Another chapter is here!

Kazeshuriken: We shall see in down the road.

Quathis: It takes time to breakthrough a lifetime of training and condition, but she's working on it.

Enjoy!

Cloud, Barret, and Vincent stood within the crowd that had gathered around as Rufus Shinra discussed matters with Cid, who was being very loud in expressing his displeasure that they'd come to get his plane. The president was flanked by his guards, his hound, and one of the Turks, a larger man with a bald head and a pair of shades that hid his eyes. Cloud and Barrett kept themselves hidden as best they could to avoid drawing eyes, remaining downwind of the guard hound and using hoods to cover their heads and weapons.

The townsfolk seemed to be on the verge of a riot. Cloud hadn't imagined that everyone else would be so angered by the fact that their hopes were being dashed to see the launch, but he supposed it was natural that the people who stayed in the town would also want to see it launched after so long. All those rumors beforehand just got their hopes up for nothing.

Not that the discussion hadn't been without merit. Shinra was indeed tracking down Sephiroth across the ocean. Now the only matter was how they themselves were going to get across it to this supposed Reunion.

A ship would likely take too long. And he doubted they would be able to borrow the plane given how this particular conversation was going. Would it even be big enough to fit all of them inside?

"I'm not letting you borrow shit!" Cid made clear. "You don't get to abandon us and our dreams, only to come back and take what you want. I built that plane from the ground up and I say who uses it. Use one of those tin-cans that you already have."

The crowd seemingly agreed, verbosely telling the president to let the Captain go into space or get lost. The guards Shinra brought with him seemed to be unnerved by being surrounded by angry people. They moved their hands towards their guns slightly in alarm, shifting their stances faintly.

Cloud could tell that it was a pose that was practiced for being ready to open fire in a flash. He supposed that would be from the residual memories he had from when he was part of the program, now that his memories were bleeding through more easily since he came to realize the truth in Nibelheim—both that he did have a past and that he had been injected with Jenova's cells, only barely kept from being a thrall because of Aerith. He pushed the troubling implications of whether or not he would end up a puppet when he heard Rufus starting to speak.

"You only have yourself to blame for not attaining your dream to be an astronaut," he said pointedly, barbed despite the lack of emotion in his tone. "You stopped it by hitting the emergency stop, did you not?"

Cid's mouth pulled back into a scowl. "You expected me to let Shera die in there?"

"If your dream was so important to you, then you should have stopped at nothing to attain it," Rufus claimed. "She failed to evacuate despite having ample warning, so the death would have been the natural consequences of her own actions. Likewise, you made the decision to stop the launch of your own accord, costing the company years of manpower and resources. The natural consequence of that was that the program went defunct along with your so called dreams. You have no one else to blame."

His body tensed like a coil ready to spring forward, barely kept at bay by the man's thinning restraint. "You son of a—"

Rufus cut him off. "This discussion is over. In case you've also forgotten, this land was purchased by Shinra for the sake of the launch. You've been trespassing here the entire time as it is, so I'm within my right to confiscate the plane either way and evict you."

"Like hell you will!" Cid charged the man with his fist cocked backwards, only for a lightning bolt from the hound to snap off and hit him square in the chest. A shimmering field followed, swaddling the president as a safeguard while the big man proceeded to move in and detain Cid. The guards trained their guns on the crowd when they reached their boiling point as well, a clear warning they would shoot at the first sign of trouble.

"It's a set-up," Barrett whispered in a harsh voice. He was cradling his gun-arm with his other hand, or restraining himself from raising it to take a shot. "They're gonna use this as an excuse to do whatever they want. We gotta act."

"It's a powder keg waiting to go off," Vincent noted. "If you make a commotion or start to fire then they'll open fire on the crowd. Our best bet is to secure the plane ourselves."

"Crimson should be inside," Cloud said. "We'll call her and—"

Lightning burst from the rear of the house in a deafening roar, splinters raining down from where it had blown out the backside. Cloud recognized it as one of Crimson's spells. It was ill-timed as it startled the crowd and the guards, leading to a chaotic mess as they pulled their triggers and screams started.

Cloud unslung the sword and took up a defensive posture before any more bodies were dropped, using his tempered body and sword to withstand the gunfire. Vincent quickly scored two headshots on the guards to put an end to it, while Barret looked around at the dead and fleeing. Rage filled him as he aimed his gun-arm square at Rufus, gathering the fiery light of a Limit Break at the tip, and fired off a massive ball of flames.

It ruptured with an ear-deafening explosion, smoke and dust thrown up in the process. The smoke thinned to reveal that the tall Turk had used his body as a shield. The sheen of two different barriers wrapping around his frame as the smoke trailed off it, leaving his suit scorched at best as Rufus reached into his coat and pressed something inside.

"Sir, retreat," Rude said. "I'll cover your escape."

Rufus nodded and then moved to retreat, Dark Nation at his side. Barret aimed the gun-arm at him again and moved to open fire when Rude proved to be surprisingly fast as he closed the distance, jumping up in the air and then coming back down to slam his fist into the ground. It sent a shock of energy through the ground towards Barret and exploded the ground beneath his feet.

Vincent fired twice at the man's head only for the bullets to ping off the barrier. It was barely enough to make his head jerk back before he slammed into the undead gunner like a rushing train with his fist. The impact sent him to the ground as well.

Cloud moved in with a strong swing of the sword. The blade smacked into the barrier and his arms held in a defensive pose, causing him to slide backwards and then take on a boxer's stance. Cloud tightened the grip on his sword as the other two got back onto their feet, forcibly keeping his attention on the man in front of him rather than the sounds of battle reaching his ears behind the house.

[-oOo-]

The sound of abrupt gunfire and screams reflexively drew Crimson's attention towards it, away from Reno. Things had exploded into combat the moment that they met on the way out. These two had obviously come to kidnap the woman inside the house to use as a leveraging chip against the pilot or to take something from her. Their priorities changed the moment their eyes met.

Crimson decided to simply hit them with a Bolt 3 spell out of the gate, no questions and no hesitation after her last encounter with the Turks ended with a bullet tearing through her. But Reno pushed the new girl out of the way as soon as he saw the streamers forming, and apparently his suit was insulated to be resistant to electricity—probably in case he had a mishap with his electro-mag rod. He got back up and Crimson went after him while Tifa handled the new girl and Aerith stayed behind to support and remain out of their grasp.

The brief opening was all it took for Reno to bring the hand holding his weapon of choice around. Seeing the movement in her peripheral vision instinctively brought her own up to guard, Rekka at the ready to block the long shaft of the nightstick. It fell short as he twisted his wrist to slam the butt-end into her shoulder, dislocating it with a pop.

She suppressed the pained sound in her throat as her weapon slipped from slackened grasp. Crimson immediately brought her other elbow up to land a blow square into his nose, staggering him long enough for her to then throw a kick that caught him in the stomach. It brought her breathing room as a soothing sensation entered her body, no doubt Aerith working her magic, snapping the dislocated shoulder back into place.

Reno blinked rapidly while touching his nose with his free hand. It wasn't broken. "I see you're back in form despite Costa del Sol."

She picked her weapon back up and stood at the ready as an ethereal clock sudden sprung into existence at her feet, courtesy of Aerith after her last trip to the store for a Time Materia. The hands spun faster and faster, and Crimson felt herself very existence hastening as well as the light encompassed her. She rocketed towards him and unleashed a flurry of stabs.

Reno shifted his stance and then used both hands on the nightstick, a tight grip on the handle with his dominant hand and a looser grip near the top with his weaker hand. He needed it to both react and block the attacks Crimson sent his way when she closed the distance, using the section between them. It was only an ill-timed Quake spell that gave him an opening, throwing her off her guard when the ground shook beneath her feet.

He promptly exploited it by thrusting the nightstick in his horizontal grasp forward. It hit her in the throat, and Reno drove them both to the ground in an attempt to suffocate her with it by crushing her windpipe. Crimson pushed against it as she hit the ground and stopped the fall from doing just that, but she was pinned down.

"Mog!" Aerith called from her position near the house. A flash of feathers followed as the summoning rushed forward, leaving Reno to abandon the kill attempt in order to activate his Barrier Materia. It was all that saved him from having his chest caved in as the Chocobo's kick hit hard enough that he took a brief trip in the air before springing back to his feet.

Crimson expended the remaining Haste spell closing the gap between them again, a vengeful look in her eyes. She activated the Destruct Materia and the barrier shattered like glass as she swung the point of her Rekka. It found its way past his uniform and shirt, but Sense told her it was too shallow to be fatal and so she thrust it forward to finish him.

He brought his nightstick forward to intercept the Rekka before it could run him through the heart. Then he then fired a Turk Light straight into her unprotected abdomen. It knocked her away as the Haste worse off, leaving him to fall onto his knees while holding a hand to the bleeding wound.

Elena tumbled through the air and then landed with a yelp next to him, looking worse for the wear as long strands of raven-black hair were in her grasp, while Tifa skidded to a stop next to Crimson. She looked pissed, and the Fire Materia that she had on her bangle was lit as she cradled a fireball in her hand. She chambered to throw it at them when a high-pitched man's voice from behind stopped her.

"That's enough!" They all turned towards the source to see that Aerith had her hands up in surrender along with Shera. Palmer was holding a mako-gun to them from behind, no doubt having forced her to dismiss her summoning before it could act.

"Mister Palmer, what are you doing?" Shera asked cautiously as Elena held a hand out towards Reno and one of her materia glowed softly. It was a Restore Materia, judging from the healing spell being used. It knitted close his wound before he could bleed out, making the effort from before a moot point.

"Sorry about this, but I have to get the plane or my cushy job is on the line," he said somewhat remorsefully, the gun shaking in his hand as he alternated between the two. Crimson noted that it was sloppy holding it that close and loosely. If it had been anyone else there other than those two, they would have disarmed him. He addressed Tifa and Crimson again. "Drop your weapons or I'll shoot them."

"It's a bluff," Crimson said. The only reason she hadn't neutralized him while she had Sense active was because the coward was hiding directly between the two women. Any attack she made would hit them as well.

"I'll really do it," he said. "I don't want to but—"

"He won't kill Aerith because she's too valuable, and the fact that he needs a mako-gun means he doesn't know how to handle a materia properly to use an Escape Materia," Crimson said, keeping her emotion out of her voice as she cast Tifa a side-glance. "If he shoots the other one, you cover my front while I bury my Rekka into his heart."

Everyone could hear him gulp. He was cowardly enough to pull his gun on a defenseless woman and a valuable target for his job. But he was also too much of a coward to pull the trigger when it means his guaranteed death. And since it sounded like they were still fighting in the front, he couldn't go that way either.

"N-n-now, let's not be hasty here…" He abruptly trailed off into a yawn and started slouching backwards as the Seal Materia that Crimson loaned Aerith glowed. The last of the Cetra took that as cue to turn around and push him, making him hit the ground with a thud.

With that distraction taken care of, Crimson turned to see that the Elena girl had taken the chance to pull the pin on a canister and then tossed it their way. She immediately brought her hand up and fired off a Bolt spell before it could reach them, causing it to detonate early. The veil of white smoke obscured their view.

Tifa cast a Fire 2 spell where they had been and let the heat force the air and smoke upwards and out of the way. They were gone, no signs of burned clothing or flesh to show they'd been caught in the blast. Damn. "Did they give up on what they came for?"

"Maybe…." Crimson wasn't too sure and was on high-alert when Nanaki and Yuffie finally arrived, the latter riding on the back of the former. They were both panting, and looked like they had been through something. "What happened?"

"Ma… machines," Yuffie said, panting. "We spotted a truck holding machines like from Costa del Sol! We tried to get them all, but some of them broke away. If we're going to go, we need to go—"

"Down!" Nanaki snarled as he brought forth missile constructs and fired them forward in the distance. A hail of gunfire intercepted them and shot them down. It came from what looked to be Mighty Grunts on treads, firing as they continued their approach.

Tifa used her Ice Materia and raised a wall of ice to block the hail of gunfire as Shera screamed and Crimson focused on her own Summoning Materia. A massive jolt surged through her mind and threatened to sap her consciousness as the Elder Justiciar of Lightning was born anew. "Ramuh, hold them off!"

"Very well, child." The elderly summoning rose in the air and stuck his staff out. Lightning surged from the tip and slammed into one of them, exploding it from the inside out. They altered their approach in light of that and began to change tactics, alternating between shooting the group and the summoning.

Crimson then turned to the woman they were originally after. "We need to get the plane in the air before they get it."

"Uh, right…." Shera reached into her pocket, feeling for something there, only to look surprised. "The key is missing!"

"There!" Aerith pointed her staff towards the plane as Palmer, who must've woken when the shooting started and moved while they were distracted, got the cockpit open and had started the plane up to take off.

"I got this!" Yuffie jumped off of Nanaki and ran towards the plane. Palmer panicked as he saw her approaching and fired the mako-gun, which sent a stream of fire towards her. She broke off to the side and then threw her Wind Slash straight into the gun from the side, piercing it with the sharpened steel to stop him from using it.

"Eeep!" Palmer had about a second to yelp before Yuffie leapt up and kicked him off the top of the plane, sending the fat man tumbling down to the ground. He groaned as he looked up and saw Nanaki in front of him. The leonine warrior bared his fangs at him, and Palmer proved that he was surprisingly fast for a rotund individual.

Crimson climbed into the plane and took the pilot seat while Nanaki helped Aerith on-board. She ignored the crack of thunder as her personal summoning smited another one of the machines, instead focusing on the fact that the layout of the plane wasn't familiar. "I can't fly this!"

"If you don't at least move it then eventually they'll hit it!" Tifa yelled as she raised another ice wall to stop them from shooting at the plane and everyone on it.

"They'll shoot us down in the air either way if someone doesn't hold off their fire." Crimson pointed out as the assistant climbed in, nervously taking a seat next to Aerith. "The summonings will only work so far from the summoners, Lockhart!"

"Then give me the keys to the Buggy!" she shot back. "Red and I can hold the line with the others and then regroup later on!"

The former Turk tossed the keys down to Nanaki and then turned her head towards Shera. "How do you fly this thing?"

"Cid built it himself," the woman said, keeping her head down as the gunfire and thunder continued. "Only he can fly it, but I think he presses the blue button to release the brakes and then pushes the lever forward to move it."

She pressed what she hoped was the right button. Something went 'click' and the plane jostled at bit. She took a deep breath and then pushed the lever.

The plane started rolling forward….