the destruction of her home city, and shrink it down to the size of one beach house, and that’s what she was
being faced with. Costa Del Sol had never really hit her as a home- how could it? The nearest human being
she loved was separated from the place with a mountain, and even when chance occurrences had brought her
and one of the others there at the same time, she always knew it was temporary, always knew it could never
be her home.
But Yuffie had been there, when... this... had happened, and that made it just as bad. And the implications of
all of these attacks, well, Tifa wasn’t even going to think about that right now.
The clean up crews were doing a pretty good job, she reckoned. They’d managed to put the fires out, and
get most of the bigger pieces of lumber out of the way, revealing simple ash and shattered glass below, but
they still hadn’t found a body. That fact had offered Tifa a short glimmer of hope, until Red had
unbeknowingly destroyed it by explaining it was very possible that they wouldn’t find anything but teeth to
identify their ninja friend from.
Thank God for Red... thank God for a calm and informed voice in the middle of this, while the rest of them
stood around like idiots, gawking at the wreckage that had used to be their beach house. By the time they’d
managed to leave Vincent- Vincent, Yuffie, Reeve, this had transposed from horrible coincidence to a
horrifying series of events- and get here, Red had already been all over town, talking to people and
authorities, listening in on conversations that no one else could by pretending to be a simple animal.
Sometimes Tifa wondered if that sort of thing irritated Red, considering that on an intellectual level, it was
the humans who were monkeys compared to him.
Cid and Shera had stayed behind in case Vincent went critical, even though deep down Tifa believed that if
that happened, there was nothing anyone would be able to do. She’d also tried to joke with him, after
particularly close calls, that anything he could survive the first five seconds of he could survive, period.
Though the pale man never took too kindly to jokes about the alterations Hojo had placed inside him, he
was always receptive to the fact she thought he was so powerful. She wondered if she’d ever be able to tell
him that joke again.
Tifa was jerked out of her thoughts as the almost silent sound of padded feet treading across the dirt road
approached her, and she looked up to see Red, Nanaki, her little source of sanity in this matter, walking
towards her. His always deep and thoughtful eyes seemed unusually contemplative today, and his slow and
sloped stride did very little to assure Tifa that he was bringing good news. For a brief moment, she
wondered when the last time she’d heard good news had truly been.
“Tifa.” He said simply, a greeting, and rested his head across her knee. She hugged him in response.
“Red.” Less a greeting than a plea. “Did you find anything else out?”
“Very little that we didn’t already guess,” he said, sounding almost pained by the admittance. “This was no
accident, and no effort was even being made for it to look like one. They didn’t do anything with the coal
tank or the gas lines, they simply filled the building with enough explosives to blow a dent in a Cosmo
mountain, and then detonated them at a later time. The bombs could have been there, hidden, for months, or
for only a few minutes. There’s really no way to know.”
“But...” Tifa struggled, wondering if she even had something to say. “Someone would have noticed people
moving packages in and out of the house, wouldn’t they? Something suspicious? There had to have been
witnesses, or neighbors who heard something, or-”
Tifa was cut off as Red simply shook his head, muzzle dipped towards the ground. “I agree with you, believe
me,” Red said slowly, “but the cops have either been thoroughly incompetent with every aspect of this
investigation, or the attack was done on an extremely professional level. No witnesses have yet to to come
forward, and no suspects have even been considered at this point of time.”
“No one?” Tifa asked, shocked. “Are you sure the people just aren’t afraid? I mean, seeing an entire house
blown to pieces isn’t going to do much for your good Samaritan status.”
“Normally, I’d say that was true,” Red said, “but people are reacting very violently to the mass murder of
Avalanche. Quite frankly, I’m surprised at the magnitude they are reacting.”
“Well of course they-” Tifa paused, her eyes widening. “What?”
“People are quick to jump to the worst possible assumption,” Red explained, “and in this case, that would
happen to be that each and every one of us was inside the house when it was destroyed. I have already
spoken to the others, and we’ve agreed its probably the best course of action to allow this belief to continue.
Despite the mournings that are gathering, and the rising panic that has been developing with reported
sightings of the late Rufus Shinra...”
Red paused a moment to let the irony of his statement sink in.
“...we feel that its best that whoever was trying to kill some or all of us, believes that they succeeded.”
“Oh...” Tifa paused, wrapping her arms around herself, and squeezing tightly. “OK. But Red, what do you
think this could be? I mean... Vincent is bordering on death, Reeve’s already been buried, and now Yuffie
has disappeared completely, and the last place we knew she was got blown up... who’s doing this?”
“Unfortunately,” Red paused, holding his breath, “I have no idea. If this had happened at any time before
Midgar was destroyed, who would you say it was?”
“Shin-Ra,” Tifa answered incidentally, “but as far as we’ve heard Rufus hasn’t made a single move to reveal
himself publicly, and I don’t think he would come after us if he did.”
“I agree,” Red replied, “especially because we would make excellent witnesses to the fact that he had aided
in saving the Planet, which would be all the foot hold he needed to step back into power. The simple fact he
didn’t pursue that course of action has convinced me that Rufus has either changed, or is simply too weary
of power to try to take any more.”
“So what does that leave us with?” Tifa asked, and then tried to answer her own question. “Former
employees?”
“Possible, but I don’t know any of them who would have the resources,” Red disagreed. “Which brings us
full circle to not knowing anything. And that’s why it’s a good idea for us to allow the rumor of our deaths
to continue, so we can lie down and learn more.”
Tifa nodded, seeing the sense in his words, but still feeling a painful sting in her gut at the thought of
deceiving so many people, making them ache for a wound that was only partially existent.
“When did it become like this?” she asked suddenly, drawing Red’s attention. “When did our lives just
become these series of terrible events, with brief pauses in between? Were we fated for this? Are we
destined to be the men and women who spend their entire lives suffering so others don’t have too?”
And that, of course, was something Red had no answer for.
***
“So where is she?”
Rufus sighed, closing his eyes and walking blind for a few moments down the Midgar streets, wishing he had
something both heavy and covered in serrated barbs he could throw at his traveling companion. Zack was
many things, with even more skills, but all of those things and those skills were useful in fights, or in
avoiding them, and they sure didn’t help much in conversation. Thus, the former Shin Ra president wasn’t all
that surprised that the Gonganan jumped directly onto the least tasteful subject he possibly could.
“I really don’t think that matters right now,” Rufus snarled in response, inwardly realizing that his relatively
slim frame wouldn’t be all that intimidating to the ex Soldier, so an angry voice probably wasn’t going to
have much an effect.
Zack seemed to buy his answer, however... for a few seconds anyway. And then he spoke up again.
“Imagine this. We walk around this next corner up here, and you step into the barrel of a Spaz Shotgun, that
turns your head into jelly with the simple squeeze of a trigger. I cut the guy’s head off, but that doesn’t
really change the fact your skull is now officially hamburger.”
Surprised he was actually following Zack’s diatribe with a mental picture, Rufus shook the images out of his
head. “Do you have a point, or are we just competing to see who can concoct the most morbid way for the
other to meet his end?”
“I have a point,” Zack confirmed.
“Are you sure?” Rufus asked, sounding almost disappointed. “Because believe me, I have this really great
scenario worked up involving you covered in salt and this legion of flying attack porcupines...”
“Anyway.” Zack interrupted, cutting him off. “So with you dead, the only other person I know who knows
where Shera is would be Shera herself, and if I had a way to contact her this would all be a moot point. So I
find out that she’s in danger... big danger. The sort of danger we’re in right now. And I could help her,
because, well, I’m me. However, since I can’t find her, she ends up being buried just a few hours after you.
Get it?”
Wondering when exactly his friend got so talkative and completely fucking annoying, Rufus relented. “She’s
in Nibelheim,” he answered. “Its not exactly Midgar, where she grew up, but then again she might like it that
way. Besides, its wide open... she’ll like that.”
“You act like you don’t know one way or the other...” Zack ventured, “don’t tell me you haven’t spoken to
her since she left!”
“Hey, I didn’t want to tell you anything at all, remember?” Rufus asked. “Besides, Mr. Hypothetical, what if
we did talk, and we slipped, and she came back? So instead of my wall getting blown full of holes, it would
have been my girl.”
“Fair enough,” Zack said nodding, and then paused as they came to a particularly seedy looking building,
“and speaking of which... not to bad mouth your shotgun, but that’s for hunting animals, not for fights. I
don’t even trust the Ultima Weapon here at a distance against guys with the kind of firepower they had.”
It took only an upward glance for Rufus to take his meaning- the dirty, paint chipped sign that hung above
the building besides them could be read ‘AummuStation’ with a certain level of difficulty. Knowing that the
bottomless checkbook he owned less than three years ago was long since gone, Rufus really hoped that Zack
had brought some cash of his own, or had little to no qualms about robbing a store.
Then they walked inside, and Rufus’s hopes dropped to include solely that Zack had brought some cash of
his own. There was no way in hell they were robbing this place, it looked like the arms lockers that the
Turks wouldn’t even let him into, and he’d had to have a special team cut the doors off their hinges with
blow torches when they were out on a mission in Wutai just to get a look at it. The outside of the store was
obviously a front, because anyone with this sort of inventory would be able to afford solid gold brick walls.
Everything they could have possibly wanted was there. An entire wall was dedicated to body armor, Kevlar,
riot gear and even what appeared to be a full body suit of chain mail. There were shotguns that would put
his Shin-Ra issue to shame, and Scarlet herself had been behind the design on that one. It was a red neck
militants wet dream, explosives and trip wire and full automatics, with a cherry on top. And standing at the
counter, watching the two through glittering black eyes, was one of the strangest women Rufus has ever
seen.
She looked like someone had taken a house wife in the making from her country side home, shot her filled
with adrenaline, and then dropped her in a pile of metal. Pale skin, pink lips, and classically cut brown hair
gave an image of tranquillity that was instantly shattered when you realized she had more armor and
weapons strapped to her body than she had hanging on the walls around her. A simple sticker pasted across
the left side of her chest plate read simply ‘Royce’.
Zack, however, utterly ignored the woman and the flashier of the weapons, and walked straight to the basic
hardware. Hand held weapons, some of them modified, some of them not. After a moment of lighting fast
speculation, he grabbed a pair of identical Ingalls and tossed them up on the counter, and then quickly began
to scoop up all the ammo in sight. Rufus reached for one of them, but Zack stopped his hand, and gestured
down towards the weapons rack.
“Those two are mine,” he said simply, “pick two out that fit you, and grab some bullets. You know, lots of
them.”
Never the world’s biggest fan of pistols, Rufus stared at the varying issues and models with bare
comprehension. He was saved, however, as the striking women standing behind the counter reached over
and picked up two very different guns- one the classic bottom loading Uzi model that had been serving the
Shinra forces faithfully for years, and another a magnum pistol with a barrel bigger than Rufus’s eyeball. She
set them both up on the counter, and stared at Rufus calmly, as if he had made the decision himself.
“Hey...” she said slowly, raising an eyebrow, “don’t I know you from somewhere?”
A mild rush of panic hitting him, Rufus quickly reached beneath him and grabbed a clip of ammo from the
bin beside the guns, and lifted it up level with both of their vision. Feigning calmness, he picked the Uzi up
off the counter, and pumped the clip into it, pulling back on the quick slide to auto load it. “I don’t know...”
he said slowly, insinuation dancing through his voice, “do you?”
“The gun.” Royce said slowly, shaking her head. “Always with the guns. You do know there’s only about
twelve square inches of space on my entire body that gun would be able to penetrate, correct?”
“Woah! Hey! Slow down!” Zack snatched the Uzi from Rufus’s grip and set it back down on the counter.
He followed it with a roll of bills thick enough that it actually distracted Rufus from the fact his entire cover
in life may have been blown for a few minutes, and by the time he recovered Zack was yanking him away
from the store owner, with their weapons in hand. He quickly shoved Rufus out the door to the outside, and
then turned to the recently accosted owner. “I’m sorry Royce...” he said, “he has some emotional issues.”
Without giving her a chance to respond, he turned and walked out the door, following his friend.
“You are a real piece of work, you know that?” Zack growled at Rufus’s retreating back. The former
president paused, his shoulders heaving in a sigh, and he spun around.
“And why is that?” he asked with restrained calm.
“You didn’t need to do that with the gun,” Zack retorted angrily, “that was a good friend of mine, she
wouldn’t breathe a word of anything involving me to anyone, and that includes over reacting sociopath with
automatic weapons! No wonder you’re living in a god damn cabin, you don’t know how to deal with anyone
who has less money than Christ!”
Rufus paused, slightly taken aback. He momentarily lingered on going the route of challenging Zack’s use of
‘old friend’ by comparing it to ‘frequent lay’, or ‘quality head’, but he wasn’t really fond of either of those
terms. Not to mention he was fairly sure Zack would take a swing on him if he tried them out. “Look, I
figured you would understand this better than most people, Zack. You died too. And now you’re back, in a
world you don’t belong, surrounded by people who are going to fear you just for the fact you still exist.”
“Now, imagine that, adding in that every single human being on the planet knows what you look like, some
to the most minute detail of your face. Not only that, but they hate you, and the only reason they didn’t fill
you full of bullets before was you walked around with a personal bodyguard escort of five or six different
armed men. Would you really think twice about pulling a gun on someone who had the ability to bring that
all crashing down on you?” Rufus finished with a flourish.
“Move.” Zack said simply, in response.
“Move?” Rufus blinked. “Did I mention that you could kiss my ass?”
“Not get out my way,” Zack said quickly, his eyes suddenly widening, “get out of the street before the group
of people following us turn you and I into piles of steaming liquid! People are coming!”
Wordlessly, Rufus reached under his jacket and grabbed the Uzi he had so recently stored there, ripping it
free and pointing it blindly into the shadows behind them. To his surprise, however, Zack pushed his arm
down and gestured him furiously to the side of the street. “I’ve got this!” he said sharply. “Go!”
For a few moments, Rufus wondered if he should try to be indignant about this, but that was ended as he
heard a cascade of footsteps... they were faint, in the distance, but growing steadily louder- heading right for
them. Considering he had never fired his new gun before, and that his shotgun was basically useless in the
dark, he actually did as Zack instructed and darted off the side of the street, leaving the Gonganan alone.
“Son of a bitch...” Zack muttered, watching him go. He hadn’t really believed that Rufus would leave, no
matter how nobly he’d told him to, and now the resources he had been counting on were officially cut in
half. Shrugging the concerns off his broad shoulders, Zack improvised, ripping his massive sword loose from
its holster and lashing out, chopping the nearest street light in half and sending the upper part crashing down
onto the pavement, shooting sparks. They could now see him as well as he could see him- or saying it better,
they couldn’t.
He replaced his weapon and drew one of his two Ingalls, unsure of where to aim- the footsteps had stopped,
and silence surrounded him. Roughly two seconds later, that silence was shattered by an explosion of gun
shots, only a few of which came from Zack himself. Feeling bullets whir past his skin, Zack dove to the side,
hitting the ground and rolling behind the corner in the fence to his right.
Instantly, the firing stopped, and a pit of dread opened up somewhere very deep inside Zack. He wasn’t
dealing with amateurs here, or even men of the uncautioned sort they had encountered at Rufus’ cabin...
whoever these were, they had senses sharp to tell where he was in the dark- and where he wasn’t. And
whoever it was, they had the sense to stop firing as soon as he was out of range.
Zack took a deep breath, as the footsteps began again.
They advanced quicker this time, clicking sharply on the concrete beneath him, but rapidly began to slow as
they approached. Zack turned from his position on the ground and leveled one of his Ingalls parallel to the
corner, and then freed the second one, aiming that as well. Judging by the volume of the steps, it would just
be a few more seconds until they crossed into his line of vision, and then hopefully he’d be able to cut down
the two of them- it sounded that way, anyway- before they even knew what hit them. Zack held his breath as
the footsteps stopped altogether, and the dread inspiring sound of automatic weapons clicking armed rang
out.
Zack wrapped his fingers even tighter around the triggers, a single footstep rang out-
-and a roaring, screeching sound shattered the tension as a navy blue car came tearing through the streets,
skidding around the corner, and then accelerated directly forward. Zack heard one thump, a muffled groan,
and then a second, sounding off at rapid fire. Two unidentifiable black lumps arced through the air, smacking
down on the street beside him and laying still. Zack had only time to identify them as bodies before the car
backed up, flying back into his vision and parking only a few feet to his right.
Throwing his hands up over his eyes, Zack fell back, shielding himself from whatever drive by attempt or
autocide event was about to befall him. When nothing did, he lowered his arms, and gazed at the car that
may have saved his life.
Sitting in the drivers seat, hair blown back, and a smirk that only an adrenaline rush could bring on stretched
across his face... was Rufus. The former president leaned his head out the open window and called to the
Gonganan. “Hey, we’d better get going...” Rufus said, and then paused, “unless, of course, there’s
something else you’ve ‘got’ I need to wait for.”
Rolling his eyes, Zack pushed up to his feet and ran a half circle around the car, pulling open the passenger
side door and stepping his side, coming to an exhaling rest in the plush leather seat. He glanced over at his
companion. “You had to steal a luxury car?” he asked skeptically.
“Yes.” Rufus said after a moments thought. “Yes I did.”
Gun shots rang out. From further down the street, bullets raced, and peppered a line of holes across the
trunk of the car. And in the squeal of tires, the blue car raced off, and disappeared.