Another week, another chapter. There were a lot of comments regarding Ranma feeling like he'd been nerfed in the fight with the SOLDIER prototype, and I agree that I may have taken that a bit further than I'd intended. As far as his susceptibility to the Poison status goes, I'd tried to go with the idea that the more active Ranma was being, the more damage it would do to him, which is why Red wasn't hurt as significantly by it. This is actually a mechanic used in several FF games, so I didn't think it was going to be a large leap to take, but re-reading the chapter, I may not have demonstrated that as well as I'd hoped. Chapter 20 will probably have a bit of an edit to address these matters in the coming weeks as a result. I do appreciate your comments in helping me to make this story as good as it can be.

As far as the story feeling too close to the original... I mentioned before that the story will follow FF7's plot at points. The Midgar section is taking this path fairly solidly. Shinra's reactions are being strengthened in response to the changes. I can assure you that even as the path ahead looks familiar, there will be some changes to come, both subtle and significant. Some of these changes may even surprise you.

Death of Snipers and NightmareKnight1: These are both very, very good questions that I will not answer yet due to some future plot points.
Mr Haziq: There will definitely be a reckoning of sorts as we continue. Ranma is a bit idealistic in some ways, even in the face of this world, but even he has limits to his mercy and good will.
Z.L.C. genesmith: The Promised Land is, at least as canon goes, more of a euphemism for death and the afterlife than an actual physical place. That being said... well... there's more going on here.

Onward!

Chapter Twenty One

Five Cells

[ ν ] - εγλ 0007, December 13

Cloud and Tifa

"Won't budge," Cloud said, having bruised his shoulder against the door. He sat down, wincing, and rubbed his shoulder. "My guess is that they tested these cells against SOLDIERs to make sure they'd hold up." He took a breath, and sighed, holding one hand to his face.

"Don't give up, Cloud," Tifa urged him on. "I know you can take care of this."

Cloud nodded. "What the President was talking about... " he shook his head. "He can't be serious."

"What do you mean?"

"Sephiroth said the same thing… years ago." Cloud leaned back against the wall, stretching out his legs across the floor. "He said… that he was going to go to the Promised Land. But he was going to crush the rest of us… all the humans that betrayed him."

"Cloud…"

"I looked up to him. I idolized him. He's why I joined SOLDIER. And he turns out to be the worst of the lot…"

"You're not him, you know," Tifa said firmly. "You may have looked up to him, but he doesn't control you."

"I know… but I still feel… betrayed." Cloud let out a sigh, and leaned back against the wall. "He did so much to you, to me… our home… our families… and it's like his spirit is following us. We went our own ways, after that… and I did everything I could to get past… what happened. But I couldn't. Everywhere I went, it was like he followed me. I still feel it some days. And now that speech from the president, and it's like he's right behind me."

Tifa curled up on the cot. "I… know how you feel, Cloud," she said quietly. "I dealt with a lot… after. When I woke up, I wasn't even in Nibelheim anymore… Zangan had patched me up as best he could. But I was still out cold for over a week. And in that time he carried me all the way to Junon. I woke up, saw his face, and fell asleep again… and I didn't wake up again for another week and a half after that. By then, I was here, I was recovering, and I had nowhere else to go. Zangan had left while I slept, and…"

Cloud looked up at her. "...Tifa?"

Tifa took a deep breath, trying to steady herself. "I thought you were dead, Cloud. I thought you were dead for five years! I still don't know how you survived! How any of us survived! And I swear, even right now I'm worried you're going to be a ghost or something. And I'm going to wake up one day from this dream to find I'm on my last breath, laying there on the reactor floor in the mountains, with Sephiroth's blade through my chest. And that'll be the end of me." She shuddered. "Dreaming of another struggle in a far away land… while I bleed out on the floor."

Cloud stared at her. "Tifa…" he said quietly, standing up and resting one hand on the brunette's shoulder. "You are real. As much as I wish otherwise, this place is real. I'm real. And we're really getting out of here. All of us, together."

"...Cloud?"

"But doesn't look like it's gonna be tonight," he admitted. "I don't think I'll be able to punch through that thing at full strength either, but it's a better chance then, than I have now."

Tifa nodded. A long quiet moment passed between the two of them. Then Tifa looked up at Cloud again. "Cloud, why did you invite those two to join us, anyway?"

"Hm?"

"That's... not like you," she continued softly. "You've always been... very independent, stubbornly so. But you got caught up with those two, and then you brought them to the bar to join us, after knowing them for all of, what, thirty minutes?" Tifa threw up her hands in confusion. "Why the change of heart?"

Cloud considered the question. "I saw how Ranma fought," he said. "It reminded me of how you fight. I thought you two might get along, maybe learn from each other... Aerith, I thought that if Shinra was after her, being with a group fighting them would be safer than anywhere else she might try to hole up these days. And..." he paused.

"...and?"

He took a deep breath. "I thought that if they were half as good as you think I am, that maybe you wouldn't need me around."

Tifa looked at him in genuine shock. "Wait... what?"

"I..." he sighed. "I wanted to leave again."

Tifa looked at him. "Why? I thought you were starting to like being around me- us, again."

Cloud waved one hand vaguely. "It's not that, Tifa," he responded. "I wanted to keep that promise I made to you. But I didn't feel like I was worth all that hope you put on me. I still don't. I mean, look at us, we're here in prison, at Shinra's whim. I don't want to give up, but I... just feel like I'm letting you down. Part of me wants to get out before I fail badly enough to make you hate me." He thumped the wall with one fist. "I thought if they were good enough, I could leave without letting you down."

"Cloud..." Tifa said quietly, but before either of them could say anything else...

"Hello, hello?" a woman's voice sounded through the wall.

"Aerith?" Tifa and Cloud cried out simultaneously.

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Barret and Red

"You won't be able to get through the door, you know," Red said quietly.

"Ain't gonna stop me from tryin'!" Barret answered, throwing his full weight against the door.

"And if you break your arm?" Red offered. "Would that stop you from trying?"

"Gotta spare one over here," he said, shrugging. Red shook his head gently, and curled up on the floor. "Hey, what's your story, anyway?"

"I have no story."

"Bullshit," Barret countered. "Everybody got a story. You don't wanna tell me, that's your business. Don't mean you ain't got one."

Red considered this for a long moment. "What is it you want to know, then?"

Barret looked at him, then rolled his eyes. "How about how you got here? We found you in Hojo's lab, but the way you go on, I don't think you were born there."

"That, at least, is an astute conclusion," Red confirmed. "I was born a long way from here, and I came to be here because the alternative was for... someone else... to take my place."

Barret nodded. "You surrendered yourself, so they could get away?" When Red nodded in answer, "Yeah… been in situations like that before. But I don't surrender. Fought my way out of it instead. Shinra ain't never kept their word to me before, and I ain't about to give 'em another chance to stab me in the back."

Red shook his head. "I was not strong enough, then, to fight," he explained. "The men who came for us were powerful, armed and prepared to do battle, but their leader was honorable. Had I chosen to fight, I would have died, forgotten and unsung. And she would still be here in my place. Instead, I bargained for her life with my own. Their leader kept his word, she was able to complete the work we had both set out to do, and then I came here with them. I am no coward, but I know that battle is not the only way to achieve victory."

"S'pose that depends on whatcha call winning," Barret responded, thoughtfully. "So, whaddya know about the Ancients, anyway? You were talkin' to that Shinra asshole like y'all went to the same school or somethin'."

"I can assure you," Red replied with a contemptuous tone, "the likelihood of a man like that learning in the same place as I is slim."

"Fine, fine, whatever. And the Ancients?"

"The Cetra," Red corrected with a pointed tone. "They existed alongside humans, thousands of years ago. They were supposedly wiped out by some great calamity that affected them, but left the humans of the world unharmed. Clearly, if the girl is a Cetra survivor, that history is to be called into question as well."

"What about the Promised Land he was yammerin' on about?"

"In truth, I don't know what he believes, but…" Red sat thoughtfully, his tail curling around his toes. "All of the records my tribe hold on the Cetra agree that the Promised Land was a myth. A fertile land of infinite happiness... most likely a metaphor for some afterlife. In this era, with Shinra's planes and ships circling the globe and their SOLDIERs in every town… You would think they might have found such a place by now."

Barret considered that for a moment. "Unless he thinks they closed it up behind them," he observed. Red looked up at him, a curious expression on his face. "Well, think about it," he said. "Whole group o' people goes away however long ago. A few of their survivors still walk Gaia, but the rest vanished mysteriously, and no humans went with them wherever they go. An' their stories tell you they were goin' to this Promised Land or whatever. Maybe it's hidden. One door in, one door out. And you gotta be a member o' the club to know how to get in."

Red cocked his head, his expression somehow conveying both disbelief and deep consideration. "In all the stories told by my tribe, nobody had put forward such a theory. You saying it aloud makes it sound so simple. But I cannot believe that the world operates that way."

"Why, cuz a dummy like me said it?"

"Not at all," he replied. "Even a fool may enlighten a king. It's because if you're right, then this world is much, much different than history would lead us to believe."

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Ranma, and Aerith

Ranma wasn't given to pacing. On the other hand, the room she was in didn't really allow for pacing either. All of three strides long in any direction, and even then her movement was severely hampered by the shackles cuffing her feet together, and her balance further disrupted by the fact that they'd left the hand-enclosing cuffs on her, holding her arms firmly behind her back. With her arms behind her back, and her hands completely covered, most of her chi techniques were going to be locked off to her or at least heavily hampered. Coupled with the short chain keeping her ankles bound, and she couldn't build up enough momentum to do much in the way of damage or escape attempts. She had to hand it to the Turks. It took them a few tries before they really took her seriously, but when they did they went all out with it.

She sat down on the cot, considered her best angle, and banged her cuffs against the wall behind her as hard as she could. She was very surprised to hear a voice immediately afterwards.

"Is someone there?" the voice spoke from the other side of the wall.

Ranma nearly fell off the cot. "Aerith!"

"Ranma! I'm so glad you're safe!"

"Wouldn't go that far, but I'm alive, yeah." She sat back down on the cot. "They took you away before dragging us in front of the president. We didn't even know if you were still alive."

"Yeah, I honestly worried that they had taken you somewhere to execute you all… Is anyone else in there with you?"

"Nah, they locked me in here and cuffed me for good measure." She smirked to herself. "They finally caught on to the fact that I ain't just an ordinary girl. Tolja they would, though it took Reno's dumb ass longer than I thought."

"Why were you antagonizing him like that?" Aerith's concern was audible even through the wall. "You could have been hurt or killed, he might have done it just out of spite!"

Ranma smiled. "Because… every moment they had their attention focused on me, was one moment more that it wasn't on you or any of the others. I don't know if it could have made a difference, but if it did, you coulda got away, or maybe Barret coulda just grabbed me by the legs and swung me around like a club. The point is, for those ten or fifteen seconds, you weren't in danger."

"But you were!"

"Yeah, but that was the point. I can take it, Aerith," Ranma answered gently, stretching out her legs on the cot. "I know how to take it. Any fighter worth their salt knows how to deal with bein' hit, with bein' struck, with taking a fall, with the pain and physical stress. I may be younger than you, but I'm a bit tougher than you are. And when I said Reno hits like a girl up there, I was bein' nice. I know at least... five girls who hit a lot harder than he does, and you're on that list."

Aerith giggled, the sound muffled through the wall. "You really are incredible, Ranma," she said. "I don't know if I'd be half this brave without the training you put me through."

Ranma smiled, then thought for a moment. "So... what exactly did you do to Tseng to get Elmyra free, anyway?"

The moment of tension between question and answer was palpable. "I did something stupid. It worked, but it wasn't the smartest thing I've ever done. It was... probably the most reckless thing I've done in my whole life." Aerith's voice quavered a bit, as she finally said, "I held myself hostage."

Ranma blinked in confusion. "You... what?" she glanced up reflexively, as if that would help her see or hear Aerith better. "How?"

"I grabbed Tseng's gun," she said quietly. "And I put it to my head. They wanted me, and they wanted me alive. I wanted to make sure that Mom and Marlene were okay. So... I took myself out of the equation. I told Tseng to let Elmyra and Marlene go, or he'd lose his prize forever. It... worked... but... the alternative..." the brunette's sigh was audible even through the wall. "Tseng caved. I got what I wanted out of the exchange, and unfortunately for me, he got what he wanted. But Mom was safe. And Marlene was safe. I knew I couldn't have looked Barret in the eye ever again if I'd managed to get that little girl hurt, and I'd never forgive myself if anything happened to Mom."

Ranma nodded as her understanding grew. "You did good, Aerith," she said finally. "We met up with Elmyra after the... after the fight. She's safe, Elmyra's safe, and Barret got to say hello to the girl too. You really pulled it out. In the end, I'm the one who screwed it all up."

Aerith's voice changed to one of concern. "Do you need to talk about it?"

Ranma let out a sigh. "Last night, I... saw someone die," she said, her voice cracking some as she said the words aloud. "I've... never seen anyone die. When we were about to go up to help Cloud and Barret... Wedge fell off the tower. He said something to me, and then he died. And..." she took a deep breath. "I hesitated. I lost... my confidence, whatever, it just... everything felt wobbly, unreal, for a bit. I felt like I'd failed. And I did fail. But I stopped, for all of thirty seconds down there on the ground, and that caused me an' Tifa to fail again. I... Tifa had to stop to get my dumb ass back on target, which meant we didn't get up to the top of the tower fast enough. Which meant that Shinra an' the Turks... dropped a billion tons of metal and concrete on the slums. And thousands of people died. And that's something I'm gonna have to live with for the rest of my life."

Aerith was silent for a long moment. "Ranma... that's not your fault."

"Isn't it?" she countered harshly, struggling to keep her emotions at bay.

"No!" Aerith repeated, adamant. "You did not kill Wedge. You did not drop the plate. That's Shinra. You start taking responsibility for what they're doing, and they've already won. They wanted to drop the living conditions of everyone in the slums on me, they dragged AVALANCHE's name through the mud even though they're trying to save the world from being killed by the reactors. You better not try to do that job for them. You did everything you could, I'm sure of it. Sometimes you can do everything right, and still fail."

Ranma blinked at those words. She turned them back and forth in her head, and considered that there may be something to it. "Thank you, Aerith."

"You're welcome, Ranma."

"So..." Ranma trailed off for a moment. "What's all this stuff about Ancients?"

There was a long moment of silence after that question. "So you found out."

"Yeah... El Presidente spilled the beans upstairs," she answered. "Somethin' about usin' you to get to the 'Promised Land' and get infinite rice pudding or something stupid like that."

Aerith giggled again. "You are such a goof sometimes," she said. "But… yeah, I knew that's why they wanted me. They want me to talk to Gaia for them."

"They want you to talk to the planet?" Ranma asked, incredulous.

"That's what we were supposed to do… the Cetra- I mean, the Ancients. My mother taught me that we are born from the planet, we speak to the planet, and we unlock the planet. And when our duty to the planet is done, we will return to the Promised Land, a place of supreme happiness where the land is fertile and peaceful, and flowers bloom eternally. I… always thought I would stop hearing her voice as I grew older. But I hear her even now."

Ranma thought about that for a long time. "We'll get out of this," she said. "Trust me."

"I know." There was a long silence after that. "Did you hear that?"

"Hear what?" Ranma asked.

"I think there's someone in the next cell. Hello, hello?"

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Aerith, Tifa and Cloud

"Oh thank goddess you're safe," Tifa said aloud. "We didn't know what had happened to you after the elevator."

"What about Ranma?" Cloud asked. "She with you?"

"She's in the next cell over from me," Aerith answered. "She's still cuffed and shackled, so she can't do much right now. Barret and Red?"

"Same on our side, they're in the next cell," Tifa replied. "We heard Barret beating on the door earlier, so we're pretty sure he's all right."

Cloud frowned. "If Ranma can't break free of the cuffs, they must be using the SOLDIER tech on her," he muttered.

"Wait, what?" Aerith's muffled voice coincided with Tifa's question.

Cloud nodded. "Shinra developed SOLDIER-level restraints, for those occasions when a SOLDIER goes rogue or something. I have no idea what they're made of, but we got shown some of them in training. Someone dropped a cubic meter of lead on one of them, and there wasn't a mark on them. They're magic proof, as far as I know. I don't think she'll be able to get out of them easily."

"I'm so sorry you all got captured on my account. I never should have gotten you all involved in my problems."

"Aerith, that's completely unfair," Tifa countered. "We've been fighting them for months, and we're still going to fight them. You had your own issues with Shinra. You didn't get us in any more hot water than we were already in."

"Besides, we're going to get out of this," Cloud added. "We'll get through it together, we'll get somewhere safe, and then we'll make our plans from there. And we're going to get Shinra for all of this."

There was a pause. "Thank you, Tifa, Cloud," Aerith replied. "I think I'm just tired at this point… I don't even know what time it is, I must have been awake for almost a whole day right now."

"Yeah, I got a look at a clock when we came in," Cloud said, suppressing a yawn, "and it was just after midnight then. It's been at least an hour since, though. We should all try to get some rest. Gonna need our strength when it matters."

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…another cell…

It had been years since others had gotten so close. There was always something in the way… a door, a wall, a continent... but now, so close, the strength... renewed. The will was always there. It was time.

Time for the Reunion to begin.

Time to go...

A/N: Five girls who can hit harder than Reno: Ukyo, Shampoo, Akane, Tifa, and now Aerith. Her training is paying off, as you might have noticed in the previous chapter. You'll have a chance to see it again in a few more chapters. I got something big planned...

Not a lot going on in this chapter... in fairness, not a lot can happen in this chapter, and that's kind of the point. After the intense first half of the 'rescue' arc, this is the downtime while the stakes get escalated. Soon, the Ryoka will break into the Seireitei and do everything they can to rescue Rukia Kuchiki- wait... wrong story. Sorry. ^_^;

Hope you like it! Comments and feedback welcome!