father had ditched my family and I was the oldest child of seven, so my mom couldn't work. His help ranged from food to money, even to clothes, for me and my family. Without realizing it, we formed a bond. As it turns out, Odin bonds don't work the same way as most other Summon bonds..."

"They don't?" Tseng asked with a small, puzzled frown.

"Most work like yours, I gather. Odins absorb deaths and become stronger, and the more of those bonds are severed, the closer they come to entering a berserker state." He paused to give a startled Tseng a wryly amused look, then said, "That was when President Shinra had ordered the Infantry at the time to slaughter all of the working poor and the poor who weren't working—men, women, and children. Of course, that meant my family and I were on their list, and I...we...were all gunned down without mercy. Well, some of what the troops did technically made the 'being gunned down' part more merciful, since they also participated in torture and rape. They got interrupted by terrorists shortly after they'd shot me and left me laying on the street outside my home."

Kariya paused for a moment, closing his eyes. "I saw him standing over me and met his gaze, wanting to thank him, or not die, or something—when some energy pulled on me—us. The next thing I knew was that I couldn't think clearly and was seeing things through a lens not my own...'I' was opening 'my' eyes and staring up at the sky through a haze of red. It was hard to move, and 'I' felt the weight of gravity pushing down on 'me', something humans don't normally tangibly feel...and pain lancing across 'my' body. One of the terrorists leaned over me and cast some healing as he said, 'It's okay, kid, we've got you, you're safe now.' Everything went dark for awhile after that."

His gaze met Tseng's shocked one as he went on, "When I woke up again, I was in the terrorists' base, in a small room with a bathroom attached, and I was still sort of detached, watching him as he realized very quickly that most of his usual abilities didn't work anymore—especially, he couldn't revert to a spirit form. It was hilarious when he realized he had bodily functions he'd never had to deal with before, like using the bathroom." Tseng's expression turned faintly amused at that, so he went on, "It was when he realized the sensation he had down there meant he needed to pee that he went to the bathroom—and looked in the mirror. And he found himself looking back at me."

With a deep sigh, he gave his head a small shake and told the Wutain across from him, "Incidentally, his checking for me in alarm dragged me out from behind the barrier and finished merging us. These days, some of the things I do originate from my Odin aspect, while others originate from me, but there's no...'other' person there for me to speak with—I only know he's 'there' because I have his memories. I have no idea if our souls will ever separate out again or not, or even if he—I—still count as an Odin. Well, I guess you told me that—to Minerva, I do." He looked amused as he said the last.

"Apparently Alexanders and Odins are mutually attracted to one another, and the way Minerva phrased it, that's not normally platonic," Tseng replied in annoyance.

"Minerva told you that how?" Kariya asked in surprise.

Tapping his chest around where his heart was, the Wutain replied, "She—the one from the end of the world—housed herself in me."

Kariya blinked, then propped his chin on the heel of his hand and rested his elbow on the arm of the chair he sat in. His steady, thoughtful gaze stayed on Tseng so intently for so long that the younger man began to squirm with discomfort.

"You're afraid of having a bond like that with someone, with anyone," he stated suddenly, gaze not changing. "And you don't like how you feel that's a dictated, foregone—prophesy, that you have no choice in the matter." Tseng glared at him and opened his mouth, but Kariya cut him off, saying, "You're wrong. Yes, Odins and Alexanders share a mutual attraction, but that doesn't mean they choose to have a relationship, to have a family together, or even have a one night stand. You aren't the only Alexander I've met over the years, Tseng, but none of them were anything more than passing acquaintances or friends, regardless of any 'attraction'. Besides that, I have a lover and two daughters, even though circumstance keeps us apart."

Tseng's eyes widened as he suddenly shivered and pushed himself to his feet, not sure what he wanted to do, where he wanted to go, or what he should feel. "If that's true, why didn't you say that before, why did you use any excuse except the one you should have been giving? Why did you even say you were a lonely man like there was no one in your life?" he finally asked with what he hoped was an offended glare, spinning towards the door.

"Sit down!" the older man suddenly barked at him in a tone which—somehow made Tseng drop back into his seat, then look up in shock at how easily he'd obeyed. He wasn't some errant child! Then again, he had never heard Kariya use a tone like that before.

After a long minute of silence, Kariya sat forward, leaning both elbows on his knees and linking his hands in front of him. "I lost a son because of my work, and was never allowed to marry my lover because of Shinra's petty hatred. I was terrified of losing my other two children if I stayed with them—they know nothing about me at all. I can only very rarely and very briefly meet my lover, I can't even send her mail safely. The last time I visited her, I could feel that she was approaching death, though I have no idea when she'll die or how she'll go. What I do know is that she won't even make it for another two years, and my older daughter will, if we're very lucky, have at least turned fourteen by then so she'll be able to take care of her younger sister. In your future, Shalyn would have been dead for years, and I'd have been a very lonely man."

There was another silence as Tseng leaned his own elbows on his knees and rested his forehead on his own linked fingers. The obvious reprimand in the words stung with a pain he wasn't familiar with feeling, and while some of that might have been guilt, it wasn't just that. He had gone back to not knowing what he should think or feel, not knowing—where he stood with Kariya. What was he to the man, what was the man to him? He felt like he was intruding on something he had no right to intrude on by even having a bond with the man, even if all he ended up really feeling for him was that Kariya was an uncle or a close friend. Right then, he didn't know what he felt for the man, but the feeling that he was intruding was the worst part.

"...She must mean a lot to you if you haven't had any other partners," Tseng said at last, softly.

"She does, and I haven't. At least, not until I can send her on. That doesn't mean I can't care about other people, and it doesn't mean I can't love anyone else. It means I'm choosing to respect her and our relationship enough to wait, and to mourn her properly."

"What if she doesn't die?"

"If this hadn't been going on for many years already, maybe she could be saved. If she can be, then she and I will seriously have to re-evaluate our relationship, because it's not the same as it used to be back before our son was killed. I honestly have no idea if we'll be able to reconcile those twenty years of lost time."

Tseng had to sigh at the words, wondering what it was about Kariya's daughters which kept attracting his attention. He mulled it over absently, calculating dates and years and slowly coming to the realization that the older daughter's age matched Doctor Rui's age in particular years. A sense of dread and horror came over him as he paled and slowly looked up at the orange haired man across from him, who looked alarmed at the change in the Wutain's emotional state.

"Kariya...what are your daughters' names?" the younger man asked quietly, silencing whatever question the older had been about to ask.

He paused, then admitted, "Shalua and Shelke Rui, twelve and seven respectively."

"Holy fucking Hellfire!" Tseng snarled, digging his nails into the arm of his chair and dragging them towards him so hard he tore the fabric. "How many more of these disasters am I going to find, just inside the Turks?" He then released a puff of air and went limp, sagging back against the chair, even startling himself by the sudden loss of his energy.

A hand touched his forehead gently, so he opened his eyes to look at Kariya as the older man checked him over for injuries or illness. "Kariya—" he began.

"Shelke has SND," the man said softly. "I'll hazard a guess by your behavior just now that she's going to suffer for it. I know the President is looking for people who have it, and with what you've said about Deepground...Am I close?"

With a faint sigh, Tseng answered, "The Shelke I had known had spent ten years in Deepground, and hadn't aged a day since she was taken there—she still looked like a nine-year-old ten years later. Shalua...while trying to find her sister...joined AVALANCHE, and over the years, she lost an eye and an arm...The last I knew of her before we were sent back was that she had been in a coma and the stasis pod she'd been in had fallen into the ocean in an unknown location. We have two years before Shelke will be taken, so we have two years to decide what we're going to do to keep her out of Shinra's hands."

For a few long moments, Kariya was silent, then he asked, "Do you plan on resting today?"

"I still have to go see Neirine while she's in the hospital..." the younger man sighed.

"Then I suggest you actually get some rest," the man answered in faint amusement.

"Don't you care about your daughters?" Tseng glared at him.

"Tseng, they're my kids. Of course I care," the older man replied, looking amused. "I heard what you said. I also heard you say we have two years to work out what we're going to do with them. They aren't in danger right now, and it won't help anyone, least of all them, if I go into a panic over trying to hide them. Especially since I know their home is being monitored and only approved personnel are allowed to go there without tripping alarms all over Shinra."

There was a long silence before the Wutain blinked and said, "That's why you have a soft spot for kids and would rather run away than fight them."

Kariya snorted and chuckled, then said, "Yeah, that's part of it."

"...So by the way you ended up in that body, are your daughters half-Summons or just humans?" the younger man asked thoughtfully.

"I don't actually know," Kariya shrugged. "They could be either, or something like a quarter, or something which isn't known because it doesn't happen often enough. They haven't displayed any skills technically associated with Summons, but that could just be because they never had a need to and didn't have a Summon parent to encourage them to develop such 'esoteric' skills."

"...I guess that's true," Tseng agreed quietly. He absently curled up in the chair the way he had done earlier, settling there and letting his eyes drift shut, letting his ears tell him Kariya had risen and gone back to sit in his chair.

"You shield yourself when you rest. Do you sleep in that same sort of position in your bed, too?" the man asked gently.

A faint crease crossed the Wutain's forehead as he murmured, "Sometimes. Not all the time. Shield?"

"Curling into a ball like you're trying to protect yourself from blows. Or like you'd rather be back in your mother's womb. Either way, it's defensive."

"It can't just be the position I feel comfortable in?"

The amusement in Tseng's voice as he asked that made Kariya smile faintly. "Did you sleep like that before—the incident when you were ten?"

Tseng had to take a minute to delve back into those old, childhood memories, then chuckled slightly and said, "Unless Hikaru (2) was sleeping with me, yes."

"Hikaru?"

"My younger sister, the baby of our family. As soon as she could get out of her crib (3), she would crawl into my room and curl up with me, and I always shifted to accommodate her. It was a lot like having a cuddly teddy bear to keep me warm. Mom and Dad always knew they could find her with me if she wasn't in her room."

The older man had to chuckle about the words, but he knew Veld had requested one more thing of him, so he waited a minute before saying, "Veld told me about your trip to the tailor." Tseng made a motion like a shrug, and Kariya went on, "There's a case we have which actually needs a Wutain plant, meaning it wasn't getting done because Veld had been—uncertain about putting you in an awkward position. In the meantime, you've gotten really well-known as 'the Wutain Turk', and a lot of people recognize you on sight, clothes aside. Now that he has to give you that case, you need a literal disguise so no one can tell it's you. Ideas?"

"How soon am I supposed to start working on this case?" the younger man asked as his brow creased faintly again.

"Not until after you get back from Nibelheim. He needs to know what he's doing to lay the ground work for you," Kariya replied in a dry tone.

For a few minutes, Tseng was quiet while mulling over the question, but then Minerva put in, sounding faintly amused, :It would do you well to—attune to—your female side once again.:

Tseng turned scarlet, prompting Kariya to ask in confusion, "Tseng?"

The younger man's eyes opened to glare at the puzzled man across from him. "You, and Veld, and Maya, would all have to keep it secret. Se-cret. Even the other Turks cannot know." He was still blushing hotly, but at Kariya's even more perplexed expression, he shook his head and got up to go into his room.

Going to his bedside table, he pulled it open and reached into the back, pulling out the Materia there. While the one which would have ended up in the trunk would have been more advanced, the one he currently held was more than advanced enough to do what he needed it to do. As he turned back to the door of his room, he saw Kariya glaring at the green orb in his hand.

"I thought we'd gotten them all," the orange haired man commented.

"This wasn't one from Leviathan's Blessing," Tseng answered. "It's been in the back of that drawer since I've had this room, and before that, it was in the back of the drawer in my Academy Student Room. I've had it since—well, I'd had it when I was a child, but it had belonged to my father then, and when I was eleven, Veld let me go back to Wutai to find it. He didn't know 'what' it was, just that I wanted to go back to find one family heirloom I knew no one else would have found. It's not for combat."

Kariya blinked, then asked, "So what is it, then, besides a Magic Materia which is somehow not for combat?"

With a small sigh, the Wutain admitted, "It's called Shapeshift." The older man was blinking and frowning in something like bemusement, so he went on, "The first spell makes you look like someone else. That only works with an exact match of someone you've personally seen before, or at least seen a photo or portrait of. The second spell changes your gender to its opposite. The other two spells are related to animal transformations, and this one is up to the third spell. It has different leveling requirements from normal Materia because of the complexity of what it's doing, but my current capability with it means the easiest way to completely change my appearance is for me to change my gender."

"Become a woman, you mean?" Kariya asked, gaze turning highly amused. Tseng actually put his hands on his hips to glare at the older man, which just made the man start snickering. "And how long would that last for without draining you?" he asked around his snickers.

"It lasts until I remove it with no drain on me," the Wutain replied with a glare. "It's no laughing matter. Everyone will think I'm a woman, even any doctors you take me to—if they did a genetic test on me, they'd think I'm my own long-lost fraternal twin sister, but they'd never peg me for being myself."

"Well, then, Miss Tseng, let's see this disguise of yours," the orange haired man smirked.

Annoyed, the younger man focused on the Materia in his hand, casting the spell Switch and waiting the few moments it took for the spell to rearrange his body. It always felt strange to make the switch from one gender to the other, and depending on how long he kept the 'other gender', switching back could feel just as strange. The body adapted to its current state, and changing around the molecules to make changes like the ones he was making would never feel anything less than a little uncomfortable and very unsettling—or, as it was usually described, strange. He'd done it often enough that it wasn't actually a shock to his system or physically painful, but the strangeness never went away. Of course, the easiest way to actually go out without being found by anyone he knew was by not looking like Tseng, so he'd been using it a lot since he'd gotten to the point of learning Switch.

"Holy Alexander..." he heard Kariya breathe with a reverence which was—frankly, surprising. Yes, people used that oath a great deal, regardless of the presence of an Alexander, but none had ever said it the way the older man just had.

Tseng felt the internal shifts finish, then blinked open his—her—eyes and met Kariya's stunned, intent gaze.

After a long minute of the older man's gaze moving up and down 'her' body ('she' was suddenly thankful she was wearing Wutain-style clothes, which were more covering than standard Shinra clothes), the man finally asked, "And right now, for all intents and purposes, you're a woman, in all ways? Like—you'd actually be able to have a period or become pregnant? Or is this superficial?"

"I'm a woman right now, Kariya," 'she' glared at him. The man swallowed hard. "What in the world is wrong with you? I'm just a woman, like any other one out there."

"No, not 'just' like any other one out there," the older man replied. "Damn, you're an attractive man, but—I don't think I've seen a more attractive woman, and I've seen a lot of women over the years. You'll knock 'em dead with a smile alone."

For some reason, after a startled silence, Tseng had to chuckle, a hand moving up automatically to cover 'her' mouth. "So I'm guessing that means this disguise would work just fine?" 'she' asked, still looking amused.

"Yeah. Let me take a photo for Veld to use, then you can switch back. I mean, you could stay like that if you wanted—I sure don't mind—but it would probably be better not to use it too much until you're ready to start the mission so no one will see you like that by accident," Kariya said as he pulled his PHS out and quickly snapped a photo. "By the way, have you named that form already?"

As the older man sent the photo over to Veld, Tseng switched back to his normal form and agreed, "I found when I looked in the mirror in this form as a twelve-year-old that I was pretty much identical to my older sister, Haruna (4). I never named it beyond that. For our purposes, a common name in the area these distinctive looks originate in would be Hayashi (5)." S/he then paused for a moment before commenting, "You'll have to be my go-between, possibly posing as your former self, the Death God of the Battlefield. I don't think too many recognize you as a Turk."

"Some do. I don't know the details of the case, and it may attract your target more easily if I show up as a uniformed Turk," Kariya replied, then finished sending, put his PHS away, and looked back at the younger man. "Either way, taking it...You'll probably be living—or working, as the case may be—as a woman for a few months at least."

"Yes, I know that," Tseng agreed in amusement.

Notes:

(1) Minerva, being a planetary entity, doesn't necessarily take 'attraction' as a romantic/sexual bond between people. While she knows humans (her 'little children') pair off to have kids of their own, her primary perspective is simply that of people spending time together and caring about one another, which can also be as friends or family, which is also a type of 'attraction'. Tseng, however, has learned our human habit of taking 'attraction' as romantic/sexual without exception, something Minerva doesn't realize when she first talks to Tseng. Hence a misunderstanding. Whether it ends up being good or bad is for the reader to decide.

(2) No, the name Hikaru doesn't have to be remembered; this was only needed for this reference. My head-canon for Tseng is generally that there were five children in his family, the two oldest as fraternal twins (a boy and a girl), another girl, Tseng (born as Ren), then a younger girl. All of them are most definitely currently dead, other than Tseng, and no further mention should be made of Hikaru.

(3) This 'crib' is almost like a traditional one North Americans would recognize, but with the legs cut off so the base of the bed part is flat on the ground. Since most Japanese traditional 'beds' are futons on the ground and Wutai is so similar to Japan, this would have been a much more likely form for a 'crib' in Wutai to take. Of course, if this kind of thing exists in Japan, I don't actually know, but I don't think it does, other than maybe in the form of a bassinet, which we also still have now.

(4) Yes, please remember the name Haruna, for obvious reasons!

(5) Again, please remember the name Hayashi; it was a random name I chose as the 'family' name for the undercover assignment, but is also a common Japanese family name (and roughly translates to 'forest').