Sadly, this chapter is shorter than normal because I've been experiencing some nerve problems. My left hand is on the fritz which has made typing slow and painful. I have an ergonomic keyboard coming in the mail but until then I think I'll lay off the writing.

"VINCENT!"

He's running; moving before he thinks, barreling for the edge of the cliff. It doesn't matter – nothing matters but his friend who is now a blip on the horizon. The dragons have taken after him, and now he's outnumbered, alone, getting further and further away –

An arm like steel wraps around him, a familiar voice barraging his ear, ("Whoa, Spike, calm down, listen –") but he doesn't listen. He doesn't calm down because Vincent could die or, okay, he probably can't die but he could be badly hurt and pain hurts him the same way it does everyone else.

Maybe worse.

Grimacing, Cloud struggles free of Zack's grip and runs for the cliff. A flash of movement and a silver streak halts him, coming to stand in front of him. Cloud barely slides to a halt, fists clenched. In only an instant he moves to go around him.

"Are you just going to leave them behind?"

Cloud hesitates. In the corner of his eye, he glances back, stares at the friends behind him, at Aerith, at Tifa.

"I can't just let him –"

"You will not catch up to him any faster by leaving us." Sephiroth insists. The man turns, half lidded eyes alit with fire. He's tense, almost shaking with pent up energy. "In fact, you will only ensure that others will be harmed, if you run off half-cocked."

Gritting his teeth, Cloud spins on the man. Tears begin spilling from his eyes. "Shut up! This is all your fault anyway! You and your stupid company and stupid S – SOLDIER and – gasp – you fucking – assholes –" His knees give out from underneath him, his whole body shaking with the impact. Or maybe that's the panic that has him shivering like a leaf. "W – why does he keep getting hurt? I – I just w – wanted to help him –"

A hand grips his shoulder, tight, and Sephiroth kneels in front of him.

"We will," The man insists. His voice is firm and smooth and he commands the scene like he would any battlefield. "We will help Vincent. But to do so you must listen to me. Can you do that?"

Through gasping sobs, Cloud lifts blurry, tear laden eyes, and meets Sephiroth's gaze. Slowly he nods. It's another minute before he can look away and think about even trying to stand. His body's not reacting well to his thoughts.

"Come on," Zack's suddenly beside him, and another hand touches Cloud. "Up you get," The SOLDIER lifts him to his feet, all but entirely supporting his weight. Cloud slumps against him, breathing hard, vision blurring. "Slow it down. Count with me, okay?" He starts to slowly count, trying to get Cloud to match his breathing to it, and they begin to walk.

Even dragons are nothing to Chaos. But it has been a long time since Chaos truly fought. He is… rusty. And adjusting to a human body is difficult, after spending an eternity as an ephemeral spirit beyond the physical plane. Pain hurts more here. Everything is… more here. And Chaos wasn't quite ready for it.

The dragons hurt them more than they'd planned for, but in the end, Vincent and Chaos manage to outfly them. Once they're far enough from the mountain territory, the dragons consider the battle one, and return the way they came. Vincent only hopes they bought enough time with that little scheme for the others to have left the mountain far behind them.

It's been… hours? Long, long hours since the transformation and Vincent is exhausted. Exhausted and bleeding and dizzy with the pain. He aims to land and the world blurs and SMACK – a sudden shock of agony hits him when he misjudges an angle and hits a tree branch. From there, it's like the fall of dominoes – one hit after another after another, as Vincent tumbles from the sky, through the trees, to the earth far below.

Gods, it hurts. He aches in a way he hasn't in a long time. Tears burn at his eyes and Chaos/Vincent keens. Rest, Vincent murmurs to the deity, to the being so unused to physical suffering. Like a child, the demon whines, before slipping into sleep, and taking Vincent with him.

The Highwind Aerospace Association's second work shift that morning all look up with bright eyes full of hope when Dr. Shera walks in.

The woman grimly shakes her head. Groans of agony and defeat roll through the room.

"Really? It's 8 am." One technician, seated at one of the many work stations in the circular white room, complains. "What could have possibly pissed him off?"

Shera smiles and shrugs, clearly amused on some level, then walks out of the way. As she disappears from the doorway, the doors slide open once again – and one irritated blonde storms in.

The room tenses, and all eyes spin right back to their workstations. Too late; their boss had clearly noticed. "The fuck're you guys eyeballin' me for?" The man spits, red faced. "Ya got time to goof off, ya got time to work harder!"

"Sir!"

He opens his mouth, clearly on the roll towards a tirade, when Shera approaches again. In her hands she has a cup of tea, fresh and warm, and the sight of it blows away the man's irritation like food for a starving man.

"Shera, you're a delight," he sighs, taking it and downing almost half in one go. "Just what I needed."

"Of course, Captain," Shera smiles. "Anything for you."

"Anything to keep you in a good mood more like," One brave souls manages to mumble. The Captain's ear twitches.

"The hell was that?"

The room answers as one.

"NOTHING, SIR!"

"Captain Cid!"

Just as he was about to go off, one of the technicians spins around, concern on his face. "Whaddya want?"

"Something's come up on radar." That's all it takes to get the man's attention; he strides over fast, without spilling a drop of tea. The technician turns and explains the data he's collected.

"Three bogeys came within 30 miles of Town flying at over 25 mph. Way too big to be birds. Two of them were at least B class fiends."

Eyes narrowed as he reads the data, Cid asks, "The third?"

"That's the strange part. It's… well, the data reads almost human."

Cid blink. "The fuck're you smoking?"

"That's what I thought!" The man throws up his arms. "So I took an aerial shot of the region with one of our satellites, and look –"

He pulls up the shot, and Cid blinks. "I don't see nothin'."

Rolling his eyes, the tech zooms in. "Look,"

Grumbling, the blonde leans in, examining the image. He's just about to complain again, when he finally notices the tiny black and red dot in front of the two huge beasts.

"… the fuck is that?"

"I don't know, sir." The man admits. "But it's still in the area. The fiends turned and retreated about an hour ago, but this third one –" He points to the screen, "Came to a halt in sector 19 and hasn't moved since."

For a moment, the Captain is silent. His subordinate fidgets in his seat, sweating up a storm, tense as all get out until his boss sits up and moves away. He storms towards the doorway, finishing his tea and setting the cup on the nearest flat surface.

"Shera, keep a PHS on ya today, I'm heading out."

"Going exploring Captain?" She asks, adjusting her glasses with a smirk.

The man turns back and grins, winking. "Don't blow up the place while I'm gone."

Cid makes a quick detour for home, grabbing his jacket and spear, and then heads right out into the wilderness. It's a huge sprawling forest around Rocket Town, but he knows it like the back of his hand. It won't take long to find whatever the hell it was that landed in his neck of the woods.

So he sets out, hoofing it, since taking the Bronco would mean he'd just have to land outside the woods and backtrack, anyway. Besides, a little fresh air and time alone to think never hurt anyone. Cid walks along, and after a wall, fumbles in his pocket for his vaporizer, and sets it to his lips.

It's around then that he catches sight of the first downed limb. Then another, and another – like the forest was under attack. Clearly, this was no calm landing. Eyes narrowed, Cid tucks the vaporizer away and trudges through the debris, looking for any sign of what might have caused it.

Then he sees it – black and red. The pilot comes to a standstill. Wide eyes stare, dumbstruck. Damn it all but the technician was right – this thing is human. Err, kinda human. Human… ish? It has a body like a man, save for the weird eyes and skin color and things on its head and…

Wings.

Cid's hand trembles at the thought. He all but rushes out of the debris towards the man, falling to kneel beside him. This is a person with wings. With wings. His hands hover over the creature as he crunches the numbers in his head, examining wing span and estimating muscle mass.

The thing twitches and groans, and the movement draws his attention to the face. Long black hair, beneath… horns of some kind, frames a thin, angular face. The wings are spread out behind him, bent funny, and definitely injured if not broken. They're red and almost flimsy, with holes through the thin fleshy material. Cid almost gives in and touches it, but something tells him not to be pushy.

There's an aura around this… creature. Cid knows danger; he's fought plenty in his lifetime, and before all the security and alert systems were put in, Rocket Town itself was pretty unsafe. This creature radiates danger. Yet, in spite of that, Cid examines the wings and finds himself thinking that it's… it's…

… Beautiful.

Another groan; this time, the creature moves, swinging one of the wings around and almost smacking Cid in the head.

"Hey careful with that thing!" It occurs to him that might have been dumb to do – drawing attention to himself – but Cid smacks his hand over his mouth a moment too soon. Flushing red, he backs up a little. Dumbass!

The creature blinks; sharp red eyes meet wide, terrified blues. Then, it all begins to shift. Grey melts away into flesh tone, though it is an unhealthy pale. The wings shift inward and vanish; Cid all but groans and half twitches to touch them mournfully as they fade away. The horns disappear, the weird clothes change, and in a moment he's sitting beside a man in a black and red suit who is, undoubtedly, a man.

"Holy shit," Cid breathes. "The fuck are you?"

Sitting up, the man frowns. "I am a monster."

"No, fuck, I mean," Cid, shaking his head, moves closer, calculating again. Where did all that extra mass go? Where was it kept? The man didn't seem to have gained weight anywhere but he couldn't possibly be that dense in mass… "You flew here, didn't you? Holy shit. But how – that wingspan couldn't possibly hold your weight – and the hell did the wings go? They just fucking vanished into your body but you can't possibly weigh more than a wet green bean!" The man insists. "You're lean as a bean pole and I don't see a single wound on you from falling from the damn sky."

The stranger blinks again. "… ah." He says. "In that case –"

"And how the hell does the clothing thing work?" Cid grabs at the red cape, lifting it up for inspection. "You were definitely wearing something else – similar, but different – now it's fucking gone. Like it just melted and somethin' else reappeared."

"If you would – "

"Not to mention your damn face!" Suddenly Cid leans forward, into the man's personal space, and the stranger blinks and flushes with a stunned expression, leaning away. That doesn't deter Cid – he just moves closer. "A grey skin tone – and now, so pale! Do you have any melanin at all? Those eyes, too – yellow one second now red! Neither are fuckin' natural at all. Definitely not contacts, though."

"Are you always this friendly?" The man frowns, and Cid realizes he's practically in his lap.

"Shit – sorry!" He scrambles away, brushing himself off before standing. "Cid Highwind; Airship Pilot, Director of Highwind Aerospace, and Mayor of Rocket Town. Which you pretty much crash landed in." He reaches out a hand to help the man stand, and gets a cold dead stare in response. "… fuck, said I was sorry. The hell died up your ass?"

The words widen the man's eyes and he flushes, before leaping to his feet. "You are – quite strange."

"Same to ya, shithead. You got a name?"

Red eyes blink, staring at him sharply. "… Vincent. Vincent Valentine."

"Well," Rolling his eyes at the deep, dramatic tone, Cid turns and starts walking away. "You're welcome to tag along with me back to town, Mr. 'Vincent, Vincent Valentine'."

"It is just Vincent Valentine."

"Yeah, yeah."

When he was six years old, Cid climbed up onto the roof of his mother's house, with cardboard wings strapped to his arms, and tried to fly. What he did was break his arm, and get grounded for a month. But that failure and the pain of it – physical and otherwise – only cemented the desire in his heart.

One day, he would reach that sky.

The world around him was so dull, so small. He'd sit in class bored to tears and just stare out the window, watching. Birds would fly, carefree as can be, unaware of how enviable they were to this little boy stuck in a small classroom in Junon.

Of course, that was before Shinra came in, when Junon was a peaceful little fishing village, and not a military mecha. Cid saw it as an improvement (which did little to endear the little hothead to anyone). But from his young, naïve point of view, it was a chance to get away from the hum drum boredom of the life he'd been born into, and reach the life he was meant for.

The airstrips were his second home. Most days, if the school called home to tell his mother he hadn't shown up for class, Mrs. Highwind would find him pressed up against the fence around the air base. Threatening, punishing, grounding, none of it worked. He was obsessed.

At fifteen, somebody at Shinra finally noticed. It might've had something to do with a small explosion; maybe a little to do with the unauthorized manned flight that managed to take off from one of the piers, fly twenty three feet, and crash into the ocean. The officers patrolling the beach at the time reported hearing a massive boom, running to the scene to find a badly singed and bruised young man stumbling out of the ocean, laughing his ass off.

The next years of his life were dedicated to his dream. It was extraordinary. All the resources, all the greatest minds, all working alongside him. For the first time, he wasn't been pulled from the window, from the sky, and told to get back down to earth. No; he was being handed a tool, an opportunity, and being told to fly.

Sheer determination, alongside his great brain power, put him on the fast track to leadership. No one worked as hard as him. No one saw solutions and came up with new ideas in the way he did. In record time, he was in charge of his own division. Everything was looking up.

Until it all came crashing down.

Cid might've given up that day; might've fallen so long and so far from that high peak of success, that he wouldn't have had the strength to get back up again. To try and climb that mountain again, after having lost everything he'd accomplished, everything he'd done. If he'd been left to his own devices, that was likely what would have happened.

Only, lightning struck twice. Twice in his life, Cid Highwind had the luck of being around people who saw his potential, and gave him the chance to use it. And this woman didn't take no for an answer.

Jean Strife was a pain in Cid's ass from the moment they met. A pain that built him back up when he fell, propped him up on his feet, and showed him exactly what he had to do to get to climbing that mountain again. He'd forgotten for a moment how it felt to reach his goals, to come closer to the sky. It was like he was that kid again, stuck in the classroom, his dreams so far out of reach. Jean reminded him that he had flown already – that he could fly again.

They had a couple of really fun months together, after that. She his de facto assistant and body guard, as he went about recruiting scientists and locating mineral deposits for resources. Everything he needed to do to get his own company on its feet, she was there beside him, helping him do it.

In a sense, he loved her. He did; just maybe not in that great romantic sense the movies always talked about. And Cid knew she felt the same way, too – a bond that tied them in great admiration for one another. He'd never understand what she saw in him, but he knew what he saw in Jean; a powerhouse of a woman, a giant among ants. Someone who never seemed to feel fear the way others did, someone genuine, someone… kind.

But she was like the sky, like his love for that open blue expanse above them. He would always strive to reach it, always revere it for the fucking brilliant, amazing thing it was… but you can't tie down the sky. To tear it down that way, you'd destroy it. And he wasn't so selfish that he'd ruin all the very things he loved about the woman who changed his life forever.