So... that took longer than expected by far. First off, I am alive and doing well. I honestly hope the rest of you are too. This chapter was delayed significantly due to some... let's say adjustments that I needed to make to deal with extended work-from-home conditions, and the fact that my existing circumstances were causing some anxiety issues. I'll skip the fine details for now. I have barely written a word of text in eight weeks. I'm somewhat disappointed, in part because writing is something I deeply enjoy, and also because this story is bringing me a lot of good feelings. So I'm going to at least get back to editing until my muse returns.

Comments!
weebee: In particular about Cologne, I always viewed her as far craftier than she let on. She felt like the kind of character who would tell a contrarian like Ranma "You can't possibly learn this technique" just so that he would go through the effort of proving her wrong. As to Tifa and Aerith learning some of the techniques, my thought process is that they each represent about half of Ranma's capability... which is a very different thing from saying that they are each half as strong as he is. Ranma has a lot of skill and some talent, but he is also spread across a lot of different disciplines. Aerith and Tifa are each specialists, as their innate skills go (respectively, lifestream manipulation and bashing heads). The challenge isn't in their skill levels, it's in learning the other half.
doraemax: Ryoga hasn't been idle over the last several months either. Ranma not being able to beat Ryoga in a straight fight anymore is more a matter of Ryoga having trained up his durability to even more absurdical levels. If anyone in this series would be likely to be bulletproof, it'd be he (he's not, because then there's no drama, but still). Basically, these days he can win fights by outlasting his opponent's desire to kill him.
Hiryo: Welcome to the party! *looks back* Wait, I made a Die Hard reference and didn't realize it? Wow, I must be slipping. :D

I'm really glad that all of you are still sticking with me on this trip. As a result of COVID-related stresses, I'm more or less abandoning any pretense of an update schedule until further notice. Updates will still happen, and I am planning for them to occur on Sundays when they do. But aside from that, we're going as the ability to proceed hits me. Sorry for that, but I feel it's better to write well and be relaxed than to get stressed out over meeting an arbitrary deadline and add problems to something I enjoy doing. Please stay safe, all of you, and I hope to see you on the other side.

Chapter Twenty Seven

In The Darkness

[ ν ] - εγλ 0007, December 16

The swamp was cleared without further difficulty, though there was a great deal of murmuring between them. After another half hour's march had been put between them and the serpent-infested swamp, Cloud called them to a halt and everyone started setting up camp for the night. There was a certain amount of wariness among them, so much so that even Ranma realized the others were keeping more than just a respectful distance from her. She remained quiet until the campfire had been started, but even as they sat down to warm up and dry their clothes, the tension and awkward silence continued.

"Okay, so… what's up?" she asked finally. "You lot're actin' like I just grew another head."

Tifa glanced to either side, meeting the eyes of each of the others in turn, before glaring at Ranma. "You did something back there that… by all rights shouldn't have been possible, for any human, ever," she began. She hesitated, and looked over to Cloud, trying to verbalize what she had seen. "You used Enemy Skill... and you did it without a materia."

"I what?" Ranma blurted out, looking over the materia bracer strapped to her wrist in confusion. "What's 'Enemy Skill'? Why's it so weird I'd be usin' it?"

Cloud glanced over at Ranma, and reached down to his own heavy bracer, pulling out a single yellow orb that Ranma hadn't noticed before. "I found this when we were still in Shinra Tower… it's a special materia, it's incredibly rare, and it allows the user to learn the kinds of magic that some monsters use. People call them Enemy Skills. I had this one in my bracer, during the fight. The Zolom's fire breath attack… was learned by the materia during that fight. So I can cast that now. You don't have another one one hidden somewhere, do you?"

Ranma quietly shook her head in response. Red eyed the girl thoughtfully. "I wonder," he mused. "You are certainly an enigma, Ranma, in more ways than one. Perhaps you are not human after all… or perhaps you are merely… not only human."

Ranma returned the wolf's one-eyed look. "If you've got an idea, out with it. I ain't good with riddles."

"I believe that a simple test may suffice," he said. "You have a Cure materia in your bracer, yes?" Ranma nodded in response. "Would you cast Cure on me?"

Ranma looked at Red suspiciously, but held out her hand and began focusing on the chi inside her to fuel a Cure spell, closing her eyes to help her focus on the spell. As she did, she felt something was missing, some kind of emptiness that she hadn't noticed before. She opened her eyes again, only to find nothing had happened. "The heck..." she waggled the arm with the bracer, checking that it was clasped firmly. She pulled off the bracer entirely, looking it over intently, not even certain what she might be trying to find. "This wasn't working earlier either. Can materia break?"

"Hardly," Red answered with a smirk. He turned to rummage in one of the packs with his snout, pulling out a small green bottle with his teeth. He flicked his head to one side, sending the bottle over the fire. Ranma reached out and snatched it out of the air. "In a moment, I'd like to ask you to drink that," he said.

Ranma eyed the bottle suspiciously, until she noticed the label on the outside. "Ether?" she read out loud. "This is one of those... restoratives... Shinra makes, isn't it?"

"It is, and it should restore your mana levels to at least a usable level," Red answered.

Ranma uncorked the bottle and downed the contents, gagging slightly at the flavor. "Ugh, tastes worse than root beer. What is this stuff made out of, anyway?"

"How you could possibly have drained your entire reserve in that last battle without using any materia is beyond me at the moment," Red commented quietly ignoring Ranma's complaints, "but I digress. Would you put your materia bracer back on for me?"

Ranma complied, as the others watched her. "You wanna let us in on this little secret of yours?" she inquired.

"Not until I know the results. Please cast Cure on me."

Ranma shrugged, and reached into herself, pushing a bit of her mana, or chi, or whatever it was, into the materia. There was a small tingle in her arm, and she saw the sparkles of green settle over Red's body. "Okay, so that works the way it has for the last three weeks or so that I've been here… you're sayin' I ran out of mana during the fight. I guess that makes sense, though I dunno what did it. So now what?"

"Take the bracer off, please." Ranma gave Red a calculated look, but did as asked, the bracer falling to the ground with a metallic thud. "You don't have any other materia in your possession, Ranma? No other bracers hidden somewhere?"

Ranma thought for a moment. "Got an elemental three-pack in my bag," she replied.

"But nothing else in your pockets or anything at the moment?"

"Nope."

"Very well," Red answered. "Please cast Cure on me." Ranma blinked, and leaned down to pick up the bracer from the ground. "No, I'm sorry, you misunderstand," Red smiled patiently. "Leave the bracer, and the materia, where it is. And cast Cure on me."

Four sets of eyes swiveled from focusing on Ranma to suddenly focusing on Red.

Aerith realized what he had been suggesting, but was having trouble believing it herself. She remembered the stories her mother - her real mother, Ifalna - had told her. The power that the Ancients wielded, an innate command of magic, requiring no materia and a seemingly bottomless wellspring of mana. But she knew better than almost anyone, there were no more Ancients. They hadn't left somewhere, they'd died. Ranma couldn't be an Ancient.

Ranma stood back up and extended her arm, bare of any bracer, and focused on the sensation she'd felt when casting before. She could feel the pool of energy there, and now that the materia was out of her possession, she could distinguish the 'mana' from the chi she was used to. The two energies felt remarkably similar. But whereas the chi was channeled from energy drawn in and focused through her own breath, the mana felt more like a reservoir of liquid, a lake filled with power within her, waiting to be used. She pulled at part of it and channeled it through the now-familiar pathways in her body, and, for lack of a better word, felt something inside her go thunk.

It was like there was a door inside herself and she'd metaphorically walked straight into it. She tried again, pushing the mana through her arm. Thunk. Gritting her teeth, she grabbed at her mana, and shoved.

And suddenly fell backwards as if clotheslined by a steel construction beam.

"Ranma?!" Aerith scrambled to her feet, practically vaulting over the fire. "You idiot, I told you not to push too much mana into yourself at once!" She looked over the girl, noticing the dazed expression. "Are you okay?"

"I…" Ranma shut her eyes, the light from the campfire suddenly much brighter than she felt she could deal with. "The hell was that?"

"That," Red interjected, before Aerith could say more, "was mana blowback. Normally it happens if you put too much energy into a spell. It can also happen if you try to channel mana when you have nothing to channel it into. Congratulations, Ranma," he finished with a slightly self-satisfied tone, "you are, in fact, merely human."

"You coulda warned me," Ranma groaned, leaning up slowly, squinting across the fire.

"Warning you would have defeated the purpose of the test," Red countered. "If you had known failure was possible, you might have acted differently."

"If I'd known doing that would give me a splitting headache, hell yeah, I woulda not done that," Ranma growled irritably, pulling herself to a fully seated position, still holding one hand to the side of her head. "So, what was the other outcome, anyway?"

Red grinned, as only a wolf can. "If you had successfully cast that spell, while in possession of no materia whatsoever, I would have reached one of two conclusions…" he pawed at the dirt, his claws drawing a single vertical mark in the bare earth. "Either humans in your world were and are different from humans in our world…" and drew a second mark alongside it, "...or the humans of your world are what we think of as Cetra."

Cloud, Tifa, and Barret visibly started at that idea. "But… she ain't, right?" Barret asked. "She failed the test, so she's no Ancient, is that whatcha mean?"

Red looked away. "There is, of course, the possibility of deliberately falsifying the results," he said simply. "However, I happen to believe she's being honest with us, and as a result I stand by the outcome."

Aerith sat down next to Ranma and checked her over for any injuries from her fall. Cloud looked over at Red. "So… we know what she isn't, but how'd she do that anyway?"

"I admit, I still have no idea," Red confessed. "She may have an innate ability. For all we know, it is a shared trait among those of her world. There is not enough for us to go on."

"Ya coulda just asked me that question from the start, yanno," Ranma grumbled, the heel of her palm pressed to one temple. "I think it's part of how I learn martial arts techniques. I watch 'em bein' done, and I can usually do the same thing right after."

"Wait, you can what?" Cloud exclaimed. He stared at the redhead in shock. "And you think that's what lets you copy an Enemy Skill?"

Ranma shrugged. "Maybe," she answered, grinning despite the pounding sensation in her head. "Either that or maybe it's not as hard as people think, if someone dumb like me can do it."

"You really are impossible, Ranma," Aerith commented, still fretting over the other girl, ensuring she hadn't been hurt by the blowback and the fall. "You're not dumb. You simply still have more to learn about how things work here on Gaia. And Red, please don't go around causing your friends to injure themselves!"

Red nodded softly. "I apologize for that, I intended no harm to her or anyone."

Barret looked around at the others. "So... what, Ranma can burn all her mana and super-power-ify one spell? That sounds amazin' when you put it like that."

"As long as it hits," Cloud commented. "Otherwise..."

Ranma grimaced slightly. "Yeah, I'll keep that in mind. If that is how it works, then it's kinda all or nothing, ain't it?" The redhead pressed both hands against her head, massaging against the pulses of pressure from inside. "Anythin' that'll make this headache go away?"

Aerith shook her head. "It's not fixable by Cure or any of the medicine we have on hand... the pain from mana blowback is temporary though. You'll just have to wait it out."

"Fine, whatever, leave it," Ranma winced irritably, turning her gaze away from the fire. "We gonna get some rest or what?"

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

The next morning, it rained. Ranma was grateful for the full night's rest, as it had indeed cleared the throbbing headache that had plagued her the previous evening. She privately thought it was just as well she hadn't tried to heat up any of the bogwater to change back, as the fine chill mist clung to everything and everyone. Darker clouds on the horizon seemed to promise more rain, so they made a quick breakfast and broke camp.

Just over an hour later, as they neared what looked like the last bend in the path before the mountain face, they saw a sight that left everyone temporarily speechless. A Zolom lay ahead of them, not quite as large as the previous one they had encountered, but no less menacing in its appearance. This one, however, was definitely, extremely dead. Its body was coiled loosely around an enormous tree. The tree was the only thing holding it up, as its head was impaled on the upper branches, dried blood staining the massive trunk in rivulets that had dripped down through the cracks in the tree bark. It was a grisly sight, a macabre totem that signaled one thing.

"Sephiroth… did this?" Aerith whispered in disbelief.

"Must have," Cloud answered, examining the footprints nearby. "Nobody else came this way in the last day or two. Nothing else in the area matches the Zoloms on the food chain. Nobody else could have pulled this off."

Even Ranma was more than a little concerned about the feat of strength displayed here. It had taken the six of them working together to put a dent in the thing, before it hauled off and spit out that flame breath and nearly wiped them all out. Sephiroth was apparently capable of turning the enormous serpent into a titanic hors d'oeuvres all on his own.

Barret kept his gun-arm ready, just in case something or someone waited for them around the next corner. But there was nothing else, aside from the smell of rotting meat and the sound of thunder rolling in across the plains behind them. "A'ight, he's strong, but he's still one guy, so let's go find him and bust him up."

Tifa and Cloud nodded in response, and they kept walking. Around the next turn lay the entrance to the cavern. The mine entrance was almost unassuming, it looked like an ordinary hole in the mountain face. A pair of rust-covered rails ran into it, vanishing into the near-darkness. The outside was scattered about with picks, carts, and the remains of an old truck, all likewise pitted with rust to the point of unusability. "So, what's the story with the mine?" Ranma asked.

Barret let out a huff of disappointment. "They used to mine mythril here," he said solemnly. "Then they found mako. Then Shinra showed up. They say that Shinra showed up cuz of monsters comin' out of nowhere, but…"

"But Shinra might have sicced the monsters on the miners," Ranma finished for him, remembering Cloud's story about the Nibelheim reactor. "Wouldn't doubt it. Is that what the green-y glow is comin' out of the ground? Mako?"

Aerith met Ranma's questioning gaze and nodded in response. "The lifestream is close to the surface here," she said in an odd tone, as if she wasn't sure if it was her own words. "So many…" she trailed off.

"Aerith?"

Aerith shook her head briefly and refocused on Ranma. "I'm fine," she said quickly. "I'll be fine."

Tifa tugged at her gloves, making sure the knuckles were comfortably in place. "So we should keep an eye out for monsters?"

"For anything, probably," Cloud answered. "Keep your guard up."

The interior of the mine was a twisting maze of hewn stone and tunnels burrowed by animals and other creatures. The entrance looked exactly as any mine would. Cart rails, discarded equipment, even a dusty skeleton, long since picked clean. Beyond the entrance, the blue-green glow intensified somewhat, and the path began to shift between smooth stone shaped by men, and towering pillars of jagged ore and rock that vanished into the darkness in either direction.

"Reminds me of Zhangjiajie, back home," Ranma remarked. Five sets of eyes looked at her for more. "There's a place in China where the rocks look kinda like this. Bigger, though, and above ground."

"How big?" Red inquired.

Ranma struggled to remember her classwork from so many years ago. "The big ones are something like a thousand meters high," she responded. "White stone towering upwards, with big chunks missing from them. Couple thousand years of erosion'll do that."

"How old is your world, Ranma?" Aerith asked suddenly.

Ranma let out a laugh. "Depends on who you ask, but last I heard, humans went back twelve thousand years, give or take. Earth is a lot older though. Like, a couple billion years older. Why?"

Aerith blinked at that, trying to wrap her head around the idea of humans knowing the exact age of Gaia. "I… was thinking about what Red had said, about humans in your world maybe being Cetra. But…" she sighed. "I was taught that the Cetra died out about two thousand years ago here. So that doesn't match up."

Ranma looked at her. "You'll find the answers, Aerith," she said firmly. "I believe in you."

Aerith smiled in response. "I think this way is a dead end, though," she said as they looked out over the open space. Deep below, the glow of mako illuminated the cavern, throwing odd shadows along the deeper parts of the tunnel. A spire of stone sat in the middle of the pit, extending downwards into the distant light, and was nearly level with the current platform. Unfortunately, it was in the middle of a twenty-meter gap between it and the next platform, and even if Ranma knew she could make the leap, she doubted anyone else could.

"Okay, let's check the other way then," Cloud indicated the path they'd come from, which stretched away from the entrance into a winding path through the darkness.

Ranma thought about Aerith's words. "Wait… you said this place… you mine mythril?"

"The locals did, yeah," Barret confirmed. "That an' coal, 'til the coal veins dried up, but neither one now. Somethin' special about it?"

"My world doesn't have mythril," she answered. "It's in stories and such… mythical metal, shines like silver, lighter and harder than steel, right?"

"'Cept for the mythical part, yeah," Barret confirmed. "Got a materia bracer made of mythril. Upgraded from the old one when we were in Kalm," he continued, holding up his wrist. The dull iron that had been there before had been replaced by a shining bracer, almost delicate looking, with two materia sitting inside it where only one had been before.

Ranma looked at the foreign metal that his world called a myth, and noticed identical ones rested on Tifa and Aerith's wrists. "Huh," she said simply. "Should probably upgrade my own soon, shouldn't I?" She held up her wrist, which still held a simple iron band with a single slot, currently holding the Cure materia she'd been using to practice with since she first began learning .

"There oughta be some in one of the big towns, yeah," Barret replied. "I know we're on a budget sometimes, but if you can afford it, get better gear."

Ranma smiled and was about to say something, but she stopped suddenly. "Someone's here," she and Aerith said almost simultaneously. Tifa turned and glared between them, obviously spooked by the sudden declaration-in-stereo. "Tifa," Ranma whispered, motioning everyone to stop. "Remember what I told you about sensing? Try it now."

Tifa inclined her head, and shut her eyes. She reached out with her senses, taking a single step forward. After what might have been thirty seconds, her brow knitted with effort, she gave a slow nod. "Up ahead," she whispered. "Someone… big."

"Anything else?" Ranma asked.

Tifa's face visibly strained with the effort of focus. After another moment, she waved her arms vaguely, untensing her body. "That's all I got. Sorry."

Ranma smiled again. "Not bad, especially for one day of training," she commented, and Tifa gave a soft smile in response. Ranma turned and tapped Barret and Cloud on their respective shoulders. "This might turn into a fight," she said, "and this ain't a great space for all of us to fight in. If it comes to it, do what you can to make sure we don't get surrounded."

Cloud nodded his understanding, and they proceeded forward, weapons drawn.

"That's far enough," a voice called out from the darkness ahead.

Red shook his head. "A voice I hoped I'd never hear again," he muttered.

Ahead of them was a large, open cavern, with a wide chasm across the back. In the center of the cavern stood a man wearing an almost identical outfit to that of Cloud, a deep black knit tanktop atop loose-fitting dark pants, a thick leather girdle with shoulder straps, and metal pauldrons hanging over his shoulders. From there, the similarities ended. A wild mass of almost flaming red hair shot out in all directions from the man's head. His bare arms bore numerous, jagged looking scars, and his pauldrons and girdle showed the signs of significant damage, tears, scrapes, and gouges through them all. A pair of large single-edged blades rested over his shoulders. A bandolier of grenades wound down across his chest from his left shoulder, and a second belt hung below the girdle, from which hung a trio of pouches held shut by metal fasteners.

"You lot must be the ones who tore up the Tower last week," he declared with a dangerous looking grin. "Four terrorists, one of Hojo's precious little experiments... and my oldest, dearest friend, Experiment Thirteen! How on Gaia's green did you manage to get out of your doghouse?"

Tifa looked down at Red. "You've met this clown?"

Red bared his fangs. "First Class Lars," he growled in response. "No longer will I be used by you! I am free, and even if you end me here, I will die free."

Ranma stared at the scarred warrior before them. "What'd he do, Red?" she asked, a dangerous tone in his voice.

Red's eye shone with rage. "Every week, Lars would visit my cage in the Science Department," he snarled, dropping into what clearly accounted for an attack posture, "and use me as part of his 'training exercises.' Many of the scars I bear are a result of his work."

"If I'd known it was you, Experiment Thirteen, I'd have come straight away!" Lars shouted eagerly, drawing his swords, the metal gleaming in the greenish glow of the cavern. "I'd never miss an appointment with my favorite beatdown buddy!"

Ranma gritted her teeth, clenching her fists tightly. "That's all I need to hear, then."

Lars took a single step forward, brandishing both of his blades, but before he could bring them to bear on Red, Cloud darted between them and swung hard, the Buster Sword clanging against Lars' sabers. Lars leaned forward, digging his feet into the stone, but despite his movements, neither Cloud nor his blade moved more than a few centimeters back and forth in their efforts. Lars stared at Cloud with a look of surprise on his face, while Ranma stalked past the former SOLDIER and towards Lars. "So that's no costume, is it?" he quipped. "And here I thought you were all show! You're the real thing, aren'cha? Well, you-"

Lars' next words went unspoken, as he was suddenly knocked sideways, falling hard to the ground as both of his swords clattered to the ground alongside him. Ranma's outstretched fist was held aloft, the anger on her face clear as daylight. Lars took his time getting up. "And you must be the little bitch that's got the new boss man so worried," Lars said, rubbing at his chin with the back of one hand, wincing as he touched the spot where Ranma's blow struck. "Gotta admit, last time anyone hit me that hard-"

"-Is right now!" Ranma charged forward and threw another haymaker straight at Lars' midsection. There was a glint of metal in the pale green glow, and one of his blades appeared in front of the attack, catching Ranma's fist on the saber's flat, a dull clang sounding from the force of the impact. Ranma grinned as the blade intercepted her blow, taking a half-step forward and hooking her right leg around the back of Lars' own leg, neatly putting her foot atop the larger man's calf and pushing up onto it like a stepladder.

The sudden weight of an entire extra human on the inside of the knee joint caused Lars to stumble, the knee folding almost on reflex. Before the SOLDIER could recover his balance, Ranma grabbed at the hand nearest her, gripped firmly around the hand and saber grip, pinning his fingers beneath the handguard. She then stepped down off of the calf and pulled hard, twisting that arm back and up into a hammerlock, forcing the hand to release the saber.

Lars struggled, pushing backwards to try to overbalance the girl. In response, Ranma grasped the man's wrist hard, and pulled upwards sharply, jerking his body to one side as she fought to hold him steady. With her free hand she reached up to the man's thumb and pressed it between her own thumb and forefinger. "You try that again and I'll break your thumb," she warned, squeezing tightly with one hand.

"Ha!" he boomed, tugging at his bandolier with his free hand. "Maybe you should worry about yourself first!"

There was a dull metallic thud. Ranma glanced down, and saw a grenade roll between her legs. She flinched, releasing Lars from her grip in the confusion. The man spun and backhanded her hard, sending her flying back and to the ground, before lifting both swords and crouching behind their combined mass. Cloud was pushing the others back and likewise giving cover with the Buster Sword's flat turned towards the grenade. Ranma stood up and darted as far as she dared, crouching behind the thick roots of an enormous tree which had wormed its way through the stone and covering her head with her arms.

Barely a heartbeat later, there was a deafening blast from the center of the cavern. For a split second, the entire cave was light brighter than daylight, and then dust, dirt, shrapnel, and loose stone was sent in every direction. An enormous crack appeared in the cavern floor, and the ground began to shift, calving away and falling into the chasm at the back of the area with an enormous echoing impact.

As the dust settled, the party raised from their cover and glanced around. A shallow crater in the stone floor ended in a sharp drop into the unknown depths of the mine. Lars was nowhere to be found. "...the hell...?" Barret growled as he came to his feet. "Did he blow himself up?"

"Hardly, my little shits," Lars' voice boomed from somewhere, echoing in the cavern. They all glanced around, but Aerith spotted the man first, pointing up at a distant cliff above the chasm. "Such a tiny little blast would only hurt ants like you."

Barret raised his arm, taking aim at Lars. "I'm gettin' damn tired'a hearin' your voice," he shouted, opening fire at the distant figure.

Lars pulled one of his blades in front of his body, shielding him from the hail of gunfire, and let out a laugh. "Oh, you'll want to hear this one too," he said, pulling another grenade from his bandolier. "I've lined all of the passages out of the mine with proximity explosives. Try to leave, and they'll all go boom, and bury you in here." He pulled the ring from the grenade. "And since you're so eager to die free, cub, let's just get that one out of the way right now, shall we?" Lars tossed the grenade once into the air, the spring-lock coming loose and tumbling away as the pineapple spun gently in the air. He caught the grenade and pitched it in a hard overhand swing straight at Red.

It had traveled maybe six meters before most of the party began to react, darting back into cover and dropping to the ground. Cloud, however, had reacted much sooner. Stepping forward smartly, turning the Buster Sword in his grip, he swung flat-first at the grenade, connecting squarely with a metallic gong that echoed weirdly amongst the stone walls of the cavern.

The grenade, for its part and owing significantly to the intervention of the laws of physics, suddenly reversed course, sailing through the air at a tremendous speed directly past Ranma's head, her red pigtail swaying from the shift in the air current as it passed by. The grenade twisted in flight, rebounded off of an outcropping on the opposite wall of the chasm behind them, and tumbled rapidly downwards into the depths of the mine. Barret grabbed Tifa and Aerith and pushed them down, turning to cover them with his body, as Cloud did the same for Ranma and Red. Less than three seconds later, there was a bassy, tooth-rattling THOOM from somewhere deep in the chasm, and a cloud of dust and debris slowly rose up from the depths below.

Lars merely laughed, pulling out another device from his belt, something that looked to Ranma rather like the remote control for a toy car she'd seen one of her classmates at Furinkan playing with one day. She watched as he lifted a cover and pressed a button on the remote, before pulling out a key from the remote and tossing it into the vast pit below. "Bye bye, little ants," Lars called, before turning and vanishing somewhere above.

As Lars disappeared from sight, there was a sound from the alcove just above and around the corner where Ranma had taken refuge. A loud tone, followed by a series of low beeps. "Shit, he's activated the charges," Cloud muttered.

"Are you fuckin' kidding me?" Barret growled, waving his gun-arm wildly as he made to try to chase after Lars. "I ain't gonna die to no damn bombs! I'm goin' out fightin'!"

"Quiet!" Ranma shouted. "Barret, Cloud, I need you ta get the others into the sidetrack cave back there and keep them under cover. I'm gonna try somethin', and I'm gonna need ta focus."

Cloud stared at the redhead. "How will you know if it works?" he demanded.

Ranma shrugged. "We won't die," she replied simply. She turned to face Cloud. "I can't do anythin' about the one where we came in, but I might be able to make sure we can keep goin' forward. An' every second I'm explainin' this one is a second I ain't focused. If we live, I'll tell you after. Get them to cover!"

"What? No!" Aerith leaped at Ranma, reaching out to drag her to safety, but she was caught by Cloud, who hoisted her over one shoulder and started moving. "No! Ranma! Come with us!" Ranma stood her ground as the others retreated into the side cavern.

"This has to be as close as I can make it," she whispered to herself. "Gotta make sure that blast can't go anywhere but out..." She let her gaze rest on the wall of the cave, behind which the explosive charge sat. The rhythmic beeping continued, marking off the seconds. She dropped into a low stance, lining herself up with where she believed the best angle was, and closed her eyes, focusing on the sounds, waiting for the right moment.

...beep...beep...beep...beep...beep...Beep…Beep...

She heard a change in the tones, an urgency that hadn't been there before. Ranma cupped her hands behind her and inhaled sharply, her motions beginning to blur as the world slowed to her perspective. Her thoughts turned to the others back home for a fraction of a second. Akane, Shampoo, and everyone she hadn't seen in almost a month. She thought of the home she knew and didn't know how to return to. She thought of the others, huddled in the cave behind her as the charges around them threatened to turn them into ash. She thrust her hands forward as the device beeped twice rapidly, the second tone solid and unwavering for a whole second.

"Shishi Hokodan!"

As Ranma's chi began to fill the air just in front of her, the detonator clicked, and the cave began to fill with the blast of the explosive that had been left there. Ranma saw the flames curving around the massive orb of chi she had summoned, and released the attack, letting it fly forward. The orb sailed through the air and collided with the cavern wall, obliterating the stone and ore in front of her. The explosive force of the charge was now being pushed out of the cave, unable to pass around the Shishi Hokodan as it advanced forward, carrying the fiery blast with it and pushing it out of the mines.

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Twenty seconds ago…

Lars dashed out of the narrow passage to the waiting helicopter, slapping the last directional charge onto the cavern wall as he passed. "All right, pilot, get us out of here."

The pilot, an ordinary man in Shinra blues and a comm-helmet, gave a nod as the rotors spun up and the craft lifted into the air. Lars peered back at the Mythril Mines as an earth-shaking series of explosions burst out of every crevasse, the mountainside appearing to sink into itself as the flames and dust dispersed. "Mission complete," he said, making himself comfortable and gazing out across the countryside. "Junon, pilot. Time to report in."

The chopper flew away without another word, as several figures began to emerge from the lowest-most entrance to the mountain.

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"So, where ya think they're headed?" Ranma asked the others, pointing at the helicopter in the distance.

"Not much on this side of the mountains," Cloud answered. "Fort Condor doesn't much like Shinra, so that's out. Some little towns and villages between here and the ocean… doubt they'd be going anywhere like that. There's an air force base west of Fort Condor, near the coast... there's a small army base on this side of the mountain, just north of Junon Forest by the river... and then there's Junon port."

"What's Junon, anyway?"

"'s a military port," Barret chimed in. "Air Force and Navy, and there's one of the SOLDIER academies there. Technic'ly it's a civvie town, used ta be a fishin' port. Regular folks live there and make it work, but the whole thing's run by Shinra these days."

Cloud looked impressed. "You know a lot about Junon," he said off-handedly.

"Was gonna be one of AVALANCHE's targets," Barret admitted, "after we cleared Shinra out of Midgar. It'd probably be the next place they set up shop, 'cuz of all that military stuff."

Aerith whispered something, and Ranma glanced over at her. "What's up, Aerith?"

"Sephiroth," she declared, her voice still quiet. "He'll be in Junon."

Ranma looked puzzled. "How do you know?"

"I just…" Aerith met Ranma's gaze, the softness behind it, then glanced at the others. "Need to discuss something with sensei, give us a moment." She pulled the other girl aside, close to the entrance of the mine, and looked at Ranma apprehensively. "I think Gaia is talking to me, Ranma," she confided. "Gaia spoke to me while we were in the mines, it was how I knew Lars was there. It was how I knew everything about the attacks on the reactors back in Midgar when we met Barret and Tifa."

Ranma nodded, glancing behind her at the others, huddled and discussing their travel plans. "Been wonderin' about that," she remarked. "And you don't want the others to know?"

Aerith's face took on a very put-upon look. "Ranma, I need you to listen to me very carefully," she began, "when I say that I am a woman, who is hearing voices in the back of her head, and thinks that those voices are the soul of the planet guiding her actions. Even I think that sounds insane, and out of everyone here I'm the most likely for it to be actually true. But it doesn't change the fact that it makes me… questionable."

Ranma looked her up and down. "You're worried you're not in control of it," she said simply. It wasn't a question.

"No, Ranma, I know I'm not in control of it." Aerith smiled weakly. "I am still in control of me. But I don't know if that will last. I don't know anything about what's going on with me right now. And… as much as I appreciate all the training you've given me so far, I don't know that anyone alive can tell me what to do with what's going on with me right now." She looked down. "And it scares me, a lot."

Ranma rested her hands on Aerith's shoulders. "Do you need me to keep this secret for you?"

"I…" Aerith paused and met Ranma's blue eyes. "You'd do that?"

Ranma nodded. "If they want details you can just say it's Cetra powers or whatever. Right now, who'd know the difference?"

Aerith smiled at her, a genuine smile of warmth and happiness. "Thank you, thank you so much Ranma," she gushed, her voice still quiet.

"Just promise me one thing," Ranma interrupted. Aerith blinked. "Promise me that if things start getting out of hand, you'll tell me."

Aerith nodded and gave Ranma a hug. "I will, Ranma, I promise, and thank you."

Ranma grinned in response, returning the hug. "Okay, okay, let's get back to the others." The two girls walked back over to the other companions. "So… someone said Junon?"

A/N: A relatively short encounter with Lars, one of the five SOLDIER hunters, but he will be back to be an asshole quite soon. As you may have guessed, Lars' secondary focus is his dual sabers, but his primary method of completing his missions is to blow things up. Lars is destructive and powerful, and does not really know the meaning of restraint. Lining a mine with enough explosives to make a mountain sag is not an easy feat.

As discussed by the party, Blue Magic Overcharge is, essentially, a Limit Break-version of Ranma's absurd talent at copying martial arts techniques. Ranma has the innate ability to learn and cast enemy magic abilities (which in most other FF titles is referred to as Blue Magic), without the use of materia. The Overdrive version casts a much stronger version of the spell, at the cost of consuming Ranma's entire stock of mana/MP, regardless of the spell's effect or normal cost. This is why Ranma's limit-enhanced Beta turned the Zolom into a smokestack; the damage output of the Overcharged version was enough to take it out. This is also why her Cure materia was 'broken'; she'd never cast to exhaustion before, so she didn't know what it felt like to try to cast a spell with no MP before. Oops.

Aerith finally begins coming to terms with her powers. And yes, despite their inherent utility and the fact that it is in many ways Aerith's birthright, there is a lot of apprehension to this. Think of it like mutant powers in the Marvel universe. Having the ability to do a thing isn't always the same as knowing how to, or knowing how not to, and there is something a bit scary about the basis of your power starting with 'I hear voices'.

Hope you like it! Feedback and comments welcome!