Happy holidays! Boy has it been a week. I did not get a lot of writing done this week, since my office has been rolling out new internal-facing software, a brilliant strategy right before a giant holiday where most of the company is out of the office... but I digress. I managed to get a decent amount of writing done during the Thanksgiving weekend, despite also baking and doing a lot of post-holiday cleanup. So, as a result, here is a new chapter!

Comments!
MooseBreath: I... honestly can't tell if you're being serious or not, since your comment managed to cover three whole city blocks before getting to the point. Under the assumption that you are, I might point out that 'understanding the basics of a story in which a fanfic is set' is kind of one of the central premises of fanfiction in general. However, if you really need that much help finding a source of the entire story of FF7, I invite you to check out World of Longplays on Youtube. They literally just play through whole games, showing the story as is, and I know they've done one for FF7.
Treant Balewood: Glad to impress, and I hope that continues!

Anyway, story stuff!

Chapter Ten

Making Friends, Making Problems

[ ν ] - εγλ 0007, December 10

The hour was getting late, but after a long walk and a fight with an actual house that had grown legs and arms, the trio arrived at Sector 7. Cloud took a few steps in front of the two girls. "Let me go in first, they know me," he said, and walked up the stairs to the bar entrance. "Tifa? Barret?" he called out.

"I've seen this place before," Ranma whispered to Aerith.

"So have I," Aerith replied. "I was raised here, remember?"

Ranma gave an embarrassed grin, and looked up to see an enormous man who appeared to be mostly built out of muscles and definitely, partly made of a gatling gun surgically attached to his arm. Said gun-arm was currently pointed directly at Cloud's face. Cloud did not so much as twitch.

"You gotta lotta nerve," the burly man spoke in a deep voice, "showin' up here after that swan dive you pulled. Guess you jus' as tough as she made you out ta be." The man smirked at that.

Cloud shrugged. "What can I say?" he said calmly. "The first ten meters didn't kill me. The next twenty meters didn't kill me. The fifty meters after that kinda hurt a bit though."

"You…" the man started, but was interrupted when he was shoved to one side by a girl with long black hair.

"Cloud!" the new girl bounced out of the bar, throwing her arms around him. "I knew you'd make it."

"Yeah, yeah, knock it off," the larger man grumbled, finally lowering his weapon. "Give him too much credit an' his dumbass spiky head'll swell up in front of us." Despite his tone, he was grinning as he said it.

"So what was with the warm welcome there, Barret?" Cloud asked with a shrug. "Did you think I was dead? That I'd come back from the grave to haunt you all? Were you going to fill my ghost with bullets?"

Barret didn't answer, instead glancing over Cloud's shoulder. "Friends a' yours?" he asked.

"Kinda," Cloud replied, carefully disentangling himself from the girl. "We helped each other out of a tough spot before coming over here. The little one just took out a bunch of Shinra clowns single-handedly a couple hours ago. Taller one, if I'm understanding the relationship, is the little one's pupil." Cloud shrugged. "Thought you might want to check them out, see if they can do some work around here."

Barret's gaze was hidden behind a pair of dark shades, but Ranma could tell when that appraising look fell over her. He turned and looked into the darkness inside the bar, and then turned to the girl, exchanging meaningful facial expressions. After a long moment, Barret shrugged, and gestured with his good arm. "Mebbe you oughta come in, take a look," he said quietly to Cloud, though his bassy grumble still carried.

Cloud glanced at the girl, who smiled at him, but said nothing. He nodded to Barret and followed him inside the bar. The girl took a few light bouncing steps down the stairway and stopped in front of Ranma and Aerith. "Hi!" she said cheerfully. "I'm Tifa, I run 7th Heaven. Cloud mentioned you might be willing to help out?"

Ranma looked Tifa over. The outfit she sported was… disarmingly revealing, though not as much as Shampoo's usual attire. A leather miniskirt held up by suspenders, over a midriff-baring tanktop and a charming smile. Her long raven-dark hair was bound near her waist by a simple red leather ribbon, and a familiar looking yellow flower adorned her hair at the moment. A pair of padded, metal-studded gloves, matching boots, and a small bracer containing a few materia completed the look. Despite the fact that she looked like a pushover, Ranma could feel some incredible potential radiating from her. "Ranma Saotome," she introduced herself, smiling gently and offering a hand in greeting.

Tifa took the hand with a warm smile and shook it firmly before turning to Aerith. "Aerith Gainsborough," she spoke softly, curling one arm up against her chest and bowing her head.

"So, can either of you tend bar?" Tifa asked innocently.

Ranma snorted at that. "I don't think you're looking for an extra hand mixin' up drinks, miss," she replied with a chuckle.

"Why would you think that?" Tifa countered, the smile never leaving her face. "This is a bar, after all. What else would we do?"

Ranma was considering how best to tackle this discussion, but Aerith stepped forward. "We want to fight Shinra," she said, voice still quiet but determined. "And we think you already do. Cloud fell from the upper plate, into my flowerbed, seconds after the explosion from the Sector 5 reactor. Not long after, the Turks tried to abduct me, and said that Cloud was 'just a bonus.' We were able to fight them off, and Cloud took considerable risk to protect me from Shinra's troopers, at Ranma's request."

"Best hundred gil I ever spent," Ranma said, stretching her hands lazily overhead.

Tifa blinked at the detailed explanation. "There's more," Aerith said, voice quivering slightly, as if she was afraid to continue, but pushed on regardless. "I've lived here for fifteen years. I was in Sector 8 last night, I sell flowers there sometimes. Cloud was there as well. He bought a flower from me, and I think you're wearing it. If I had to guess, he's a member of AVALANCHE. I'm pretty sure Barret is too, and that means you're just as likely." Aerith paused to take a deep breath. "I've been evading the Turks more or less since I came here, and I know the train routes because of that. There's only a handful of places in Midgar that you can get to both sides of the upper plate without switching rail lines, and this is one of them. I only put it together this fast because I saw Cloud in both places, but it's not going to take Shinra long to narrow down the options either. They're going to come for you."

Tifa's smile was still there, but a lot of the previous cheerfulness had drained away. "That's… quite a head of steam on that train of thought," she said casually, dropping the overly friendly demeanor. "Though that's a lot of info to drop on just a hunch. If you're wrong, if I have nothing against Shinra, I could walk over to the guards by the pillar and turn you two in."

Ranma smirked. "Respectfully, Miss Bartender, as long as we're talkin' pure guesswork here, I think I could make ya regret that choice before you took three steps in their direction," she offered. "But that's not what any of us wants, I'm guessin'."

Tifa returned the smirk, but didn't rise to it. "Okay, say we are this… AVALANCHE, group of people. Say we talk it over, and we think you're too big a liability. What then?"

Aerith and Ranma turned to each other, and nodded. "Then we walk away, and we find our own way to fight," Aerith replied.

"Probably keep your address though," Ranma added, "in case you change your mind. Or if we need a drink, either one."

Tifa grinned, despite herself. Before she could respond, there was a squeak of a hinge on the saloon door. "Tifa," Barret called out.

Tifa turned, and noticed something in the man's stance. "Would you girls give us a minute?" Ranma and Aerith smiled, nodding their assent, and Tifa jogged back up the steps to consult with Barret. The conversation was quiet but visibly heated, and included a lot of energetic gesturing.

"Wish I knew what they're talking about," Aerith said.

Ranma shook her head. "You wouldn't like it," she replied.

Aerith was confused. "Why do you say that?"

"Cuz I don't like it."

"Wait, you can hear them from here?"

Ranma took a breath. "No, but I can read lips a bit," she answered, as Tifa turned to enter the bar and Barret turned to take her place, moving cautiously towards the two girls. "And I suspect we're about to find out just how on the nose your deduction was."

Aerith nodded. "Do you think I was right?" she asked.

"I'll put it this way," Ranma began. "If I'm reading their reactions right, you probably could have kept going and guessed each of their shoe sizes and what grades they got in middle school. How did you even do alla that?"

Aerith smiled. "I told you, I grew up here," she replied. "I know the city well."

Barret stopped about a meter away from the duo. Even at that distance, his height and physical presence were more than intimidating. Built like a linebacker and taller than either of them by a long way, Ranma considered that she could probably throw down with the man if it came to it, but even she would have trouble closing the distance with what looked like a rotary cannon built into his arm. "You think we're… AVALANCHE, is that it?" he asked in an even tone, considering his words carefully.

"Yes," Aerith said simply.

Barret inclined his head. "And, thinkin' that, you think they're usin' the trains to get around, and that Shinra is gonna put two and two together about the rail system, and send someone here." Aerith nodded in silent response. Barret shifted his weight slightly, and looked between the two girls. "You two seem nice enough… What's Shinra got against ya?"

"You mean today, or in general?" Ranma shot out.

Barret grinned at the reaction, despite himself. "Okay, I'll bite. In general."

Ranma smiled, or at least bared her teeth. "Aerith seems to have issues with them from… well, longer than I've been alive. A lot of it is personal to her, so I don't even know the whole story. Short version is, they've got a burr up their bums for taking her away and doin' some kinda science project with her. She said no, and… well… you know how Shinra reacts to 'no,'" she explained, shrugging.

Barret nodded, something in his stony face shifting at that last statement. "Yeah, I do," he responded in a gravelly tone. "What's your story then?"

"About two weeks ago, I blindsided a Turk and knocked him out, then dislocated the elbow of a second one, and might have humiliated a third by telling him to cut his losses and get his men to a hospital," Ranma explained, smiling broadly. "Three hours ago, I gave those same three guys some… more serious injuries, alongside a squad of troopers, and I may have spooked the fourth Turk with them by crushing her handgun in my bare hands."

Barret stared at the redhead, his mind working overtime to process the seemingly casual statement of having wrecked one of Shinra's more talented groups of operatives on what appeared to be multiple occasions. He was torn between a delicious sense of schadenfreude and a genuine concern as to what the newcomers would bring down on him and his crew, but shrugged. "Maybe you two oughta come inside," he said carefully.

Aerith smiled and stepped forward past Barret, moving to the bar entrance. Ranma followed close behind.

-=x=-=x=-=x=-=x=-=x=-=x=-=x=-=x=-=x=-=x=-=x=-=x=-=x=-=x=-=x=-

The interior of 7th Heaven was, more or less, what Ranma had expected it to be. Dingy lights, wooden floors, heavy tables and barstools. A pinball table sat against one wall, its legs bolted to a sheet of metal. Further back, an ordinary jukebox sat playing tunes. A few neon signs lit up the bar itself, and a plethora of bottles lined the back of the bar.

The current patrons, on the other hand, were not quite as standard issue. A larger man in a bright yellow shirt sat in one corner, fussing over a handheld electronic game. A man and a woman, dressed closely enough to each other that they could be either siblings or lovers, occupied the table nearest the bar. Tifa had already stepped behind the bar and was currently wiping a mug clean with a bar cloth. Another girl, who could not have been more than five, was assisting behind the counter. Cloud was sitting in the bar seat closest to the wall, gazing at a drink on the bar in front of him, his enormous sword leaning against the wall next to him. Barret came in from outside and more or less eclipsed the light coming in from outside.

As Barret entered, Ranma became aware of two things. The first was that, aside from the jukebox and the occasional attract sounds coming from the pinball table, all the noise inside had completely stopped. The other was that, excepting Cloud, all eyes were focused on the two of them. There was a long moment where the tension stretched out, and Aerith noticed it as well.

Barret waved his arms overhead behind them. "Okay, knock it off, y'all," he said, his voice easily carrying over the ambient sounds. "These two are just guests of the bar, for now, anyways." As if a switch flipped, everyone went back to what they were doing.

Ranma took a seat at the bar, facing out at the assembled individuals. Aerith sat down next to her and asked for a drink. Tifa smiled and busied herself behind the counter. Barret stepped forward, removing his shades and pulling forward a chair. "So, you two wanna join up with those terrorists runnin' around blowing shit up, yeah?" he asked in a gruff but quiet tone, taking a seat with his gun-arm resting across his lap. Aerith turned around in the barstool, and nodded to Barret. Ranma gave a simple affirmative grunt. "There's a bit of a dilemma, an' I gotta deal with it. Don't know either of ya, so I don't trust ya. Lil' spiky head over there seems to think yer on the level, but I wouldn't put it past Shinra to stage somethin' like that. Means I can't take what he says without a grain of salt. Leaves me back at not trustin' ya. Meanwhile," he said, pointing to Aerith with his good hand, "you rattle off a buncha nonsense like one o' dem conspiracy nuts that run around with foil on their head to keep the space men from readin' their minds or whatever. An' the worst of that is, everythin' you said sounds right, if you look at it from the right angle."

Barret reached up and pinched the bridge of his nose. "What really puts me inna bind right now is that I've told you two alla this now. Yer smart enough to have pieced together this much without ever meeting us. That means, by now, you've guessed that you're right, we're AVALANCHE. But… I still don't trust ya. I don't trust ya to keep this a secret if ya walk outta here and do your own thing. So I can't let ya just go on your merry way. Which means, either I have to let you two join up right here and now…" Barret hefted his gun-arm meaningfully, glancing between the girls. "...or I can't let either o' ya walk out of here, ever again."

Aerith's eyes were somewhat worryingly focused on the gun-arm resting in Barret's lap, and the drink Tifa had mixed up for her sat forgotten on the bar behind her. Ranma met Barret's gaze and saw the truth in his eyes, that given no other option, he would kill and not hesitate for a second on it, if it meant protecting the people he was in charge of. Then she took a moment and replayed the conversation in her head, examining the wording of what he had laid down in front of them. "Are you even offering for us to join?" she asked.

Barret shook his head. "Need a reason to trust ya before I can do that."

Ranma glared at him. "You're asking us, at gunpoint, on threat of death, to give you with a reason the two of us can be trusted," she ran the sequence back to Barret.

"Gotta take care o' mine first," Barret replied, giving a shrug.

Ranma nodded her understanding, disappointed at how much sense it made. "All right, then. Aerith already knows this little magic trick of mine, so… Tifa?" she asked, turning to the bar.

"Hm?" Tifa looked up from what she was doing. "Need a drink?"

"I need two cups," Ranma corrected. "One with hot water, one with cold water." Tifa looked a little surprised at that, but started cleaning out a pair of mugs. "And if you really wanna know that this isn't anything sneaky I'm doing, gonna ask one of you to tie my arms back."

Barret looked puzzled, but nodded to the man in green. He got up from the distant table and pulled a length of rope from somewhere on his person. Ranma shrugged off her coat, setting it on the end of the bar, then turned her back to the man and reached her hands behind her. She felt the rough rope against her wrists as the man wove the fabric into a simple but effective set of impromptu manacles extending all the way to her elbows, keeping her arms rigidly straight within the rope weave. "Huh," she said out loud, testing the restraints gently, "didn't think anyone here would know that knot pattern. Anyway." She stepped down off of the barstool, carefully testing her balance, and nodded to Aerith. "Quick show of hands, who thinks I look girly?"

The vote, unsurprisingly, was unanimous. Even Aerith raised one shaky hand, still nervously watching the rotary cannon attached to Barret. Ranma smirked. "Barret, please do me a favor, and aim at the floor for a moment? I don't want you to fire at me out of shock. Tifa," she asked, "if you would be kind enough to pour that glass of warm water over my head?"

Barret and Tifa exchanged glances, but said nothing. Barret lowered his arm, the gun barrels pointing to the floorboards. Tifa slid effortlessly over top the bar, and lifted the slightly steaming mug of water in one hand. "Whatever you're planning, girl," Tifa said quietly, "it better be good."

"I'll let you decide, Miss Bartender," Ranma said simply, and closed her eyes. Tifa shrugged, and held the mug up high, tipping the water over her head. After about three seconds, she gasped, and the mug dropped to the ground, bouncing away on the floorboards. Ranma opened his eyes. "Hello again," he said calmly.

The room was once again silent but for the jukebox. Every single eye in the room was entirely focused on him. From behind the bar, a little girl's voice sounded, "Hey, mister, where'd your boobs go?"

A/N: I wasn't sure how to write Barret in this scene at first. I did my best to find a balancing act between a man suspicious of the good timing of the arrival of new people offering to help, versus a genuine desire to improve AVALANCHE's odds of survival. When I first wrote this scene, I thought I'd tipped too far in one direction or the other until I saw the completed product. I'm pretty happy with how it turned out.

Tifa was a lot easier to write. The good cop to Barret's bad cop, but also having a long and practised hand at her 'cover' of being a bartender, and therefore used to being cheerful to patrons right up until they'd had too much to drink and needed to be shown the door.

I knew I wanted to end the chapter on a bit of a punchline. The tough job was deciding who to give that line to. Marlene gets so little screen time in the game, and I've been around four-year-olds, that is exactly the kind of direct question they'd ask.

Aerith having the sudden, long-winded, highly detailed explanation of events sounds way out of character right now, even to me. I promise, once again, I have my reasons for this bizarre behavior, but you will have to be patient with me, the payoff for this is going to be a long time coming. I'm playing a long game here, there's a lot of world-building, and I've actually got a pretty sizable list of notes I used to get this far and into the foreseeable future.

Hope you like it! Comments and feedback welcome!