A/N: Once again, thank you for those who have read it so far. Increase the follow and favorite. Little by little but it's better than nothing.
Rated R: Thank you for the review. Kunsel will show up.
DarkHeianPrincess: Thank you for the comment.
Enjoy the chapter!
Cloud stood alone as the other members of AVALANCHE scattered from the flame-shrouded entrance, their bomb having gone off and successfully blown open the door to their escape route. Now that the others were gone, he silently brought a hand up to his ribs and breathed out a pained sigh. He couldn't show weakness in front of others, but the battle against the Guard Scorpion had done a number on him when its Tail Laser blasted him.
In the end, it was a mistake attacking when the tail was up. He managed to block with the Buster Sword, but the impact of the blast still knocked him down. Unfortunately, Crimson had taken her healing materia when she left, so he was going to have to tough it out.
There was no time to linger. It would only be a matter of minutes before Shinra troops came to investigate, and his eyes would likely give him away. They were too recognizable. He had to get to the train and meet up at Sector 8 fast.
Cloud climbed the stairs and then came onto the street lined with overturned cars and wreckage, people scrambling around. The explosion must've disheveled them, and the debris was collateral damage. He walked as calmly as he could to avoid stressing his injury until he saw a woman in a pink dress and red bolero jacket being knocked down.
It was what was next to her, a basket of scattered flowers, which caught his eyes. Was it her he was looking for? He had to know, so he walked over as she began placing the flowers back into the basket and gave her a hand. "Let me help you."
"Thank you," she said. Her eyes lingered on his outfit and sword a moment longer than normal, but then set to work in collecting all the remaining flowers. When they were done and stood up, she reached into the basket and gave him one. "Take this as a token of my gratitude."
Cloud took at the flower and looked at it. It was healthy in this land where even weeds struggled to thrive. "These are rather rare, aren't they?"
"I grow them," she explained. "It's a dream of mine to fill the slums with flowers."
The words brought pain as memories surfaced, only to slip through the cracks and into the darkness again. This time he tried desperately to hold onto them but—
Hey, let's start now!
Huh? Start what?
Start filling the slums with flowers!
—the more he did, the more pain there was. It was breaking his mind apart, and he fell to his knees and clutched his head. "Agghhhhh!"
"Are you all right?" he heard as the headache raged within his skull. "Did you get injured by the explosion? Let me heal you."
Sweet, blissful relief flooded his body. It miraculously numbed the headache as well, which even Crimson couldn't with her materia. With both the headache and his injury from the battle gone, Cloud rose to his feet and felt refreshed in body and mind.
"Are you feeling better now?" the flower girl asked.
He gave a brief nod. "Yes. Thank you for that."
When their eyes met again, the flower girl stared into them for a moment. "Eyes the color of the sky," she said in a tone that sounded as though she was recalling a memory. "But they aren't scary at all…."
Cloud looked confused. "Huh?"
"Forgive me. I was just remembering something someone said to me." She fondly touched a ribbon in her hair, and small smile formed on her face. "Are you SOLDIER by chance?"
"I used to be…." His eyes drifted down to the flower she had given him, and he held it between them. "Have we… met before?"
The flower girl shook her head. "I don't think we have. Why?"
"It's just that, I was looking for someone who sold flowers," he told her. "But I don't know why."
"I'm sure you'll find who you're looking for if you keep searching," she told him. "Now, I'd better get going. My mother will be worried if I loiter around after that explosion."
Cloud watched her go silently, holding the flower by the stem as tenderly as he could. He couldn't put his finger on it, but he felt that she knew more than she let on. Regardless, he still needed to rendezvous with the others on the train. So he tucked the flower away and continued on.
That was when he heard the troops calling for him to stop and reached for his sword.
[-oOo-]
Crimson was grateful that she was far enough from the reactor when it went up.
The damage was mostly confined to the northern section, but there must've been a number of people injured from the shockwave. Let alone the causalities for those who were close to it. While there were occasions where reactors blew up, like in Gongaga, those in Midgar were constantly monitored and maintained.
It had to be an act of terrorism, meaning security was about to get tight and the Turks would also investigate. That was bad when she wasn't supposed to be in the city. Worse, when she managed to slip back down to the Wall Market and the Inn, she found that Cloud was missing.
She couldn't help but groan at that. "Why couldn't he wait?"
Cloud didn't have a PHS, so she couldn't contact him through that method. That left her little choice but to wait for him to return. But even that was dashed when she went down to see if he left a message with the Inn-Keeper and found Shinra troops just around the corner, questioning him.
"We're searching for a man with blond hair and blue eyes, carrying a large sword," she heard one of the troops say. "He's a suspect in the reactor bombing and attacked several troops, but he doesn't appear in the ID registry, so we're working on the assumption that he's a guest—"
Crimson swore under breath and then made a beeline for their room, leaving before the conversation could come to an end. The Inn-Keeper would give them away to avoid trouble, so she had maybe thirty seconds at best to grab their bags and then climb out the window. She locked the door and barred the entrance with a chair beneath the door knob.
It was closer to fifteen second before the door was kicked in, leaving her just enough time to jump out the window, grab an outcropped pipe, and sling herself into the alley next to the building. Out of sight from the troops, she slipped into the crowd and she managed to get to the Sector 6 Park undetected, where she dumped their bags into the unused attractions. Having escaped captivity for a time, she took a moment to think about what she had to do next.
"Okay, if they're looking for Cloud then they have to send that information out somehow," she said to herself. "In that case, my best bet would be to check one of the outposts they have in the city…."
She trailed off as she recalled the bombing and how destructive it had been. The death count from the initial blast and panic were going to be high, and that's without adding the additional fallout from the lack of power in that sector. She didn't want to believe Cloud was responsible for that, but there was only one way to find out.
Crimson caught the train to Sector 5 of the city, where she knew one of the outposts was, and deftly entered through the rear entrance by knocking out one of the guards on a smoking break. The outpost was mostly empty since a good part of the infantrymen who had also been assigned there were slaughtered when they had to deal with Zack. There wasn't an immediate need for the city to reassign them to the sector, so it was heavily undermanned.
Crimson managed to knock out the last guard with ease and access their computer to see what their current orders were easily enough. Her fears proved to be well-founded. "Blond-hair, claiming to be ex-SOLDIER but no records found, last spotted in this sector, heading for the Reactor with known members of AVALANCHE!?"
That was bad for a number of reasons. Her initial plan had been to get in, find out how to cure him, and then get out. If they had this much information then the Turks were going to put together his identity soon. Not to mention it would make hiding harder than it had been before.
She rustled her hair in aggravation and then turned her attention back to the screen as new information came pouring in. "Trap in effect, deploying 'Airbuster' techno-SOLDIER prototype to deal with threat, arrival time estimated to be ten minutes."
"Well, that's just fantastic," she said bitterly as she rose to her feet. It would take her too long to get there on foot if she was going to do anything. First she would get him out of there, then she was going to slap some sense into him for getting involved with terrorists of all people.
Crimson went over to the outpost's supply room. It was decently stocked all things considered. She took whatever she thought might be useful—wire, materia, potions, gil, etc.
Then she grabbed the keys to a motorcycle in the garage and rode off on it a minute later.
[-oOo-]
Tifa joined Cloud and Barret as they set the bomb in the Sector 5 Mako Reactor.
It was a risk, attacking a second reactor so soon after they had done the first. But the first one had gone off without a hitch thanks to Cloud being there. By acting quickly they could capitalize on the confusion and further cripple Shinra.
It was a conflicting feeling, Cloud being SOLDIER and her loathing of Shinra for what they did to her home. And then there was his recollection of what happened that day. From the sound of it, he was there personally.
But that wasn't the case. The only ones there that day were the two SOLDIERs she had taken a picture with, Zack and Sephiroth. She had been struck down by the latter of the two, after he had killed her father and she tried to strike him down with his own sword. Zack had found her and she refused his help, preferring death over the help of a Shinra agent after everything they had taken from her.
Cloud said he was traveling with someone to cure his memories. She would have to go looking for them later on to see about getting some answers. But, until then, she could keep a closer eye on him this way.
As they arrived at a T-junction, Tifa's silent fear that the trip had been too easy was confirmed when they spotted guards for the first time. They should've had been able to mow through them easy enough, but the narrow walkway left little room to navigate. It was like they were lined-up for the firing squad as things stood.
"So the vermin have arrived," they heard, turning their heads to see that President Shinra was here as well. The portly man looked them over with the same attention that one would give a rodent. "I don't bother with trivial infestations since that's Heidegger's job, but I thought I should see the allegations of their being another traitor for myself. The eyes show you've received the mako-infusions… what's your name?"
"Cloud Strife," he said. "Former First-Class SOLDIER."
"Hmm, not one I'm familiar with," the president said. "Well, that's to be expected. I don't know the names of all the rank-and-file. Only those like Genesis and Sephiroth, too clever by half those two…."
"No more talking!" Barret said, holding up his gatling arm and opening fire. The bullets bounced off a solid screen of light. It was a barrier of some kind, leaving the president untouched while the other soldiers opened fire on him.
Cloud used his sword as a shield to block them from hitting Tifa. Barret retreated behind the sword as well once his arm became damaged from retaliatory spray of bullets. It was useless to him now.
The shooting stopped as the president raised his hand, issuing a silent command. "You're truly nothing, if not vermin, for thinking I would come here today without a defensive materia. Your predecessor was at least an obstinate threat, but you're not even a thorn in my side. The only reason you made it this far was because of the traitor."
Barret gnashed his teeth and tried to lunge at him, only being stopped by Tifa as the soldiers readied to fire again. That was when the mechanical whir of moving metal reached their ears and a new combat-orientated robot entered from behind. They all dodged as it plowed a straight-line towards where Cloud had been.
The president continued to speak to Cloud as though the rest weren't even there, much less a threat to him. "Between the Genesis War and rogue SOLDIERs like you, we've decided to go a new route in dealing with threats. You'll get to serve as test subject for our prototype techno-SOLDIER. I'm sure we'll get some valuable data from your death."
The prototype presented machine guns that swiveled around and opened fire on the SOLDIER, forcing him to block until it fired small missiles that detonated against the sword. The blast knocked them all back from the sheer force. Cloud right himself first and took up a fighting stance, blade at the ready as the machine redid its calculations and threat assessment.
President Shinra paid it little mind as a helicopter lowered itself next to him and he hopped inside of it to depart. As soon as he was clear of the area, the soldiers retreated through their entrance and barred that exit as well. That left the three of them facing the prototype that towered over them by twice on their own.
[-oOo-]
Crimson stood with her breath held in her chest as the soldiers began to file out of the reactor, following the helicopter that passed overhead.
She waited for thirty-seconds after they had cleared out before going in, towards the sound of gunfire and explosions muffled by a solid steel door. It was barred from her side with an electronic lock. Thankfully it was a model that she was familiar with, so she pulled the paneling off and fiddled with the wiring to get it open.
When the door finally opened, she witnessed what she presumed to be the prototype weapon assaulting Cloud and two others. The long-haired woman he was with was kneeling over a large man with one arm missing, replaced with a now-damaged weapon arm. He was lying on the ground, nursing a wound to his shoulder, while Cloud was in front of them using his sword to fend off the machine's arms.
Crimson tapped into the power of the Thunder Materia. Lightning crackled between her fingers and outstretched palm before a serpentine bolt arced towards the machine. It struck with a deafening roar that resounded off the surrounding metal with a flash of blinding light, leaving tongues of electricity running over its body from the electrical damage.
"Crimson, look out!" Cloud yelled. "It has a counter for back attacks!"
The warning came just in time as a machine gun sprouted out of its back and opened fire, leaving the former Turk to roll over the trail of shots as they smashed into the wall behind where she had been. Coming out of the roll, she activated her Sense Materia and entered into a state of hyperawareness. The details of its frame came to mind, the flaws in its design now obvious, and the munitions it carried clear.
She flung her Rekka at the machine gun port. The sharp points severed the connection point, leaving it no longer operational. Crimson pulled at the thin steel wire connected to the shuriken to reclaim it as the Airbuster whirled around and prepared to run her down.
"No, you don't!" Cloud brought his mako-infused muscles and heavy sword down at an angle, cleaving into the mechanism it used to hover just barely above the platform they stood on. He hefted the blade out and then brought it up for a second strike.
The machine's top-half swiveled around and used its right hand to catch the blade, while the left came in for a heavy punch. The long-haired woman threw herself in front of him and caught the fist with both her hands, managing to stop it. Then she reared back and threw a punch that blew the arm, already damaged by the lightning strike earlier, to pieces.
Crimson followed that up with another bolt spell, making the Airbuster release Cloud's sword. The sound of the gears grating as the internal mechanism began failing were akin to a death knell. It was on its last leg.
"Get Barret out of here!" Cloud told the long-haired woman as he cleaved off the machine's other hand and created an opening. She lifted the man who was easily twice her weight and leapt over the machine. Cloud thrust his blade into the torso of the failing prototype before it could strike them and grabbed its attention a final time. "This is the power of a real SOLDIER!"
He jerked the blade out, and stepped back from it to gain enough distance. Tapping into the power of his rage for a Limit Break, he chambered his blade and leapt into the air. Then he brought it back down as he fell to combine his strength, the blade's weight, and gravity into a downward slash that could rend steel. "BRAVER!"
The Buster Sword cleaved through the entirety of the Airbuster and the rest of the missile munitions. The end result triggered an explosion that rang out with enough force to send the others sprawling over the platform.
"Cloud!" Crimson heard the other girl scream as she got onto her feet. She looked to see that a massive opening appeared beneath the SOLDIER. Cloud barely hung on to the edge while gripping the Buster Sword with his other hand.
"Get out… of here!" he ordered. There were numerous burns covering his body from the brunt of the explosion, and he was straining to hold on. "Time… up… bomb is about to—"
The roar of another explosion cut him off as the bomb they had set went off, starting a chain reaction. The entire reactor trembled, leading the large man to drag the long-haired woman towards the entrance that Crimson had used, screaming as Cloud's grasp slipped and fell below. They were passed by Crimson as she ran over to the opening, wire wrapped around her wrist and Rekka in hand.
She immediately threw herself after him, falling down into the depths.