regain when submerged in the Lifestream in Mideel, with Tifa Lockheart acting as a Sherpa to his psyche
and slowly piecing together his past, bit by bit. He hadn’t mentioned them at the time- he’d felt no real need
to- but they were seared into the back of his eyelids forever.
A man in white, with greasy hair, a man who would taunt him later in life about not having a number... Hojo.
His entire creeping, smirking, sickening image tinted green due to the indescribable liquid that Cloud had
been floating in at the time, with tubes and IC drips poking into his body from all angles. Crystal clear, was
the memory of Hojo slowly lifting up a scalpel, and bringing it methodically down across the wrist of his
newest specimen.
And now here they- Barret, Shera, Cid, Cloud himself, and Cloud’s tour guide to his own mind, Tifa- were,
in a place that was similar in many ways. The sights. The smells. The men and women who worked here
wore white, and it too was stained with blood, but it was blood shed in an effort to save, not to destroy. The
people here wielded scalpels like a feather, and not a butchers knife. It was an entirely different aura.
But that didn’t take away the smell.
They sat in a small circle, hunched over as if it were cold in the seventy degree room, faces pale and solemn.
It had been bad, really bad. Worse than anything they’d expected when they’d gotten the call that their friend
had been found with slash wounds outside of Rocket Town. Cid and Shera had rode with him to the
hospital, and Cloud and Tifa had picked up Barret on the way. They’d tried to contact Red, but the people
of Cosmo Canyon had informed them that he’d left on one of his frequent pilgrimages just days before.
Yuffie, never one to stomach much blood, unless she’d shed it, had stayed behind in Costa Del Sol, in case
their quadruped friend got back to them.
“What...” Tifa tried to speak for the first time in what had to be a quarter hour, and then bit her lip, eyes
filled with tears of concern. “What could have done that?” she managed to get out, visibly wincing,
obviously imagining exactly what ‘that’ was. Or, as the doctors put it, ‘that’ being the ‘severe trauma to the
chest, lungs, and rib cage.”
They sat for a few moments, in quiet contemplation, searching for an answer. “An animal?” Shera ventured,
ever the optimist, never willing or wanting to admit that there were bad things out there with even worse
intentions towards very good people. An almost reprimanding look from Cid quieted her back down
instantly, but when he saw her flinch into silence the old pilot’s features softened. Running out into the fields
to find Vincent lying there, surrounded by more blood than their walls had paint, had been hard on her, and
he knew it.
“Maybe,” said Tifa, trying to be kind. “Or, if not that, a mako mutation of one. I don’t really know anything
that could get to Vincent if it wasn’t enhanced somehow... maybe a bear...” she trailed off, well aware that
any bear that picked a fight with Vincent would be dead before it realized its mistake. The worse you hurt
Vincent, the more dangerous he got, the more apt to explode any moment into a form that was no way his
own. And speaking of which...
“Why tha hell didn’t he go Chaos?” Barret demanded angrily, though neither the question or the anger
seemed to be aimed anyone currently in the room. “He certainly would have gotten enough juice enough to,
I’ve seen him take hits that were... God... nothing compared to that, and he went all purple and skull
throwing in no time at all. I just don’t get it...”
“It must have hit him fast,” Cid said with a forlorn shrug. “Really, really fast. I’d say a gun, but those cuts
weren’t made by any bullet... and Vinny could catch an arrow in mid air and grind it to splinters if it was
fired point blank while he was sleeping.”
“It wouldn’t have to be fast if they took him by surprise,” Tifa said with a haunted edge in her voice,
“someone he trusted maybe. Or knew. Someone he was sure wouldn’t hurt him.”
“I don’t think he trusted anyone dat much...” Barret muttered, putting his head in his hands- one natural, the
other mechanical. “But it could have been someone dat he wouldn’t hit back, even if they did hit him first.”
“Lucrecia.” Tifa finished the thought, shaking her head. “You thought of her too.”
They lapsed into an uncomfortable silence, and in an effort to shatter the tension, Shera spoke up with
something she’d noticed as they drove to the hospital, but no one had mentioned yet. “Why didn’t he have
his claw?” she piped up quietly, but loud enough that it drew their attention.
“I... don’t know,” Tifa admitted, having the strong feeling that she’d be using that answer fall too much in
the upcoming days. “I always thought it was attached to him, stitched on, or soldered. But all he had was
that black glove, and there’s no mark of anything being removed...”
“Sephiroth.”
Cloud, speaking up after a prolonged quiet, stunned them all, causing them to look over in shock. They
stared in confusion, but waited with various levels of patience for him to speak up.
“It could have been him, couldn’t it? I don’t care what Aeris told us, I don’t trust Sephiroth living or dead,
and we have no idea where he’s been or even if he’s still on the Planet for the last two years,” Cloud took a
deep breath, clearly forming his following rant in his mind. “And he’s the only swordsman I know good
enough to take Vincent out, let alone without going down with him. Besides, as Lucrecia’s son, he would be
able to get close enough to Vincent just by talking to him, we all know that Vince wouldn’t run or attack
him first....”
“...and all Sephiroth needs is a few seconds.” Tifa finished him, eyes closed, images of the silver haired
Soldier hacking apart her town and its people running rampant. But when they opened, while not forgiving,
her gaze was trusting. “But I believe Aeris. She’s never lied to us before, and I don’t realize why she would
start now, especially about something as important as that.”
“Never lied to us, sure,” Cloud agreed shortly, and Tifa was surprised to hear the razor edge in his voice,
“but she sure kept a lot from us. Rufus, Zack, Sephiroth... we had to right to know that these people were
walking around again, for better or for worse. Besides, it doesn’t matter if Sephiroth really has turned
around, because all of his sides are evil.”
“Evil?” Tifa asked gingerly, not wanting to push him. “I’d think more insane than evil...”
“*Listen*,” Cloud began, going red in the face, but at that second Cid’s phone rang. The pilot fished it out
and hastily began to try to get it open, an act that he could only accomplish with Shera’s aide. Once it was
finally accessible, he held the device up to his ear, and listened closely. To the horror of everyone else in the
room, the usually unshakable man’s jaw went slack, and his usually tan complexion went pale. Each of these
conditions only seemed to increase as time went on, until he was simply nodding dumbly to whoever was
speaking, apparently unaware they couldn’t see him. Slowly, shakily, he hung up.
“Reeve...” he started slowly, searching for the words. “Something happened to Reeve.”
Tifa tensed up, sensing doom from the tone of his voice. “He...” she started, before her voice caught in her
throat, “he... is he OK?”
Cid went to answer, but couldn’t, and simply lowered his eyes, shaking his head. Tifa gasped in horror as
Shera burst into tears, she’d formed a fast friendship with the fellow mechanic. Barret and Cloud simply
stared, unable to say anything, the sudden wall of grief hitting them like a sledge hammer blow.
“The local police...” Cid said quickly, trying to focus on his words more than the thought of his friend no
longer walking the plane of the living, “were trying to keep a wraps on it, for some godforsaken reason. It
happened a few days ago.”
“A cover up?” Cloud asked in surprise, shocked out of his silence. “So how did Yuffie find out about it?”
“She... didn’t.” Cid’s voice lowered even more, and the others could swear they saw a glint of tears in their
aged companions eyes. “That was Nanaki... he just got back from Costa Del Sol. The house... somebody...”
Oh god, Tifa thought desperately, not more bad news. She didn’t think she could take it, she didn’t think she
could take what it implied. Vincent, Reeve... and Yuffie? The pattern was obvious, and did nothing to take
away from the shocking pain she was already feeling. It couldn’t be, she though vehemetely, there’s no way
anything could have happened to Yuffie.
“...somebody blew the house to bits. There was nothing left but ashes.”
***
The dark corner seemed appropriate, if not a little excessive. After all, the night was dark, the city was dark,
and the bar was dark... it really struck Rufus as over kill that they would need to cram themselves into a
cramped section of the room just to eliminate the miniscule remaining risk that someone with supernatural
feline vision would be able to recognize him. But he’d just been shot at, multiple times, and the man who
wanted the dark corner was the man who’d saved his life.
So all in all, Rufus was fairly open to suggestion right now.
Zack had changed, but not enough that you wouldn’t know it was him. Small changes, subtle changes, the
sort of changes you spotted all over your high school reunion, on the faces of people who had grown up
barely more physically than they had mentally. His usually long and spikey hair was now short and spikey
hair, cropped close around his ears so they stuck out at an awkward angle. It gave the definite impression
that someone had tried to cut his hair in a hurry, probably someone without much cosmetics knowledge... or
a pair of scissors.
Other than that, there was the simple changes of a warrior. His skin, rougher, more calloused, more battle
hardened. His muscles really never had any room to get bigger, so they’d gotten harder, ropier, like old steel
cable wrapped around the bone time and time again. More scars, too, as if the added bulk had slowed him
down when it came to dodging, and a few lucky shots had been landed on his face. Small cuts, but with a
Soldier, that didn’t tell you much... it could be a thrown knife that they’d dodged, or the tip of a masanume
that had been feinted from.
They sat in silence for a while, nursing the drinks Rufus had ordered them when they first entered, each of
them trying to find the right words with which to form their questions. They finally seemed to occur to
Rufus, and he opened his mouth to express it, but Zack always had been quicker- and cut him off by about a
second, hitting him hard and sending him reeling with a question of his own.
“Where’s Shea?” he asked slowly, single eyebrow cocked. In a flash, Rufus remembered how Zack had
come upon him and his teenhood lover almost a week after the final battle with Hojo, and how long it had
taken them to explain the whole story to the Gonganan... and even after that, they weren’t entirely sure he’d
understood. But comprending or not, he’d remembered.
“Safe.” Rufus answered simply, finishing his drink and slamming the glass down on the counter. He raised a
hand and signalled for another.
“Are you sure?” Zack asked quietly, sensing the finality in Rufus’ tone but over ruling it with the need of the
situation. “Because if you aren’t...”
“I’m sure.” Rufus said simply, and conversationally, the issue was closed. Mentally, it was playing all over
again. She hadn’t wanted to leave, of course, but he’d insisted. He hadn’t wanted to send her. But Rufus
was always a long term thinker, and even as their lips met for the first time in years he was inwardly
wondering how he was going to break the news to her that they couldn’t be together. That he was a hunted,
haunted man, and always would be. That she needed to have a life of freedom, and all he could off was a
cage with a window. In the end, he’d made her see, but it hadn’t been easy. At least he’d lasted out for her
to leave until he cried.
“But I’m not sure,” Rufus continued suddenly, as a train of thought hit him, “who the hell it was that turned
most of my walls into driftwood. I mean, I’m not much for carpentry, but thats a lot of oak those damn
bullets blasted through, and on automatic fire? Someone was packing some serious heat to come after one
former politician in a hut.”
Zack paused, as if unsure what part of that statement to respond to, and how. He chose the question, and he
chose a blatant outline of facts. “There is a company that is quickly gaining power in Midgar... its called
Helixon. No ones really sure where their funds or influence are coming from, but its the general idea that
they’ve hired up every unemployed member of Shinra to gain some quick experience in the fields.”
Rufus blinked, surprised both by Zacks contigence of information and the straight forward way he was
receiving it. It wasn’t the Gonganan he knew to talk in quick, informational sentences, or to properly
pronounce the ‘-ing’ at the end of words. Whatever Zack had been doing since the two had parted ways, it
had improved more than his body. Zack took a quick drink of water, then continued.
“And, of course, they followed the usual routine of killing anyone who would stand in their way.” Zack
paused a moment, allowing Rufus to catch onto the deviation from the normally used tenses. “They don’t
wait for the people to stand up, to fight, or to form group’s... they simply take a few educated guesses at the
people who could cause them trouble, and kill them. You were on that list. So was I.”
“Really?” Rufus said in surprise, “I didn’t realize that two corpses could present so much imminent danger.”
“That’s the weird part,” Zack admitted, shrugging his hulking shoulders, “they know, seemingly about
everything. I got ahold of some of their files, on a job, and they’ve got pictures of us, the Turks, and
everyone else from our little adventure. Not on the adventure itself, mind you, but damn close to it.”
“Job?” Rufus asked, raising an eyebrow. “What kind of job was that?”
“All kinds,” Zack answered with a simple shrug. “I went back to my old job as a mercenary. It wasn’t the
same though... there aren’t many enemies down in Gongana, just a good deal of lazy, curious people. So I
had to get fast, and I had to get stealthy. I had to learn how to use a computer. Its been some trying times.”
“So a keyboard gave you those, did it?” Rufus asked, taking a gulp of his whiskey, and gesturing towards
the fresh scars that were splayed across the former Soldier’s faces. Zack simply dismissed his statement with
a wave of his hand, a sort of silent omission to the fact that he’d still had to get his hands dirty a little bit.
“Its been weird stuff though... Ive been scouting some of the old mako reactors, the ones that operate
outside of Midgar... I have no idea what I was supposed to be looking for, but I didn’t find anything besides
some good old fashioned mako mutations. Maybe someone figured out what I was up to, or something, and
thats why I made their list...” Zack trailed off a moment, taking a deep breath, and then continued.
“About a week ago, I was coming home from a... friends house, it was about three in the morning. My door
was unlocked, which seemed weird to me, so I checked things out first... way too much stuff was out of
place in the perimeter, I figured something was up. So I got my sword out-”
“Do you still use that glass looking meat cleaver?” Rufus cut in, simply because he hadn’t spoken in a bit.
Zack continued on with only the slightest affirmation in the form of a head nod. “-and I came in through the
back. Caught one of them dozing off, knocked him out. The other three were a little harder, but they didn’t
seem to realize that bullets keep going when they miss. Two of them got hacked to pieces by their own
bullets. The third one took a shot to the thigh, and tried to run... not easy on one leg, so there was nothing
doing there.”
Rufus back tracked mentally through the story, before catching a point that didnt sit well with him. “And the
first one?” he questioned, draining the last of his drink.
“Interrogated him,” Zack said, “found out pretty much everything I just told you, except his employer,
which I found out by going through his check book. He also told me that the team I’d taken out was a small
part of a larger group, that half of them had been sent looking for someone else... looking for you. He
seemed pretty creeped out about it, which is understandable, considering you’re dead.”
“Well it takes a corpse to know a corpse...” Rufus trailed off, then caught up with himself. “But there’s no
way in hell these people would only be after us. I mean, sure, they’re worried I’m going to return to Midgar
and try to gain power, I can understand that. But- and no offense- Im sure a lot of people weve worked with
in the past carry more of a threat than an ex-Soldier who’s in it for the money.”
Zack nodded in agreement. “Avalanche. Turks. Aeris, maybe, wherever she is. We should go get them.”
“But just for back up,” Rufus argued, his reversed moral barometer kicking in, “not to help them out.
Agreed?”
Zack hesitated, shrugged, and nodded. “Agreed.”
They payed their bill and left. It wasnt long before three men, sitting at a table in the opposite corner of the
room, did the same, and followed in the same direction. Even the casual observer would have been hard
pressed to miss the metallic sheen from the holsters the men wore on their hips.