Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

“Hey, asshole!”

Genesis turned instinctively at the shout, Angeal pausing along with him. Verbal abuse from the public wasn’t exactly unknown to him—no one with significant notoriety will ever be without their detractors, deserved or not—but he was a little startled to have someone shouting at him so brazenly, in broad daylight, in one of the more affluent sectors, while he and Angeal made their way back to the Tower after having lunch.

He opened his mouth to respond, zeroing in on an approaching blond man. A very quickly approaching blond man. “Wh—”

Genesis never had a chance to finish the question. With the speed only an enhanced person can have, the blond seized a fistful of his hair, yanked his head back, and poured a small vial of water into his mouth. He swallowed out of sheer surprise.

Angeal made an alarmed noise, immediately lashing out to get the blond off of Genesis, and was deftly flipped into a headlock for his troubles. Genesis was still occupied with regaining his balance as the blond man tipped a second vial down Angeal’s throat.

Then the man unceremoniously released his hold and walked off, as if they had exchanged no more than a handshake.

The whole thing had taken place in the span of maybe five seconds. Angeal touched a hand to his mouth as he straightened, bewildered. Genesis ran his tongue over his teeth. If there had been anything but water in that vial, he would have been able to taste it. But why in the Goddess’s name would someone assault two SOLDIERs to…what, hydrate them? Why would someone enhanced—

Someone enhanced.

Genesis looked at Angeal. Angeal looked back. Without a single word, they both took off after the blond man. 

He’d managed to get a fair distance away, but he also seemed utterly unconcerned with making any kind of actual escape. He was just... leaving. Casually. Fortunately for them, his shock of bright gold hair was unmistakable (and about as ridiculous as the wild mane of Angeal’s student, in Genesis’s opinion).

“Excuse me!” Angeal called, his tone somewhere between bewildered and angry. “What do you think you’re doing?”

Genesis was a little surprised when the blond man actually turned toward them, even if he did keep walking backward. He had a preternatural ability to dodge oncoming pedestrians without looking back. “What?” asked the man, seeming genuinely shocked to be questioned in such a way. His head cocked to the side like a curious little bird. “I’m solving problems before they escalate. Can’t you feel the difference?”

Then he pointed to Genesis’s shoulder—the shoulder that wasn’t healing, which he hadn’t told anyone about yet, though he had decided to go to Hollander tomorrow. The Commander barely kept himself from bristling defensively, which was absurd because how could this random whelp off the street know something he’d never even told Ange—

Wait. 

His shoulder.

His shoulder.  

It wasn’t hurting. One hand shot up to grab it while the other gripped Angeal’s bicep, just for something to anchor him as he reeled in shock. Had the little blond healed him? How? It was impossible for some stranger to have even known there was a problem, much less how to solve it!

The blond cracked a crooked grin, apparently following Genesis’s train of thought perfectly. “Yeah, see? ‘S all good now. Bye.” Then he offered a sloppy two-finger salute and turned back around, intent on continuing his power walk into parts unknown.

Genesis dropped his hands and closed the distance in three long strides, seizing the blond’s arm without a thought. “My friend, do you fly away now?” he quoted breathlessly. It wasn’t quite the proper context, but he couldn’t bring himself to care. He needed this man to come with him back to ShinRa, just so he would have enough time to wrap his head around the whole thing and offer an appropriate response. “Please, hold for a moment, stranger.”

“Genesis?” Angeal asked cautiously. It wasn’t often that Genesis asked nicely.

The blond frowned up at him, slowing to a stop. The crowd flowed around them like a river around a boulder, though the three hardly paid them any mind. “Why? Take it and go. I’ve got important things to do.” This close, Genesis could see the gleaming mako blue of the man’s eyes. There were even unmistakable strands of green threaded around his pupil.

“I don’t recognize you, but you must be a SOLDIER,” Genesis said contemplatively, keeping his grip firm. He tapped his chin with his free hand, thinking of every Second Class he knew. There was far too much mako in the blond’s eyes for him to be a Third, but Genesis knew all the other Firsts on sight. “Who are you? What cohort? I suppose you must be one of the ones who are overly fond of those ridiculous helmets.”

The blond looked at him strangely, and as Genesis became less distracted he started to notice how wild and unkempt the man looked: dirt-smudged, hazy-eyed, and now that they were standing still Genesis could pick up the faint coppery tang of blood, both dried and fresh. Honestly, he looked like he’d just returned to Midgar from a month-long solo extermination mission in the wilderness. The circles beneath his eyes were deep and dark, a sharp contrast to the brightness of his irises. 

“I’m not a SOLDIER,” the blond said, as if such a suggestion was absurd on its face.

Genesis frowned at him, puzzled that he would even attempt to claim such a thing. “There’s no use in lying, dear. I can see the mako in your eyes. I know my reputation likely precedes me, but I swear to you I’m not angry. I don’t know how you...well, suffice it to say, you have nothing to fear from me.”

Angeal shot Genesis a very pointed look—the one that said we’re going to be talking about this later —but he turned his attention to the blond and seemed to see exactly what Genesis did. “Are you alright, SOLDIER?” he asked, putting his hand on the arm opposite to the one Genesis was still holding. “You look like you haven’t slept in weeks.”

The blond blinked slowly, glancing down at the hand on his bicep. He seemed to know exactly what Genesis did: that it was there both as reassurance and in preparation for restraint. He was certainly a SOLDIER if he knew Angeal that well, most likely one of the men in Angeal’s section.

“Oh,” the blond said after a second’s delay, sounding oddly surprised. “Sleep. I knew I was forgetting something.”

Genesis and Angeal exchanged another glance. “Ooookay,” said Angeal, drawing the word out. His tone turned coaxing. “I’m still not entirely sure what’s happening here, but why don’t we all go back to the Tower and get you seen to?”

“No thanks,” said the blond. “Let me go, please. I’m busy.”

Oh, how precious. He really thought he was going to get away that easily.

Genesis smiled charmingly. Anyone who worked with him for any length of time knew to be afraid of that smile. It meant, quite plainly, that Genesis had decided on something and there was not a single earthly measure anyone could take to dissuade him. “I’m sure you are, dear, but believe me when I say that you’ll feel much more capable once you’ve had a chance to rest. Why, you may even accomplish your... tasks ...more efficiently!”

With Angeal’s help, he started to drag the squirming man back toward the Tower. SOLDIER strength or not, running away turns out to be quite difficult when your feet aren’t touching the ground. Who knew?

“Put me down!” the man demanded, though he sounded far more offended than truly angry. “I’m busy, you assholes!”

“Of course,” Genesis agreed pleasantly, his grip like iron. The blond was very sturdy for someone of his stature and build, but keeping him from getting any leverage to squirm free took only a fraction of the Commander’s strength. He really was quite small. Come to think of it, Genesis didn’t know of any SOLDIERs who were quite so... fun sized. “We won’t take up much of your time, I promise.”

“This is what I get for doing Zack a favor,” the blond muttered irritably, straining to catch the toes of his boots on the concrete in the vain hope of resistance. Angeal shot him a sharp look. Genesis made a mental note. One of the puppy’s many friends, perhaps? But what did he mean by a favor? How had Zack known? Had Zack known?

Genesis shook his head to dismiss the thoughts for now. He didn’t care if he had to let the mysterious blond crash on his couch and use his personal shower. Hell, he didn’t care if he had to cook the man a meal himself—Genesis wasn’t going to let the source of his miraculous healing out of his sight until he got answers.

Chapter Text

Cloud was miffed— miffed! —at the two men currently dragging him toward ShinRa Tower like a particularly defiant sack of potatoes. He actually listens to Zack’s impassioned pleading for their lives and they repay his generosity by kidnapping him?

Rude.

He was, admittedly, pretty exhausted. He hadn’t really thought about it until Hewley had asked. Maybe he could use this as an excuse to get some sleep (he felt a little embarrassed that he’d forgotten about that) before getting back to work. It wasn’t like they could actually keep him anywhere if he didn’t want to stay (current situation notwithstanding, it wasn’t like he was trying very hard), especially when they had no idea who he was. For Gaia’s sake, they thought he was a rank-and-file SOLDIER! Giving them the slip would be child’s play, and sleeping on a bed and/or couch sounded pretty nice, especially if it inconvenienced them in some way. Seemed karmic.

Counterpoint, said a voice that sounded like himself back when he thought he was Zack, Sephiroth is probably going to be there. He’s friends with Hewley and Rhapsodos. The voice paused and added dubiously, I think.

Rhapsodos spoke up and pulled him out of his musing. They were a lot closer to the Tower than they had been a second ago. He must have zoned out. “Out of curiosity,” said the Commander, “why did you feel the need to verbally assault us upon our first meeting? You don’t seem nearly as angry as I would have expected from your initial...greeting.”

Cloud blinked slowly, kicking his legs in absentminded protest as the two Firsts hauled him through the front door of the ShinRa Tower. “Never met a person who wouldn’t turn right around when they thought they were being insulted,” he explained. He’d needed their immediate attention for his plan to work. And it had worked, which was nice. Not many things had gone smoothly since he’d gotten here.

...actually, this probably didn’t count as ‘going smoothly’ either, considering he was being toted about like a recalcitrant child.

Hm.

“I see,” said Rhapsodos, though he didn’t sound particularly enlightened.

They garnered quite a few stares as Cloud was hauled across the lobby and into an elevator, but no one seemed inclined to question anything, which Cloud thought was very rude of them. Honestly, his boots were pretty blatantly not touching the ground! Didn’t anyone have a sense of justice or fairness or something?

Then again, he probably would have walked quickly in the opposite direction if he’d seen something similar during his Infantry days. He wasn’t entirely sure, though. Those memories had been soupy even before his tumble into the past and they were downright incoherent now.

You weren’t very confrontational, the voice that sounded like actual-Zack agreed.

Shut up, Zack, he thought.

As they stood ( they stood; his feet were still a solid three inches from the ground) in the elevator, Cloud suddenly realized that this was the first time he’d stopped moving in...uh...a few days, at least. Maybe a week or two ( he’d been busy trying to avert the end of the world, sue him ). The sudden stillness was starting to make him sleepy.

Really sleepy. As in, oh-shit-am-I-secretly-narcoleptic type sleepy, where everything buzzes and the corners of your vision start to go dark. Clearly, forgetting to sleep had been a poor decision on his part.

Oops, he thought, a bit too late as his body made an executive decision and everything went dark.

There was no warning before the blond man suddenly slumped between them, but they both felt as his muscles went slack and his heart rate plunged . For one wild second, Genesis was convinced he had somehow managed to accidentally kill his miracle healer before he got answers. He and Angeal both stared, wide-eyed, at the limp body held suspended between them.

Then a soft snore drifted from the man’s mouth, and the situation became so ridiculous that Genesis couldn’t stop the slightly-hysterical giggle that bubbled up in his throat. “ Infinite in mystery is the gift of the Goddess, ” he said, rubbing the bridge of his nose with his free hand.

Angeal muttered something about stupid teenagers ignoring their physical limitations and hauled the man up into a bridal carry. The blond didn’t so much as twitch at the sudden change in elevation.

“You think he’s a teenager?” Genesis asked curiously. He’d assumed early to mid twenties, though the man did look comically tiny contrasted against Angeal’s broad frame.

“Most SOLDIERs are younger than us,” Angeal reminded him, hefting the blond a little so that his head fell into a comfortable position against his shoulder. Fortunately, he hadn’t worn his pauldrons out to lunch. “And his face is kind of...squishy, don’t you think?”

Genesis peered closer, pushing wild blond bangs out of the way to get a clear view. Asleep, the man somehow managed to look even more raggedy and unkempt, but there was also an undeniable youthful softness in his face. “Huh,” he said. “I see your point.”

When the elevator stopped, they stepped out onto the non-emergency medical floor and approached the front desk. The nurse on duty looked from them to the blond and back. She raised an eyebrow. 

Angeal cleared his throat. “We’ve got a SOLDIER collapsed from overexertion who needs attention.”

“He’s bleeding, or was recently,” Genesis added helpfully.

She nodded and typed something into the computer. “What’s his name?”

The two Firsts exchanged a glance. “...we don’t know, actually,” said Angeal.

She glanced between them, then narrowed her eyes a little, clearly used to dealing with SOLDIER bullshit. “Class?”

Angeal smiled sheepishly. Genesis just smirked and stood back, enjoying his friend’s discomfort. “Ah, no idea about that either. Most likely Second.”

“Is there anything you can tell me about the patient?” she asked archly.

“He said he had, and I quote, “forgotten” about sleep. He was fine until we got into the elevator, if a little loopy, but he suddenly fell unconscious.” As if in agreement, the blond snored softly.

“I see,” said the nurse in a flat voice. She checked something on her screen. “Well, take him to room three and I’ll send a doctor in for a general assessment.”

Angeal never got a chance to respond. As if a switch had been flipped, the blond startled awake and blurted out “nodoctors!” before vaulting over Angeal’s shoulder like a damned gymnast. He hit the ground hard and tried to grab the buster sword harnessed to Angeal’s back, but Genesis managed to snatch his wrists before he could successfully arm himself. 

“ Goddess, calm down!” he said, thoroughly taken aback.

“No!” said the blond, and suddenly Genesis agreed with Angeal: this was a teenager. “Let go of me!”

“Woah, hey” said Angeal, stepping out of sword-grabbing range and holding his hands up. He looked just as startled as Genesis felt. “What’s wrong?”

“I save your life and you try to foist me off on scientists? ” said the blond in a supremely offended tone as he wrestled with Genesis. He was so offended that he actually paused with one boot planted on Genesis’s thigh, holding his weight off the ground and using the Commander’s grip on his wrists as a counterbalance, just to stare accusingly at Angeal.

Genesis abruptly let go of his wrists and the blond went tumbling to the ground with a startled yelp. “Oh for heaven’s sake, we are not foisting you off on scientists, you little twit,” Genesis snapped, scowling down at the boy. “You are receiving medical attention for severe exhaustion. This isn’t even the emergency ward! Someone as careless as you has surely been here before, you should know that we are nowhere near the science floors!”

Honestly, ‘foisting him off,’ did the blond think they were savages? No SOLDIER worth their salt would so much as suggest a comrade go to the science floors unless death was imminent. How terribly insulting!

The blond narrowed his eyes, getting up off the floor and backing out of easy grabbing range. “I don’t remember ever coming here,” he said slowly, suspicious and a little confused. “I guess I probably did at some point…”

The nurse, who’d looked vaguely entertained until this point, suddenly turned serious. “Are you having trouble with your memory, SOLDIER?” Genesis could understand her concern. Any kind of injury sufficient to induce amnesia in someone enhanced was worth worrying about.

The blond blinked at her, derailed wholly from whatever train of thought he’d been confused by, and then laughed. “Not a SOLDIER,” he asserted for the second time, “but my memory’s been put through a blender like...three times, plus the Lab. Ti—ah, a friend of mine always said she was surprised I remembered anything at all.”

The Lab. Genesis exchanged a glance with Angeal. Well, that would certainly explain his reaction to the word ‘doctor.’ And his odd behavior. Potentially, it might also explain why he insisted he wasn’t part of SOLDIER, though that would beg the question of why he was roaming Midgar unsupervised.

“Okay,” said Angeal, apparently thinking along the same lines, “how about we go up to Genesis’s apartment, then? Would you accept medical attention there?”

The blond squinted suspiciously, but he was starting to sway in place as his adrenaline rush wore off. “No doctors?” he asked, bearing an uncanny resemblance to a wary five-year-old.

Angeal’s lips twitched a little, and Genesis felt reassured that his friend found the situation just as absurd as he did. “No doctors,” Angeal solemnly promised their mysterious assailant, somehow managing to keep a straight face. 

The blond (goddess, how had they still not gotten his name?) searched his face, then Genesis’s, before nodding slowly. “‘Kay,” he agreed, and promptly buckled to the floor.

It took every bit of Genesis’s enhanced speed to keep the kid from cracking his skull open on the tile. He blew out a startled breath, feeling the SOLDIER heat of the blond’s skin seep through his glove. “Well,” he drawled, glancing over his shoulder at Angeal. “I stand corrected. He is certainly a teenager.” He pulled the blond over his shoulders into a fireman’s carry, unconcerned with his comfort. He was unconscious, it wasn’t like he would care that Genesis’s pauldrons were digging into his torso.

Angeal rolled his eyes and headed for the stairwell. “I’ll get my first-aid kit and meet you at your apartment,” he said.

Genesis hummed in agreement and stood. With any luck, the strange boy would be more inclined to cooperate once he was well-rested and out of sight of any medical professionals. And if he wasn’t...well, Genesis would figure something out.

Bonus

Chapter Text

Sephiroth stepped into the elevator two floors above medical, no doubt on his way to a late lunch in his apartment, as he was wont to do. Genesis smiled at him, admittedly a bit more warmly than he had since his shoulder had been injured. “Good afternoon, my friend,” he said.

Sephiroth blinked slowly, first at his smile, then at the grubby unconscious teenager slung over his shoulders like an unusually eccentric fur stole. “Hello, Genesis,” he responded politely, and then fell pointedly quiet.

They stared at each other and rode in silence for a few more floors. Genesis’s smile slowly widened. Normally he would have been too impatient to wait for Sephiroth to ask, but today he was feeling like the cat who got the cream.

Something of his mood must have been plain on his face, because Sephiroth finally sighed and relented in their little battle of wills. “Why do you have an unconscious man over your shoulders?”

“I’m taking him back to my apartment of course,” Genesis said jovially. By his ear, the blond snored softly.

Sephiroth gave him a Look. “...for what purpose?”

Alright, he was definitely too impatient to draw this out any more. “This darling, idiotic little teenager has done me a substantial favor—an impossible one, in fact. I am doing him a favor in return by making sure he doesn’t drop dead of poor life choices.”

“Doing him a favor,” Sephiroth repeated dryly, not buying his bullshit for even a second. “And why didn’t you simply drop him off in medical?”

The elevator came to a stop at their shared floor as Genesis waved a hand. “Oh, we tried, believe you me. Infinite in mystery is the gift of the Goddess. He turned out to be quite wary of any and all doctors, possibly due to some time in an unspecified lab.”

This caught Sephiroth’s attention. “I see,” he said neutrally. “Would you mind if I aided you in tending to him, then?”

“If you wish,” Genesis said magnanimously.

Sephiroth followed him to his apartment, steadying the sleeping teen across his shoulders while Genesis fished through his pockets for his keycard to unlock the door. Angeal emerged from his apartment in time to follow them in with the industrial-sized medical kit he meticulously maintained.

“Sephiroth,” he greeted. “Did you volunteer or did he rope you into this?”

“Volunteered,” said Sephiroth as Genesis none-too-gently dumped the blond on his couch. “You will excuse me for being concerned for any SOLDIER who catches Genesis’s eye.”

Angeal laughed, but Genesis blew his bangs out of his eyes and said “well, he insists he is not a SOLDIER, so clearly you have no reason to be concerned.”

Sephiroth blinked at that. “Oh? You said he spent time in the Labs.”

“That is the mystery of the moment,” Genesis agreed, flipping the teenager over onto his back and starting to unbutton his shirt. He paused after a long second, halfway down the shirt, and frowned. “This is...an infantry uniform,” he said slowly. It was discolored and worn and bloodstained, but now that he’d seen it, it was unmistakable.

Angeal frowned too, pausing in the middle of pulling out antiseptic and gauze. “What? Why is he in an infantry uniform?”

“I do not recognize him from the ranks of SOLDIER,” Sephiroth said. “Though it is possible he simply prefers to wear the helmet at all times.”

Genesis rolled his eyes as he stripped the shirt all the way off. “He has to be a SOLDIER,” he said. “Look, come see his eyes. They have so much mako that there’s green in them.” Sephiroth came to crouch beside him. He tossed the shirt over the back of the couch and used a thumb to lift one of the blond’s eyelids.

The blue-green iris, hazed over with sleep, immediately focused on Sephiroth.

The teenager screamed at the top of his lungs and, in a feat of superhuman dexterity, got a hand beneath him and vaulted backward off the couch. His boots hit the tile with a solid THWACK.

“Goddess!” Genesis exclaimed. Had the kid been an actual godsdamned gymnast before joining ShinRa? This was rapidly becoming a theme. “What the fuck!”

The boy blurt out something that Genesis didn’t catch, reaching for a sword he didn’t have. When his hand grasped empty air he blanched and dove for cover behind the side of the couch furthest from them. The wild blond spikes of his hair poked up just enough to be visible, like shoots of wheat.

The whole group stood in bewildered silence for a long moment, Genesis and Sephiroth still crouched in place, Angeal frozen with one hand partially raised toward the couch, and the boy himself stock-still behind his cover. 

Finally, the teenager’s voice drifted forth to break the silence. “...why’m I shirtless?” he asked, baffled.

Genesis pinched the bridge of his nose and stood, Sephiroth following him. “Infinite in mystery,” he muttered. “Truly infinite in mystery. I took your shirt off, kid.”

Bright, bright blue eyes poked up over the couch and blinked at him curiously. “Why?”

“Because you need medical attention, you twit.”

“Uh.” He ducked for a moment, and there was a sound as if he was patting himself down before he popped back up and said “no, I’m fine.”

“You are not f —okay, you know what, you’re going to pass out as soon as that adrenaline wears off anyways, so believe what you want. Would you like to tell me why the sight of Sephiroth startled you so?”

The blond’s eyes widened in realization and flicked to Sephiroth. Again, one hand jerked up to seize a sword he didn’t have. His eyes narrowed to slivers. “Oh, wait a second.” His head popped up a little more so that his nose and mouth were visible. “You’re not nutso yet, are you?”

Sephiroth blinked. “Excuse me?”

The boy nodded, satisfied. “Good. Forgot, for a second there. Everything’s been all spinny for a while, it’s hard to keep track.” He perked up suddenly. “Oh! Since you’re here—” He moved in a flash, leaping from the floor to the arm of the couch, then springing at Sephiroth as adroitly as any cat. Glass glinted in his hand.

Unfortunately for him, he no longer had the element of surprise. Genesis snatched him out of the air and slammed him back down onto the couch. He landed with an indignant oof!

“Would you please stop assaulting First Class SOLDIERS!” Genesis snapped, exasperated. It really said something about how his day had been going that he said such a thing with exasperation rather than any other emotion, but he wasn’t particularly willing to examine that thought further.

“Assaulting?” Sephiroth repeated, a very faint trace of alarm in his voice. 

Genesis waved him off and stared down the pouting blond. “How about you try asking nicely this time?”

The teenager blinked like he hadn’t thought of that before. “Oh,” he said. Even the brief stillness of being forced back onto the couch was enough that his eyes were starting to close again. Genesis wondered if he was in the hallucinating stage of sleep deprivation. It would certainly have explained a lot. “Okay. Drink this please?” He held out the little vial and wiggled it enticingly, as if he was trying to bait a cat.

Sephiroth gingerly took it. “What is in it, and why would I drink it?” He seemed a bit bewildered as to why he even bothered to take it in the first place. The boy seemed to have that effect on everyone.

“Water,” said the blond through a yawn, sagging back into the couch cushions now that his goal had been accomplished.

“Just water?”

“Mmm, yeah,” he slurred, rapidly dropping off again. “Special, though. She gave it...to...me…”

Genesis leaned in interestedly. “Who?”

At the twilight edge between sleep and wakefulness, the boy spoke in a voice so soft that it strained even their enhanced hearing. “The...healer…” And then he was back to snoring softly, sprawled across the couch at a very uncomfortable-looking angle.

Angeal dragged a hand down his face. “What a weird kid,” he muttered. When the other two Firsts stared interestedly at the vial of theoretically-just-water, he rolled his eyes and moved to start tending to the blond’s injuries.

Sephiroth was still holding the vial between two fingers, as if it was likely to explode at any second. “Even if it is just water,” he said slowly, “why would I drink it?” Unspoken went this is the strangest assassination attempt I have ever seen.

Genesis shrugged. “I am far more interested in this ‘healer,’ but when he assaulted us earlier with similar vials they truly did contain only water. Water with miraculous healing powers, but water still.”

“And there is another matter,” said Sephiroth, eyeing him, “what is this about ‘assaulting’?” 

Genesis frowned. That was what he wanted to focus on? Not the miraculous healing part? He didn’t think he was ever going to understand his silver-haired friend.

“Kid blindsided us and got some water down our throats,” Angeal said bluntly as he started cleaning the numerous patches of blood and unidentifiable debris from the teenager’s pale skin. “Apparently it did something to Genesis, but I didn’t feel—holy shit this kid’s got scars!”

“Most people have scars, my fri—oh. Oh, goddess.” Genesis lost his sarcastic train of thought when he saw what had so thoroughly startled Angeal. There were...a lot of scars. Far more than what he would expect even on a SOLDIER.

“No, hold on,” said Sephiroth, still caught on the earlier subject. “What was that about a teenager successfully introducing a foreign substance into your systems?”

Genesis pointed indignantly. “Does that look like a normal teenager to you!”

“That looks more like a feral cat plucked from a dumpster than anything else,” he replied flatly.

Genesis opened his mouth and then closed it. No, that was fair. 

Angeal shook his head and stood. “I’m going to call Zack and get him up here,” he said. “We’ll see if it’s one of his friends.” He pulled out his PHS and went out into the hall to call his apprentice, pausing at the door. “Make sure he doesn’t sustain more grievous bodily harm while I’m gone, please.”

Genesis sniffed. Honestly, it was like Angeal had no faith in him at all.

Bonus

Chapter Text

Zack picked up on the second ring, his exuberant voice just slightly too loud over the speakers. “‘Geal!” he enthused. “What’s up? Need something?”

“Hello, Zack,” Angeal said with patient amusement. “I need you to come join me in Genesis’s apartment as soon as possible.”

“Oh? Uh, sure, I’ll head up now. What’s going on?”

“Hm, let me ask you a question first. Do you have any blond friends in SOLDIER or the Infantry?”

There was a long pause. “Yeah, I’ve got a couple of blond SOLDIER friends—James, Titus, Adeen...uh, Kunsel’s kinda dirty-blond, don’t tell him I spilled the beans on that…”

“And in the infantry?”

Another very long pause. “I...had one.” His voice was suddenly subdued enough to make Angeal blink in surprise. “Cloud. Good kid, wanted to be in SOLDIER but he needed a bit of time to grow, you know? Smart, and strong, but he was tiny. I told him to keep trying. He was really something. He, uh...he vanished a few weeks ago on a mission. Got declared KIA cuz no one really cares about infantry grunts. I didn’t even find out until I—” His words stumbled to a halt.

Angeal frowned at the depth of the grief in his apprentice’s voice. “Can you...describe him for me?”

“Sure, he had these big blue eyes, like sad eyes man, if he wasn’t so withdrawn all the time he’d be—he would have been a real ladykiller...uh, he had this ridiculous blonde hair, really light gold, and it stuck up all over the place. I think I called him chocobo-butt once and he sincerely tried to strangle me.” Zack laughed, but it was unsteady.

No, thought Angeal. It can’t be. A few weeks isn’t enough time to enhance someone like that…  

“Why did you need me to…?” Zack asked, trailing off uncertainly.

Angeal chose his words with care. “Genesis and I encountered a young man earlier today. He mentioned a ‘Zack’ but we weren’t sure if it was you. He’s currently unconscious from severe sleep deprivation and we don’t have a name or any identifying information, other than the fact that he’s wearing an infantry uniform.” He decided not to mention the mako eyes just yet.

“Blond?”

“Very.”

“Short?”

Angeal held a hand to where the teenager came up to compared to him and squinted at it. “Eh, roughly 5’5” or so?”

Zack was quiet, then said “I’ll be up in a minute,” and hung up. 

Angeal couldn’t quite decide if he hoped the teenager would turn out to be Zack’s missing trooper friend or not. On one hand, losing a friend was always hard and he wanted to spare his apprentice the pain of it. On the other, he could very easily imagine the absolute havoc Zack and the blond would wreak together, and he refused to even think about the amount of paperwork that would inevitably go along with that.

Although, they would probably end up as friends anyways now that he’d gotten Zack involved. The teenager was like a magnet for new friendships. Shit.

When Zack came jogging down the hall a few minutes later, his expression was unusually serious. He nodded silently to his mentor and went straight for the door. Angeal arched a brow at his behavior but obligingly swiped his keycard and allowed him in first.

Zack got all of two steps into the apartment before he spied the teenager on the couch and choked in a gasp. “Cloud!” he cried, stumbling for a moment before he sprinted forward, hurdling the coffee table and falling to his knees to drape himself over the blond. “Holy shit, Cloud, oh gods—”

Well, that answered that question. “Zack, don’t wake—” Angeal started, but Genesis waved a hand and interrupted him.

“He won’t. I Sleepel’d him to make sure we wouldn’t have a repeat of earlier.” He was watching the interaction with keen interest. 

Zack was laughing and crying, gathering the sleeping teenager up in his arms and holding like he never wanted to let go, forehead pressed to bare chest. Angeal narrowed his eyes a little. How had he never heard about this friend, if Zack was this deeply attached to him? His apprentice babbled so much that it seemed like an impossibility that he wouldn’t have mentioned ‘Cloud’ at all.

Unless he’d been deliberately avoiding mentioning Cloud?

“I’m sorry kid, I’m so sorry,” Zack was whispering through the odd, choked laughs. “This is all my fault, isn’t it?”

What?

“So he is a friend of yours then, Zackary?” Sephiroth asked. He had the stoppered vial in one hand and an expression of muted confusion on his face.

Zack jolted at his voice, turning his head to the side enough to see Sephiroth. They would have to work more on situational awareness later, evidently. “Oh,” he said, clearing his throat. “Uh, yes. He’s a friend of mine. I thought he was dead.” His voice cracked, but he did seem to be calming down.

“His name is Cloud?” Genesis asked, probing. He had a knuckle to his lips, one elbow braced on the opposite hand.

“Cloud Strife,” Zack confirmed, looking back down at his friend. “He was aiming to be a...SOLDIER…” he trailed off, leaning closer to the blond’s bare chest. “How did he...how did he get these scars?”

Angeal’s lips pressed together, puzzled by the quiet rage in Zack’s voice. No—not by the rage. By the suddenness of it. By its intensity. And by the way Zack’s hand went to the smallish scar just over the teenager’s sternum, hovering like he was afraid to touch.

“You never saw them before?” Genesis asked, a keenly interested gleam in his eye. Angeal winced, familiar with that look. He was going to have to hide Zack from Genesis for a while, until he lost interest. It was far too late for the blond, but he wasn’t about to let his apprentice get sucked into the Genesis Mystery Theater if he could help it.

Incredibly, Zack shot Genesis a suspicious look, curling over Cloud a little, as if he suspected Genesis of scarring the kid. “He didn’t have scars like these before.”

The three Firsts all frowned simultaneously. “Impossible. Some of those are years old,” said Sephiroth, eyes on the same scar Zack’s hand had been hovering over. 

“But he also didn’t have any mako in him a few weeks ago,” Angeal told them grimly. This was all shaping up to be much more of a mess than he’d anticipated. Had they uncovered some kind of company conspiracy here? He knew of rumors that Science—Hojo, specifically—stole unsuspecting employees away in the dead of night, but he’d never given them much credence. A missing infantryman turning up with half-coherent references to “the Lab” and mako in his veins made him stop and consider the possibility that there was truth in those rumors after all.

Zack’s eyes went round at the news. “What?” He thumbed open one of Cloud’s eyes, much like Genesis had earlier, and drew in a sharp breath as he saw the mako glow for himself. “Shit, kid,” he whispered. “What did they do to you?”

“He had yet to be inducted into SOLDIER? Are you certain?” Sephiroth confirmed, eyes narrowing dangerously. Whatever he suspected, he was not very pleased with it. Maybe he was thinking along the same lines Angeal was.

Zack was very still in a way that made the hairs on the back of Angeal’s arms stand on end. “Yes,” he whispered, an odd note to this voice. “I am absolutely certain he wasn’t part of SOLDIER, Sephiroth.” 

Then he shook himself and looked up with a tight smile that didn’t reach his eyes, completely ignoring the other two Firsts. “Can you hand me the kit, ‘Geal? These need to be reopened.” He tapped the skin above an angry red laceration that had clearly healed closed around some kind of shrapnel. “Dumb kid. You gotta clean them out fast when you’re enhanced.”

“I can’t imagine he had a standard introduction to his enhancements,” Angeal said neutrally, retrieving the rest of the kit. His apprentice certainly had gotten quite skilled at medical care in the past few months, he mused as he watched Zack put another towel beneath Cloud’s arm and clean the area with antiseptic. Very skilled indeed. His hands were steady as he carefully reopened the wound and began plucking the shards of...metal?...out with tweezers, flushing the opened wound with saline every time he had to make another incision. 

Had he been hiding his injuries again? It was the only explanation he could think of.

Angeal glanced over at Sephiroth and Genesis, who looked equally as fascinated as they watched. Sephiroth caught his eye and quirked a brow. Angeal shook his head, and the other man frowned thoughtfully, pulling out his PHS.

There were only two major injuries that needed tending, the rest either freshly healed or well on their way to it. Silently, Angeal sat on his knees and assisted his protege, collecting the bloody shrapnel in a dish and handing Zack the implements he needed. After Zack finished casting the final Cura, the teenager wiped his bloodied hands on a towel and took a deep breath. He looked to Genesis. “I’m going to give him a bath, if that’s alright,” he said.

Angeal blinked in surprise. He hadn’t expected Zack to be quite so... steady when speaking with Genesis for the first time, since Zack tended to be excitable at the best of times and downright hyper when meeting other First Class soldiers. His blond friend seemed to be having quite an effect on him.

How very, very strange, for a friend he had never mentioned...

Genesis also looked a bit surprised, though for a different reason. “If you think he’d be comfortable with you doing that, then by all means. I hardly enjoy having my couch stained by dirty teenagers.”

And Zack looked...zoned out, completely oblivious to the scrutiny he was getting. Angeal might even have said he looked downright miserable. “Right, thanks,” he mumbled, pulling the blanket off of Cloud’s legs and picking him up in much the same way Angeal had earlier. Genesis shot Angeal one last questioning look before leading the way to the master bathroom.

Angeal sighed and started cleaning up around the couch. Genesis would bitch about the mess if he didn’t. Maybe, he thought as he gathered up the several bloody towels, he was just naive for hoping that Zack would actually clear up some of the mystery rather than leaving them with even more questions.

What a mess.

Chapter Text

Genesis led the pair of teenagers (one conscious, the other not, both increasingly intriguing) to his own en-suite bathroom. There was a second guest bathroom, but it lacked a bathtub and Genesis knew from experience how difficult it was to bathe an ill soldier without one. Normally he wouldn’t have offered his own private spaces up like this—he would have volunteered Angeal’s—but he found it a minor inconvenience compared to the delicious mystery the teenagers presented.

“Here we are,” he said, pushing the door open and standing back to let them enter. Young Zackary’s expression was still a little unfocused. “Do you need help?” Not that he particularly wanted to help, but he was intrigued—just how many impossible scars had Cloud gained? Where? What kinds?

The look Zack shot him was downright distrustful, which made him suppress a smile. Smart boy.

“No, I’ve got it,” Zack said, setting Cloud down.

Genesis nodded agreeably. “Very well. Towels are under the sink. Use any of the soaps in the shower but leave my medicine cabinet alone. And I think it goes without saying that if I catch you snooping in my room…” he summoned some fire to his palm and let it crackle menacingly.

Surprisingly, Zack snorted a laugh. “I’ve heard about you and your fondness for dodge-fireball,” he said as he began to unlace Cloud’s right boot. “I’ll pass.”

“Hmm. Good.” Genesis left, shutting the bathroom door behind him—but not the bedroom door. With it open, they would still be able to hear most of what was going on, even from the living room.

Sephiroth and Angeal were standing together in front of the couch, reading from a PHS. “Yes, I am certain it’s correct,” Sepiroth said in reply to something Genesis had missed. The barest trace of annoyance laced his tone. “This document version is from before he vanished. Even if the file was altered later, this version would not have been.”

“But still,” Angeal said, “fourteen? The kid’s fourteen and he managed to get the drop on us?”

Genesis couldn’t decide whether or not he was offended by that fact as he joined the huddle over the PHS and began perusing Cloud Strife’s file. On one hand, it was humiliating, being surprised by a child like that. On the other, Cloud had clearly gained some kind of intel or ability that they were just barely starting to scratch the surface of. He’d managed to solve a problem that he shouldn’t have known existed, much less had the resources to fix. It didn’t matter what his file said—he was not even remotely what he appeared to be.

What a marvelous enigma.

Zack had finished running a bath by the time they reached the end of the file. His voice was constant, but too low to make out his words. The tone, though, was alternately encouraging or deeply apologetic. The file didn’t add any new clues as to why he seemed to blame himself for Cloud’s disappearance, unfortunately.

“His initial test scores were good for his age and size,” Sephiroth commented, reaching the end of the commentary from the instructors. “Why was he denied—ah. Mako sensitivity.”

Angeal winced. “He wouldn’t have gotten in with anything less than prodigy-level scores considering that. Too much risk.”

“And yet here he is, enhanced to impossible levels and somehow not in a coma,” said Genesis archly, then amended, “well, not in a mako coma at least.”

“It is possible,” Sephiroth said slowly, scrutinizing the details of the teenager’s mako-sensitivity report, “that he was... selected for testing a less standard enhancement process because of his sensitivity.”

Angeal blanched, the poor honorable thing. “I—even if he volunteered, doing this much in a few weeks is reckless! He could have died!”

Genesis clicked his tongue. “Angeal, my dear friend, I highly doubt that the boy underwent this voluntarily, considering that his aversion to the word ‘doctor’ transcended absolute unconsciousness.”

“You think someone is working below-board?” Angeal asked, shamelessly clinging to his last shred of optimism.

Genesis had no compunctions about shredding his childhood best friend’s endearing faith in the rule of law within Shinra. “Were I a betting man, I would say Hojo did this. Hollander is too incompetent.” He sneered at the thought. And to think he’d been desperate enough to plan on going to the sniveling little man about his shoulder. Feh!

Angeal looked to Sephiroth, who blinked and inclined his head, agreeing with Genesis’s assessment. Angeal sighed in resignation. “Right. And now that you're interested and I'm uncomfortably aware that I should have been paying more attention, I suppose we're going to get to the bottom of this."

Genesis grinned, sharklike. "Naturally. Though, given the nature of our introduction to dear, darling little Cloud Strife, I suspect he may be attempting to beat us to the punch on that front."

“Speaking of which,” Angeal said, turning the full force of his stern scrutiny on Genesis, “why did I have to find out from that same dear, darling little Cloud Strife that you were ill to the point of needing a ‘miracle healing,’ Genesis? ”

“It’s hardly important now,” he dismissed, waving a red-gloved hand. “My shoulder hadn’t quite healed was all.” Sephiroth instantly looked guilty, in his weird repressed way, which was exactly what Genesis had been trying to avoid.

“Oh, is that all,” Angeal drawled, not buying his bullshit for even a second. “You should have told us, Gen! What if something had happened on a mission!”

“Well it’s fine now,” he responded, growing irritated. “I don’t need a second mother, Angeal Hewley! I was handling it!”

“Handling it by letting a rogue science experiment solve the problem for you?”

“Don’t be a smartass, I hardly knew that was going to happen. If you must know, I had planned on informing Hollander tomorrow.” He clicked his tongue, briefly turning his ear toward the bathroom. The tub was draining. “I owe Cloud a great deal just for getting me out of that conversation, nevermind the actual healing.”

“Was it infected?” Sephiroth asked, staring down at the vial in his hands with a little puzzled furrow between his brows.

Genesis hesitated. “I’m…not sure. At the very least, it wasn’t healing.”

Sephiroth held the vial up to the light, inspecting it, then unstoppered the top and wafted a bit of its scent toward his nose with the expertise of a chemist. His frown deepened. He wafted again, then gave up and held the vial directly up to his nose. He looked at them and shook his head. “Nothing. It smells like water. Perhaps purer than most water available in Midgar, but I cannot detect anything chemical or biological.”

Angeal rubbed his chin. “How did Cloud know at all? And why did he want us all to drink? Nothing’s wrong with me, and I didn’t feel any different after.”

“Perhaps…” Sephiroth narrowed his eyes, re-capping the vial and tucking it into his coat, “perhaps we share whatever factor prevented Genesis’s shoulder from healing properly. Hm. Cloud was—must have been—in a lab recently. It is possible he uncovered something there while he was escaping. Information Shinra did not deign to share with us. Perhaps he found this ‘Healer’ he mentioned. There are numerous possibilities.”

“Then how did Zack know?” Genesis asked, exasperated. The more information they got, the more questions seemed to arise.

“How did I know what?”

The three Firsts startled a little, so caught up in their speculation that they’d missed Zack emerging from the bathroom with Cloud in his arms. The blond was still out cold, enveloped in one of Genesis’s luxurious towels so that only his face and lower legs were visible. Free of grime and with some color back in his face, he finally looked his age.

Zack arched a brow, head cocking to the side a little, like a puppy. “Well?”

Angeal took the lead. “Zack, did you know—hm. Did you ask Cloud to do you a favor in regards to us?”

“Uh,” said Zack, confusion deepening, “Geal, I thought he was dead until today. How could I have asked him for a favor?”

The Firsts looked between themselves. “Did you know I was injured recently?” Genesis asked, looked at Zack carefully. 

This time, recognition flashed in his eyes. He looked down, hesitating, then smiled sheepishly. “I uh...yessir, I did. I didn’t tell anyone though, I swear.”

Genesis was genuinely taken aback by his answer. How the hell had these two whelps figured it out when neither Angeal nor Sephiroth, his best friends, had? “How?” he asked, not bothering to disguise his astonishment.

“Well, it’s uh—” his shoulder rolled up like he wanted to raise a hand, except his arms were busy holding his friend. “It’s...kind of obvious, I guess? You were uh...babying it. Just a little. And your pauldron on that side was a little offset, probably because you had a bandage there?”

He knew where the injury had been. That was proof enough, but Genesis’s eyes narrowed a little in suspicion. His knowledge of Zack was secondhand through Angeal, but something still felt off about the teenager’s answer. Was he lying? Hiding something?

Zack coughed a little. “Anyway,” he said, “I’m gonna take Cloud back to my apartment.”

“Absolutely not,” Genesis said immediately. There was no way in hell that anyone was removing the blond from his sight until he got answers. He didn’t even care if President Shinra himself asked, on this he was not going to budge an inch.

“Ah, he needs clothes though, sir,” Zack argued, frowning at him. “I already asked Ku—a friend to get the stuff that was gonna be mailed back to his Ma.”

“No,” Genesis said, crossing his arms. “Go get them and come back, if you must. Otherwise I’ll lend him some of my own clothing.”

Zack narrowed his eyes, holding Cloud protectively to his chest, as if he suspected some nefarious scheme to steal the boy away. Which, admittedly, he wasn’t entirely wrong about. “I’d rather just take him somewhere he’d actually feel safe waking up, sir.”

Angeal quickly stepped in. “Alright, alright, both of you simmer down,” he said. “Zack, I’ll go get his stuff from your apartment and you can stay with him here, okay? It would be better if you didn’t walk the halls carrying him like that anyway.”

“...okay,” Zack agreed at length, suspicion lingering in the set of his mouth. Genesis frowned. He thought Zack trusted Angeal implicitly. Was his friend just mistaken about his student, or...was Cloud just that important to Zack? Important enough to make him wary of everyone?

“Great,” Angeal sighed, running a hand through his hair. He glanced once at the still-unconscious blond. “I’ll be right back then.” He leveled all three of them (four, if you counted Cloud) with a stern look. “No fighting while I’m gone, got it?”

“Yes, mother,” Genesis said with a vicious eye roll as Zack and Seph nodded agreeably. Pansies. It was almost— almost— enough to make him pick a fight on principle, but he decided to restrain himself.

After all, it would be much more enlightening to stir up some strife (ha!) once Cloud was awake to join in, now wouldn’t it?

Chapter Text

Sephiroth had very little idea what to think about all of this. Genesis (and possibly Angeal) had been cured of some mysterious...autoimmune disorder, perhaps? Cured by a hypercompetent assailant who turned out to be a probably-illicitly-enhanced fourteen-year-old Infantryman whose miraculous healing potion was...water. This same Infantryman was apparently friends with Angeal’s protégé, who himself was suddenly and incautiously displaying skills that he, by all rights, should have lacked.

Sephiroth was a good strategist, both on the battlefield and off. It was ingrained in him to consider all possible outcomes and to plan several steps in advance for even mundane scenarios. But this? He found it unnervingly difficult to plan in the face of so much unknown information. It was a combinatorial problem. Without knowing the probabilities of different outcomes—without knowing the possible outcomes —thinking even one or two steps out involved an incomprehensible number of scenarios.

He found that he didn’t much like it.

Zack set Cloud down on the sofa, then perched by his head on the sofa’s arm. Barely thirty seconds of fidgeting later he picked Cloud back up and sat down so that the blond was propped up against his chest. That was understandable, at least in a theoretical sense—Zack had thought his friend was dead and wanted physical contact to reassure himself he was alive and well.

“So, Zack,” Genesis said conversationally, though the predatory slant of his eyes gave his true intentions away. He crossed one leg over the other and lounged back in the armchair like a king surveying his domain. “How did you and Cloud meet?”

Zack didn’t look like he was fooled even a little bit, which was very interesting. If Angeal was to be believed, his protégé tended to be either oblivious or deliberately optimistic about other people’s intentions, not suspicious. “I just...started talking to him. He looked like he needed a friend,” he said.

Vague. Utterly useless as a clue, since Cloud’s file had included several notes about his mild social isolation.

“Oh?” Genesis asked. “What made you think that?”

Zack just shrugged. “Dunno. What made you want to be friends with Sephiroth?”

Sephiroth blinked at the question, but Genesis barely paused. “Who else would I have been friends with?”

Well, that was a lie. Genesis had taken one look at Sephiroth and decided rival, all those years ago when they had first met in Wutai. It had only been by Angeal’s unyielding patience that his teenaged ego had deflated enough to allow for a friendship to form. Though...Genesis did have something of a selective memory. He probably believed what he was saying.

“Who else would I have been friends with except Cloud?” Zack echoed archly.

Genesis rolled his eyes. “Quite literally everyone, Zackary. Your inherent friendliness isn’t exactly a secret.”

Zack looked like he was resisting the urge to stick his tongue out, holding Cloud a little closer to his chest. “I’m friendly with everyone, not friends with everyone. There’s a difference.”

“Well, what made Cloud different, then? Honestly, there is no need to be so defensive. It’s a harmless question.”

That one was definitely a lie. Sephiroth glanced at Genesis from the corner of his eye. The redhead was in quite a mood today. Sephiroth might even have felt sorry for Zack and Cloud, had Genesis’s keen interest in them not meant a reprieve for basically the entire SOLDIER department.

“Nothing,” Zack said. “He just looked lonely and I was there. That’s all.”

Lie. Sephiroth glanced down at the unconscious blond. Clearly, something had drawn them together—something Zack wasn’t willing to admit. Perhaps...something he worried might get him or his little friend in trouble? Something like…

“Were you romantically involved?” Sephiroth asked bluntly.

Zack blanched immediately, a revolted expression crossing his face. “Were we— NO!” he made an exaggerated gagging noise, shielding Cloud from Sephiroth as if the man’s words were a physical threat. “Gross, dude, he’s like my little brother! And he’s fourteen! Eew!”

Unequivocally not a lie, though that just raised the question of what Zack was withholding, if not romantic attraction. Sephiroth sat back in his chair, head cocking slightly. “I apologize. I did not mean to offend you.”

Genesis hummed, amused, and immediately prodded at the bristling young SOLDIER. “No need to be shy, Zackary,” he said in a tone just a hair shy of outright condescending. “A two-year age gap isn’t exactly grounds for accusations of predatory behavior. And you do seem to like...touching him.” He leered.

Zack looked blank for a split second, as if surprised by something in Genesis’s statement, before his scowl deepened. “No. Just...no! I don’t like him like that, he doesn’t like me like that. No. He’s my little brother, end of story.”

“Alright, if you say so,” Genesis said with obvious disbelief, splaying his hands in mock surrender.

In response to the continued needling, Zack hunkered down like a sulky child and muttered, “you Midgar people are the weird ones. No one in Gongaga would assume... things just because I’m hugging him.”

So he did understand how his behavior was being perceived. He just didn’t care, which did fit what Sephiroth knew of him. The brash student Angeal described certainly didn’t seem like someone who would care what people thought of him. But that, as far as Sephiroth was concerned, just made his avoidance of Genesis’s question all the more intriguing. Had there been something unique to Cloud even before he had vanished? Enough to draw Zack’s attention and keep it?

"We’re gonna go home for vacation and my mom is going to adopt him and then no one will ever be able to say that ever again," Zack continued griping, apparently to himself. Jarringly intense grief flashed across his face for a split second. His grip on Cloud tightened, enough that the blond shifted and grumbled in his sleep. “Shoot,” he whispered, relaxing his arms, “sorry, bud.”

Everyone was silent for a long moment. Genesis looked thoughtful, Zack looked subdued, and Sephiroth was busy trying to puzzle out what about Cloud might have caught Zack’s attention in the first place—there was a very good chance it might also have been what had caught the Scientists’ attention.

Then, Zack blinked, coming back to himself, and raised his head. “Hey wait a second, why are you even interested in Cloud at all? Seph...iroth I can understand, because of—” he made a vague gesture to everything, which explained nothing— “you know, but why do you care about a random missing Infantry grunt?”

“He fixed my shoulder,” said Genesis casually, which was so unexpected that it took Sephiroth a few seconds to process. He looked askance at his friend, turning half in his chair to face him. Why the hell was Genesis revealing something so personal so quickly? It wasn’t like him at—oh. Genesis’s gaze was intent on Zack’s face, searching for even the slightest incriminating response. It was a tactic—a small sacrifice for what Genesis no doubt hoped was a greater gain. 

Unfortunately for Genesis, Zack just looked blank, then confused. “...he what?”

“Fixed my shoulder. You know, that injury you noticed?”

Zack looked blank again, this time with incomprehension and a little disbelief. “How’d he manage that?”

Curious. Did that tone imply that Zack knew such a thing was very difficult? Or was it merely an assessment of Cloud's lack of medical knowledge?

“With water, evidently from a mysterious healer.”

Again, nothing like recognition flashed through Zack's eyes. "...huh," he said at length, glancing between Genesis and Cloud. "I...guess that would do it?"

Genesis's lip curled at the odd but wholly unrevealing phrasing. "What do you mean you guess that would do it!" he said, exasperated.

“Well,” said Zack, freeing one hand to scratch at the back of his head, “I mean, obviously materia wasn’t working because you couldn’t fix it yourself, so, you know, a mysterious healer would be the solution, right?”

Sephiroth stared. Genesis stared. Zack looked increasingly sheepish at his own logic.

“I give up,” Genesis finally said, tossing his head back in defeat. “I shall just wait for Cloud’s return to consciousness to get my answers.”

“Hey,” Zack said, frowning, “leave Cloud alone!”

“No,” said Genesis.

“Yes,” Zack countered, glaring, “he’s already been through enough and I’m not going to let you torture him!”

“Goddess, must you be so dramatic?” (Said the pot to the kettle, Sephiroth thought privately.) “If I wanted to torture him I’d have left him in the infirmary, not allowed you to bathe him in my own home!”

Thankfully, their building argument was interrupted by Angeal’s timely return as he came in through the front door with a duffle bag over one shoulder. He took in the scene, eyes narrowed shrewdly. “Am I interrupting something?” he asked mildly, coming over to toss the bag down by Cloud’s feet.

“No,” Zack said stiffly, maneuvering to sling the bag over his arm and lift Cloud at the same time. “Not at all. I’m going to get some clothes on him and then we’re leaving.”

“The hell you are!” Genesis snapped. “That boy owes me answers and I am not letting him out of my sight until I get them!”

“If he healed you then he doesn’t owe you a thing, especially after what he’s been through!” Zack snarled in response. “Just you try to use him, just try it, and I’ll make you regret it! I don’t care who you think you are!”

“Zackary Fair and Genesis Rhapsodos!” Angeal interjected, a thunderous disapproval in his voice that made both stop in their tracks. “Both of you stop arguing over that boy like he’s some kind of bone and you’re two starving dogs!” Zack flinched, but Genesis just puffed up like an offended bird. Angeal didn’t give him a chance to respond, though, turning to his protege. 

“Look, Zack,” he said, “Cloud is KIA, officially. You can’t just go waltzing around with him before we deal with this. That means that yes, he does have to stay close for a bit. However, Genesis—” he cast a severe look to his friend— “Cloud doesn’t have to stay here. And since you both seem incapable of acting like civilized adults, I will be taking him until we get this sorted, got it?”

And again, Sephiroth noted with interest how Zack was watching his mentor with mild distrust and an odd sort of hurt to the set of his brows. Where was the shining admiration he’d heard so much about?

“Cloud doesn’t need—” he started to argue, but Angeal cut him off.

“Zack, this is the best way to keep Science from getting their hands on him again.”

The young SOLDIER opened his mouth and then shut it. Defeat and...shame? crossed his face. “Right,” he said tiredly. “Okay. I’ll just…”

“Use the guest bedroom,” Genesis said, looking somewhat mollified at Zack’s defeat. The intense, calculating curiosity had also returned to his eyes. He gestured with one hand. “That way.”

Zack nodded silently and vanished into the guest room.

Sephiroth decided his involvement could end for now. Clearly, no answers would be forthcoming from Zack, and Cloud was due to sleep for many hours yet. Angeal had the situation well in hand, so he didn’t have to worry about any (more) paperwork-worthy incidents in the immediate future. So he stood, nodding to both his friends and double-checking the vial in his pocket. “Inform me if anything happens,” he said, and left.

The most straightforward way to test the ‘water’ would be to commandeer part of Hojo’s labs. He had the necessary equipment, and Sephiroth had essentially unlimited access. Unfortunately, doing so would almost certainly attract the greasy man’s attention, and that was not something Sephiroth particularly wanted to deal with.

Less straightforwardly, the Turks had their own forensics lab, and Tseng owed him a favor. Getting the Turks even peripherally involved wasn’t ideal, but it was far more palatable than dealing with Hojo, especially if he had somehow been involved in Cloud’s illicit enhancement.  Sephiroth pulled out his PHS and dialed Tseng’s number. 

Whatever there was to find, Sephiroth would find it. After all, there was no way it could just be water, right?

Chapter Text

Cloud woke up, which was a little strange since he didn’t remember going to sleep in the first place. He stared blearily up at the darkened, unfamiliar ceiling. What had he been doing? Something important. Something...was this the explosions plan or the kidnapping plan? No, wait, he’d already done the kidnapping plan.

Hadn’t he?

Degradation, the voice that sounded like Tifa reminded him helpfully.

Right. He’d been fixing the Commanders’ degradation as Zack asked—begged, really, because Cloud didn’t particularly care. But the guy had died for him, so assaulting two First Class SOLDIERs in broad daylight was really the least Cloud could do in return.

Yeah, and how’d that go, dumbass, asked the voice that sounded like himself back when he thought he was Zack.

Hey, it worked didn’t it! Zack-voice said heatedly.

“It did work,” Cloud mumbled in agreement, which was technically true even if the Commanders had then dragged him back to the Tower like an extremely ill-advised choice of hostage. He sat up, rubbing at his eyes, and realized that he felt...weirdly clean, and comfortable, and warm, none of which had really been high on his list of priorities since he’d been unceremoniously stuffed into his old body like Palmer into a suit two sizes too optimistic. He patted at his chest, surprised to find that all the small wounds he’d been ignoring were gone and someone had put him in an old grey tee.

It couldn’t have been either of the Commanders, could it? Why would they bother?

Cloud tossed the heavy duvet off his legs, equally surprised to find a tatty old pair of sweatpants that he... thought used to be his, way back before Nibelheim and Hojo and all that mess. It made him pause, head swimming, but the memory didn’t get any clearer.

Focus, Zack whispered.

Right. He stood, swaying a little, and stumbled out of the small room. He didn’t recognize the apartment, which he definitely would have if he’d ever been there before, because it was covered in plants. He couldn’t hear anyone, though he thought someone might have been in the neighboring apartment. They were humming absently.

He put a hand to his head. Where was he? And why? He remembered...hadn’t they been taking him to one of the doctors? Science...no. Sephiroth had been there. And now he was alone in an apartment for some reason?

Of course, then Cloud’s stomach growled loudly and he lost that entire train of thought in favor of a different one. He was unsupervised in an apartment that had a very solid shot of having a fully-stocked pantry. It had been a long, long time since he’d had more than scraps. Without an ounce of shame, and poked around until he found the kitchen and gleefully opened the fridge.

It was full to bursting. The grin that crossed his face was so wide it hurt.

He might have lost track of his surroundings as he sat against the cabinets next to the sink and devoured several containers of cold leftovers, too hungry to bother heating them up first. They were utterly delicious, even compared to a normal hot meal. Who the hell could cook like this?

“Cloud?”  

He startled, leg jerking into the stack of empty containers and knocking it over with a loud clatter. Hewley was standing in the doorway, blinking at him in shock. Well, that answered that question, though it raised a lot more.

“...hey,” Cloud said lamely. It came out a little muffled around the fork.

“How are you awake?” the Commander asked with an odd twist to his lips, walking forward enough to drop two armfuls of bags onto the kitchen table. “You’ve only been asleep for four hours.”

Cloud stared. “Four hours?” he asked in disbelief. “Are you sure?”

“Pretty sure,” Hewley said dryly, rounding the table to crouch by Cloud. “You should have slept for ten hours minimum.” He looked at the stack—pile, now—of empty dishes and arched a brow. “Stomach wake you up?”

Cloud was still staring into the middle distance, reeling at the thought of four hours of dreamless sleep.  “Um.”

Hewley sighed. “Finish eating and then you’re going back to bed.”

“Huh?” Cloud blinked at him, finally lowing the fork from his mouth. “No, I’m fine now. Four hours is more than enough.” Way more than enough.

The man’s eyebrows shot toward his hairline in disbelief. A look of realization crossed his face. He sighed and bent in a sort of stilted movement bury his face in one hand. “I—no. No, Cloud, it’s really, really not enough. Did anyone ever explain exactly how mako alters your body’s needs and capabilities?”

Cloud opened his mouth to say yes, but...no, actually. He’d just kind of...woken up enhanced, and none of Zack’s memories had really filled in the gaps. There was a certain instinct about what to do, of course, based on normal human body functions. It wasn’t like his stomach stopped growling or anything. But if Hewley was saying it like that then maybe he’d missed out on something vital.

Cloud closed his mouth with a click.

Hewley drew in another deep breath, raising his head and turning his eyes to the ceiling as if he was begging the gods for strength. “Yeah, I thought so. Kid, mako enhancement is...not strictly biological. You may need less sleep when you’re out in the field, under stress, but as soon as you’re out of danger? You need more sleep than an unenhanced person. More sleep, more food, more maintenance. It’s a trade-off.”

Cloud stared. Oh. Ooooooh. That...made a lot of sense, actually. And explained some things. A lot of things. A sheepish grimace slowly crossed his face. Oops. He felt the sudden urge to apologize to...all of AVALANCHE, basically.

“Yeah,” Hewley said, watching the realization dawn. “So. You’re going to finish what you’re eating and go back to bed.” It wasn’t a suggestion. He stood, effectively ending the discussion, and started dealing with the bags he’d left on the table.

Cloud slowly ate another forkful of the (fucking delicious) leftovers, thinking hard. Privately, he decided he wouldn’t be going back to sleep even if he started feeling tired again by some miracle. It wasn’t like he was actually ‘out of the field,’ so to speak. 

But he had assaulted Hewley, and whatever the motivation for kitting him out like a guest instead of tossing him to the Turks or to Medical, he doubted he would be allowed to just get up and leave. Better to smile and nod and then vanish when they turned their backs.

So he stretched his legs out in front of him, and flexed the stiffness from his toes, and continued eating without a single complaint.

He didn’t even make it through the rest of the bowl before he was out cold.

Angeal froze as Cloud’s vitals suddenly plunged for the second time in less than twelve hours. It was only the memory of the first time that allowed him to calmly set down the groceries he was sorting and check on the idiot teenager he’d been saddled with. Cloud was dead to the world against the cabinets, head tilted back awkwardly and mouth slack as the fork and container threatened to slip from his grasp. When Angeal triple-checked his pulse, pulling off a glove and setting his fingertips on the side of Cloud’s neck, it was strong and even.

Angeal sat back on his haunches and looked hard at Cloud. He shouldn’t have collapsed that quickly—or at least, he shouldn’t have unless he was in a much rougher state than Angeal originally thought.

Or unless he was more enhanced than Angeal had assumed. Enhanced beyond Second. Enhanced beyond First. One of Genesis’s offhanded comments from earlier stuck in his mind:  Look, come see his eyes. They have so much mako that there’s green in them.

Carefully, remembering how Cloud had woken up when Sephiroth had done the same, he thumbed one eye open. The iris was a much brighter blue now, after food and sleep and medical attention, with shining green threads winding around his ciliary ring. The glow seemed to be getting stronger even as he watched.

He withdrew his hand and sighed deeply. Of course the idiot teenager who’d never had a proper introduction to his enhancements would somehow be pumped full of enough mako to rival Sephiroth. And of course he’d been actively pushing his limits by not sleeping or eating or cleaning out his wounds properly.

Forget the past few weeks—how had Cloud survived the first few days? He was adapting both freakishly well (not a single one of Angeal’s dishes had been broken, for a start) and catastrophically badly.

And now all this mess was Angeal’s problem. The meanest, pettiest part of him wondered if he could sneakily pass Cloud back off to Genesis. Luckily, his honor was far stronger than his pettiness—he didn’t want the kid dead.

It was still tempting. Genesis deserved to try and sort this out himself.

Angeal took the bowl and fork from Cloud’s slack hands and gathered up the rest of the dishes while he was at it, dumping everything into the sink for later. He hauled Cloud up and returned him to the guest bedroom, all without the kid so much as twitching at the change. He was just going back to putting away the groceries when his front door opened and a familiar pair of heels clicked across the threshold.

“Angeal, my friend, I’ve done us all a very impressive favor!” Genesis sang as he strutted in, pleased as a peacock.

Angeal tilted his head back and resisted the urge to immediately toss his childhood best friend out on his ass, just for a few minutes without another crisis to handle. “Genesis, don’t I already have enough to deal with?”

Genesis tsk’d at him, smiling like the cat who got the cream. “Such a pessimist. I went out of my way to solve problems and do expedited paperwork and this is the thanks I get?”

A chill went down Angeal’s spine. Genesis, voluntarily doing paperwork? That could only mean trouble of the catastrophic interdepartmental variety. He dropped the groceries and rounded on him. “What did you do?”

Genesis looked somewhere between smug and gleeful. “I paid a visit to Lazard and a few other people to arrange things is all. You’ll be pleased to know that ‘Cloud Strife’ is now not KIA and has been enlisted as a Third in the SOLDIER program.”

Angeal could feel his hands creeping up toward Genesis’s neck. That was all bad enough—he’d no doubt done something highly illegal to make it happen so quickly—but Angeal knew the unholy gleam in his eye. “And what else?” he demanded, a sinking feeling in his gut. He wouldn’t dare to do something as stupid as…?

He got a grin in response. “Well...I may have a new apprentice.”

HE HAD.

Suddenly it was no longer two mature, responsible First Class SOLDIERs having a conversation in the kitchen—it was a pissed-off twenty-something man and his idiotic best friend. “GENESIS RHAPSODOS!” Angeal lunged, intent on a good strangling. Genesis cackled, dodging, and bolted for the door with Angeal chasing after him. “GET BACK HERE!”

“Quiet, Ange, you’ll wake Cloud!” Genesis called over his shoulder.

“I’ll show you quiet!”

“That doesn’t make any sense!”

The door slammed shut behind them.

In the guest room, Cloud mumbled something, burrowed deeper under the covers, and continued sleeping.

Several floors down, Sephiroth was having something of a crisis as he stared at the innocent-looking vial of theoretically-just-water in his hand. Every test was coming back with the exact same assessment: water. Normal, pure, neutral pH water. No additives. Only the barest traces of the usual minerals that drinking water contained. He stared into it, taking in the completely normal way it refracted the light across his black glove, and willed it to reveal its secrets.

Sephiroth knew the placebo effect was real and powerful, but it relied on the subject actually believing the placebo material had an effect. Genesis certainly hadn’t believed so, and even if he had a placebo couldn’t cure something like a wound that refused to heal. Get rid of the pain, maybe, but actually close a flesh wound in seconds? No.

Impossible. Purely and utterly impossible.

So there had to be something in the vial that the standard tests were missing. There was an answer here, an anomaly, and Sephiroth was going to find it. He tucked the vial back in his coat pocket and pulled out his PHS. It would take some research first to compile an appropriate list of less-common tests to run, but with the right preparation it wouldn’t be long until he solved this infuriating mystery and finally got the answers he, Genesis, and Angeal all sorely needed.

Bonus:

Chapter Text

Kunsel liked Zack a lot. Really, he did. Zack was kind, and friendly, and—dare he say it—downright honorable. He was one of the few who really took Commander Hewley’s speeches to heart. Zack was that rare kind of SOLDIER Kunsel could see becoming a real, true hero one day. So yeah, it was fair to say Kunsel liked Zack a lot, and considered him to be his closest friend.

That didn’t stop Zack from being one of the most headache-inducing people Kunsel had ever met.

“KUNS!” Zack hollered, bursting into his room without so much as a warning knock. Kunsel, who’d already been running around fielding multiple requests from Zack throughout the day (it wasn’t like he was going to say no when the guy’s friend had miraculously returned from being KIA) barely twitched.

“What is it?” he asked, watching the CCTV feed on his laptop. Hewley was chasing Rhapsodos through the Tower with obvious homicidal intent. It was almost enough to make up for how stressful the day had been.

Zack slammed himself onto the bed with all the force of an enhanced teenager high on adrenaline. Lucky they made SOLDIER furniture sturdy, or he definitely would have snapped the frame. “I need your help to steal Cloudy,” Zack said urgently, blowing his bangs out of his face.

“No,” he said without looking up.

“But we have to! And fast!” He reached over and yanked Kunsel’s helmet off, ignoring the irritated scowl Kunsel shot him. “Genesis forced Lazard to make Cloud his apprentice! We’ve gotta get him out!”

Kunsel blinked in surprise. He was the one with the extensive network of contacts, but even he hadn’t heard that particular bit of news. “What? Who told you that?”

Zack’s pleading, puppy-dog expression eased a little. “Miranda.”

“Miranda?”

“You know, Lazard’s secretary. We’re friends.”

“You’re friends with a seventy-year-old woman?”

“Yeah.”

That did seem like something Zack would do. Kunsel sighed. “Okay, well—don’t we want this? Isn’t that a good thing? Won’t Cloud be, I don’t know, a stabilizing force for Genesis?”

Zack looked outraged at the mere suggestion. “No way am I leaving Cloudy in Genesis’s grubby little overdramatic crimson mitts! He’d—he’d corrupt him!”

Kunsel sighed again and—oh look, the headache was back! Wonderful. “Zack. How are we supposed to sneak him out from under the Commanders’ noses, anyway?”

“No, that’s the easy part!” he said, perking up. “I saw Angeal chasing Genesis around the Tower on my way here, and Angeal was really mad, Like, three-hour-long-lecture type mad. We’ve got plenty of time to sneak up, get Cloud, and stash him here until he wakes up! Then we can get him out of the Tower and safely to...you know.”

“Zack…”

“Please. Please, Kuns, he’s a good kid. He doesn’t deserve this. He’s already been science’d.”

Ah fuck, he really meant it. Kunsel, like most people, was helpless in the face of Zack’s full-intensity puppy eyes. In a last ditch effort to save his own ass, he looked back at the CCTV feed. Rhapsodos went down hard as Hewley tackled him, and their chase devolved into a grapple. Zack was right—they did have plenty of time.

“...fine. Fine!” he said, giving in to the inevitable.

Zack whooped in victory, pumping his fist. Kunsel pushed him off the bed with one foot.

He hit the tile with a very satisfying thud.

Shockingly (or maybe not so shockingly, considering the past few months), Zack was right. They literally just waltzed up to Angeal’s apartment and Zack opened the door using his spare keycard. Kunsel followed him in, shutting the front door noiselessly as Zack made a beeline for the guest room. Cloud was dead asleep, curled up so that only the wild golden spikes of his hair poked out from under the blankets.

Kunsel suppressed a reflexive grin at the sight. No wonder Zack talked so much about how adorable his friend was, the kid really did look like a fluffy chocobo chick.

“Cloudy, Cloudy, Cloudy,” Zack chanted in a whisper, pulling the covers back. “I gotcha, we’re gonna get you out of here.”

Cloud grumbled at the sudden cold and curled up tighter. Without the covers, Kunsel was able to see a scrawny but alarmingly enhanced fourteen-year-old physique. The numerous, silvery lines of scars weren’t lost on him either.

“What’s your plan to get him out unseen, Zack?” Kunsel whispered, and waited for the fallout of his pointed question.

Zack froze, arms already beneath Cloud to pick him up. His eyes went comically wide. “Oh. Uh...shit.”

“Yeah,” Kunsel agreed dryly, relaxing. Maybe now Zack would give up on his harebrained scheme and—

Zack stood, picking Cloud up like he weighed nothing, and hefted him a little in assessment. His expression was alarmingly thoughtful and Kunsel felt his spine go rigid on instinct. Oh no.

“Kuns,” said Zack, “empty out that duffle bag.”

The same large black duffle bag Kunsel had filled with Cloud’s reclaimed possessions earlier was sitting on the floor by the foot of the bag. Kunsel looked at it. Kunsel looked back at Zack.

“You are not serious.”

Zack looked back at him without blinking. Cloud snored softly into Zack’s neck, which really completed the surreal ambiance.

“Zack.”

Blink. Blink. Blink.

Kunsel threw his hands up. “Gods, fine! But it isn’t going to work!”

“Sure it is,” said Zack, insufferably smug. “Not the first time I’ve done it.”

“You—what?”

“Look, it was a weird time, you know that. Now c’mon, hurry up before ‘Geal finishes strangling Genesis.”

Grumbling to himself, Kunsel emptied the duffle and shoved all the extra clothes into a pile. Together, the two of them managed to get Cloud inside the bag (real travel-sized, that kid). Most of the clothes in the pile were stuffed around the bag’s edges so that it wouldn’t be immediately evident they were smuggling person.

What the actual fuck had Kunsel’s life become.

“Lets go!” Zack whispered, pulling the bag’s strap over his head and standing. The bag definitely looked heavy where it hung by his hip, but it at least wasn’t immediately apparent what was inside. That would have to be good enough.

They left the apartment together, Kunsel as cool as a cucumber and Zack twitchy as an anxious squirrel. Kunsel didn’t bother telling him to calm down and look relaxed. He didn’t think the guy had it in him. If luck was on their side, they would make it back to his apartment without anyone—

Sephiroth came striding down the hall and did an honest-to-god double-take when he saw them.

Fuck, fucking godsdamned shit son of a bitch—!

Zack stiffened like he’d been electrocuted. Kunsel slipped into position so that his body was blocking the General’s view of the duffle bag. He snapped off a salute. “Sir!” he said, and Zack had the good sense to quickly echo him.

Sephiroth was not in the least bit fooled. Kunsel could see it in the puzzled set of his brow and the suspicious slant of his mouth. The part of him that wasn’t screaming internally noted that the general looked way more frazzled than normal. He filed that fact away for later.

“At ease,” Sephiroth said, looking at them hard. “Where are you coming from?”

“N—” started Zack, and cut off when Kunsel stomped on the side of his boot.

“Dropping off some things in Commander Hewley’s apartment, sir,” he said evenly.

Sephiroth was silent for a moment, the bulk of his weighty attention resting on Zack. “Dropping things off,” he echoed, voice sliding into a lower, almost predatory register. It was a subtle shift, but it made Kunsel sweat nervously. Oh, they were so busted.

“Yessir.”

“I see. Then, tell me: what is in that bag on your shoulder, Zack?”

Lie, Zack, lie! Kunsel thought frantically. For the love of all that is holy, play dumb and we might still get out of this unskewered!

“Who’s Zack?” Zack blurt out.

NOT THAT DUMB!

But then— then, the gods smiled upon them. Because Zack’s statement was so bewildering, so nonsensical, so unexpected and inexplicable, that the General completely blanked. Like a temporary death in the face of such overwhelming stupidity, Kunsel watched as his eyes went blank and unfocused.

And that was their chance.

“Run!” Kunsel hissed, shoving Zack in the opposite direction. There was an emergency stairwell nearby with odd acoustics. If they got into it, ran down a floor, jumped three or so, and then ran one more, even Sephiroth wouldn’t be able to tell with surety which floor they were on. Then they could exit the stairwell, swap to another stairwell, and run a circuitous route out of the Tower. They were already busted, but they could at least get Cloud out.

Zack gave up on all pretenses and hefted the duffle up into his arms before bolting. Despite not carrying anything, Kunsel struggled to keep up, which was...worrying. He knew Zack had been effected, but he’d promised to be careful not to make it obvious. Until now, at least.

On the bright side, even Sephiroth would have trouble keeping up like this, which was more than Kunsel had been anticipating.

They burst into the emergency stairwell at full speed, Sephiroth following behind after a short but crucial delay. Kunsel pushed himself hard enough to grab a handful of Zack’s shirt, conveying his directions through silent yanking.

“FAIR!” Sephiroth yelled, voice echoing ominously.

We’re gonna die, Kunsel thought morosely, flashing Zack a quick hand signal before leaping over the railing and into the void between the stairs. They moved in near synchrony, bouncing back and forth between railings down three flights before jumping back onto solid ground. Even with his arms full, Zack didn’t falter.

“FAIR, STOP!” Sephiroth thundered. To no one’s surprise, Zack did the exact opposite of that, picking up the pace again as he abruptly abandoned the stairs to shoulder the door open hard enough to crumple the push-bar. Kunsel stopped long enough to pull the door completely shut before he took off again.

Even that brief pause was long enough that Zack had already disappeared around a corner, startled ShinRa staff scattered in his wake. Luckily they’d already discussed this—that is, their plans on how to get out of the Tower at speed if the worst happened. Kunsel knew where he was going. He took a shortcut through one of the lounges and managed to catch up with Zack just before he hit the second stairwell.

“What took you!” Zack said.

“Covering your ass, that’s what!” Kunsel fired back, and Zack laughed. 

It was lucky no one liked using the stairs even on the best of days. They flew down three at a time, nary a pursuing footstep to be heard.

“We’re getting you outta here, buddy!” Zack promised Cloud-in-the-duffle, who somehow still hadn’t woken up despite all the yelling and jumping. “Just a little—”

His statement cut off with a startled gasp. Kunsel barely avoided slamming into him and sending them both ass-over-teakettle as Zack came to a hard stop, boots rasping over the metal grating of the floor.

Commander Hewley was standing at the bottom of the flight they were on, arms crossed and an unimpressed look on his face. “Zack,” he sighed, and Kunsel had to give it to him—he really had the dad-voice down pat.

Zack and Kunsel, still in sync, looked over the railing to judge the odds of jumping for it. Commander Rhapsodos waved jauntily from his perch one floor below, legs crossed as if he wasn’t sitting on a narrow railing. “Trying to steal my new apprentice, are we?” he asked.

Zack’s expression tightened with defensive anger.

“Genesis, you’re not helping,” Angeal said, voice thick with annoyance. He turned his attention back to the younger SOLDIERs. “Zack. Did you seriously put your friend in a duffle bag.”

“...no,” said Zack, hugging the bag closer to himself.

Angeal gave him a flat look. “Oh? Then what’s in it?”

“My uh, new chocobo plushie.”

Below them, Genesis burst out in startled laughter. “He does look like a chocobo with all that wild golden plumage, doesn’t he?” the Commander said gleefully.

“Genesis,” snapped Angeal, pinching the bridge of his nose. “Zack, please, be serious. I can hear him snoring.”

Zack edged away from Angeal a little, chin tucked down. Kunsel felt a frisson of alarm at the hunted look that was slowly intensifying in his eyes. “It’s a very, uh, realistic plushie. That you definitely don’t need to see.”

Angeal paused, a kind of confusion growing on his face. When he spoke again, his voice had softened. “It’s...Zack, no one is going to hurt Cloud.”

Zack narrowed his eyes. “You don’t know that,” he said, also soft, but deadly serious.

Now Angeal was starting to look as alarmed as Kunsel felt. He opened his mouth. Shut it. Seemed to search for words that wouldn’t come as the tension built. Zack’s shoulders drew up higher and higher with each moment that passed in silence. Kunsel got ready to do...something. How the tension would break, he didn’t know. But he did know it would be ug— 

“Buh. S’at?” said the duffle bag groggily. 

Instantly, Zack’s demeanor flipped. “Oh shit, sorry, buddy,” he said, shifting his hold to one arm in a feat of SOLDIER dexterity and strength. With his free hand, he unzipped the bag. Out popped Cloud, bleary-eyed and confused, shedding laundry like loose feathers. He looked around, blinking heavily, until his eyes settled on Zack and lit up with recognition and...awe?

Something intense, at least. Kunsel wasn’t entirely sure what he was looking at. 

“...Zack?” Cloud said. “What’re you doing here?” Then he seemed to realize what position he was in. “Why’m I in a bag?”

And Zack simply burst out laughing, though there was a watery edge to it, and half dropped Cloud into a proper hug (if proper hugs included having his feet dangling a foot off the floor). “Sorry, buddy, it’s uh—it’s a long story,” he said, face buried in Cloud’s shoulder. “I’m really happy to hear your voice again.” His voice was shaking. Kunsel quashed the impulse to politely look away.

“We’re—we’re friends?” Cloud asked, eyes wide and startled.

Zack groaned. “Is this about the SOLDIER/trooper thing again?” he asked, raising his head. He let Cloud drop to the floor, bare feet on rough metal grating, in favor of setting his hands on the blond’s shoulders. “I told you before and I’ll say it a million times: you don’t have to be a SOLDIER to be friends with me! Okay?”

Cloud looked at him with huge eyes for several long seconds. “O-oh. Okay. I guess I forgot? I’m glad to hear you again too, Zack.” He blinked hard, then ducked forward and thumped his forehead against the SOLDIER’s chest. Zack folded him up in his arms and ducked his head, folding around the blond like a living shield. They both sniffled suspiciously.

“How touching,” Genesis said dryly, leaping up to join the party. “Well, Angeal, I suppose that resolved itself, hmm?”

“Genesis,” said Angeal with an eerie kind of calm, “I can and will suplex you again.”

Chapter Text

Cloud was…a little bit confused. Mostly happy, because it was impossible not to be happy when Zack was there and real and alive, but still. Confused. He’d been so sure he knew where he was in the timeline—after all, hadn’t he managed to get to Rhapsodos in time?

But he was pretty sure that he and Zack weren’t supposed to have met yet, much less have become friends.

Did I forget when we became friends? he wondered at Zack-voice, face still mashed into the center of real-Zack’s knit top. He smelled familiar. Safe. So much so, and after so long of being on the knife-edge of danger, that Cloud found himself melting into his lost friend like butter on a hot stove.

Did I forget when we became friends? Zack-voice responded, wailing in anguish, and if he’d been something other than a questionably-real voice in Cloud’s brain he would have been dramatically clutching handfuls of his hair. Spiky! I’ve failed you! Again!

You could never fail me, Zack. As if able to sense his thoughts, real Zack brought a hand up to cradle the back of his head as he curled around him protectively.

Oh—wait, maybe that had something to do with Sephiroth’s sudden and unexpected presence.

“You didn’t drink the water!” Cloud said immediately, wiggling around in Zack’s grip just enough to look at the man and point an accusing finger. Sephiroth blinked at him, as if surprised, and for a split second he doubted himself. Wait, we did give him the water, right? Cloud double-checked with his voices.

Yeah, said himself-as-Zack and Zack-voice. We definitely did, Tifa-voice agreed.

“Yeah, you didn’t drink the water!” Cloud repeated, pointing harder. If he had drank the healing water, Cloud wouldn’t be able to sense his presence any more. But he could sense it, and that meant Sepiroth hadn’t drunk the water he’d worked so hard to get.

“Water?” said real-Zack, chest rumbling. “What water?”

“The same water he gave me earlier,” said Genesis, and Cloud jolted in surprise at his voice. Angeal and Kunsel of all people were there too. It was a real party huh?

Pay attention, Tifa scolded. He missed whatever Genesis said, but that reminded him. He had things to do if he wanted everyone to make it out alive.

Cloud carefully squirmed out of Zack’s grip, offering him a consoling pat on the arm when he seemed reluctant to let go. “Drink the water,” he told Sephiroth again, glancing around at his surroundings. Stairwell, floor 36, west side of the Tower. Perfect. Why was there laundry on the floor? That seemed a little weird, even for Shinra. “Seriously. I want it to be gone when I’m done.”

“Done with wh—?”

Cloud hopped the railing and plunged straight down into the void between the stairs. Startled cries followed him, including Zack’s, which hurt to hear, but he couldn’t stop. Not yet. He still had things to do if he wanted to make sure Zack didn’t get gunned down by the Infantry.

Then again, Cloud had already been gunned down by the ShinRa Infantry in this go-around. Maybe that would be enough to satisfy destiny.

Angeal was worried. Angeal was worried about everyone at this point. Cloud was erratic and only marginally more coherent than before. Zack was suddenly behaving like a cornered dog. Genesis was keeping secrets, and now was so giddy with the resolution of said secrets that he was sowing shameless chaos. Sephiroth was hypothetically suffering something similar to what had plagued Genesis.

Kunsel...Angeal didn’t know what was going on with Kunsel, but he was willing to bet there was something to be worried about.

Cloud and Zack were in their own world as Sephiroth came running down the stairs to join the impromptu little intervention. His eyes swept over them quickly, narrowing slightly when he saw the muted smugness of Genesis's expression. Even a split-second assessment was enough for him to tell that Genesis had done something. They’d known each other for too long not to.

“Seph,” Angeal greeted tiredly, one hand against his temple.

Zack moved, curling around his little trooper friend and putting his own body between him and Sephiroth. And again, his eyes held a strange, haunted kind of wariness that made Angeal’s stomach go cold. Where had he learned that? And why directed at Sephiroth?

Cloud, for his part, didn’t seem to notice anything at all.

“You got my message,” Sephiroth observed, coming to a stop on the landing where they were all gathered.

“We did, thank you,” Angeal said, nodding. Zack’s expression twisted with betrayal, one hand coming up to cover the back of Cloud’s head. Angeal sighed when he saw it, somewhere between impatient and worried. “Zack—”

He was cut off when Cloud suddenly snapped one hand up, pointing unerringly at Sephiroth, and declared (half muffled in Zack’s chest) “you didn’t drink the water!”

Everyone paused, blinking in surprise at that. Sehpiroth, in particular, took on a very strange expression. “How did you—?”

But Cloud seemed to be lost in his own world again, not hearing Sephiroth’s trailing question. After a worrying delay, he finally snapped back to reality and pointed again. “Yeah, you didn’t drink the water!”

Shiva, that kid definitely needed to go back to sleep for a day or five. He probably needed more food too. Angeal mentally tripled his grocery list.

“Water?” Zack asked, bewildered. “What water?”

Genesis, who looked very entertained by all of this, hummed in amusement and crossed one ankle over the other as he leaned back against the handrail. “The same water he gave me earlier,” he reminded Zack. Cloud jolted in Zack’s arms, twisted around to see Genesis and Angeal. He looked surprised, blinking huge blue eyes still underscored by dark circles.

Oh yeah. He definitely needed to go back to sleep. Angeal wondered if he would just pass out standing up given enough time.

“Now, what is that look for, little bird?” Genesis asked, amusement ratcheting up a notch. Cloud didn’t seem to hear him as he squirmed free of Zack’s protective grip and patted his friend on the shoulder. “Drink the water,” he told Sephiroth sternly, and he was so serious with his bare feet and short stature and sleep-mussed hair compared to the tall, composed, adult Sephiroth that it made for a very comedic picture.

But, despite the comedic juxtaposition, there was something about the way he glanced around as he spoke that made Angeal’s spine go rigid—despite his seeming dazed state, and his disconnect from reality, his eyes were sharp and focused. “Seriously. I want it to be gone when I’m done,” he added.

Sephiroth looked incredulous. “Done with wh—?”

Cloud jumped the rail.

“CLOUD!” Zack shrieked, lunging to follow as the rest of them yelled in surprise at the sudden leap. Angeal intercepted him on reflex, wrapping an arm around his student’s waist and yanking him back. Sephiroth ended up being the first to jump, flying gracefully down into the void between the stairs in pursuit, and Genesis followed on his coattails with a loud, delighted laugh. 

“Let me go!” Zack shouted, struggling. Angeal, realizing there was no reason to stop him— indeed, he needed to follow his fellow Firsts too—let Zack go. He jumped. Kunsel had also vanished, though not directly after Cloud. Where he’d gone, Angeal hadn’t seen. With a short, frustrated sigh, Angeal jumped too.

He was surprised, though maybe he shouldn’t have been, that they were all forced to chase after Cloud at full speed. He couldn’t see the kid’s bright head of hair anywhere below him, only Zack following the distant forms of Genesis and Sephiroth. By the time he hit the ground floor and burst out into the anteroom before the atrium proper, Zack had vanished and Genesis and Sephiroth were arguing.

“You were in the lead! How could you possibly lose him!”

“In the same manner you lost him, Genesis,” Sephiroth snapped back, irritated. “You were not that far behind me. You saw and heard as well as I did that he vanished.”

“What?” Angeal asked incredulously, coming to a stop beside his friends. “You lost the kid?” They’d lost a barefoot, barely-coherent, sleep-deprived teenager? In less than three minutes? “Where’d Zack go?”

“Out the front door,” Genesis said, no longer amused by the situation. He jerked his chin in the general direction. Angeal took off again, jogging through the sparse late-evening crowds of ShinRa employees toward the front entrance. He could see Zack running back and forth just outside through the polished glass of the doors.

A flash of bright gold reflected in that same glass caught his eye. He paused, turning his head up and around to see—

“You’ve gotta be kidding me,” he groaned. Cloud, somehow without anyone else in the lobby noticing, was hopping from light fixture to light fixture as casually as if he was using a trail of stones to cross a river. Angeal picked up his pace, sprinting after the kid just as he hopped from the last fixture and onto the third floor. “How did you even get up there?” he muttered to himself, giving up on subtlety to leap from the handrail along the side of the open stairway and ascend to the third floor in a few powerful jumps.

It wasn’t exactly the first time a SOLDIER had performed such feats around the Tower. Most of the employees just moved out of his way with mildly annoyed chuffs. 

He got to the third floor just in time to see Cloud vanish down a hallway that he knew was a dead end. “Oh thank Shiva. Kid! Cloud!” He sprinted down the hallway, skidding to a confused halt when he couldn’t see the teenager anywhere. “What—?” Methodically, he checked each of the rooms that lined the hallway, including the bathrooms. He even double-checked that the only window hadn’t been opened and, in fact, couldn’t be opened at all without ripping the entire housing from the wall.

And all that effort left him baffled, standing in the middle of a dead-end hallway, scratching the back of his head.

Cloud had vanished, seemingly into thin air. 

“Next time I see that kid I’m going to stick a homing device on him,” he muttered, pinching the bridge of his nose and heaving a sigh. Well, nothing for it. He pulled out his PHS and fired off a text to Genesis, Sephiroth, and Zack. If they were going to find Cloud, it would take a much more coordinated, and far wider, effort than running aimlessly around the Tower.

It was time for another meeting.

Cloud slithered through the vents, humming quietly to himself. Explosions Plan, Explosions Plan…

He’d already forgotten entirely about the SOLDIERs who’d been chasing after him. Actually, he hadn’t much noticed them following in the first place. All the voices in his head were in agreement on the Explosions Plan. First they needed to get down into the Labs, then they needed to use— 

Cloud paused suddenly, going still, and scowled as he let his forehead thunk down against the bottom of the vent. Ah shit! I forgot the materia.

The voices went quiet as they, too, realized the massive oversight. Cloud didn’t have any of his usual gear—actually, he had even less than what he’d had before. He didn’t even have shoes. His bare toes wiggled against the cold metal.

Knights of the Round would be nice, Zack said wistfully.

We don’t want to bring the whole Tower down, Tifa scolded. Not yet, at least. Phoenix?

Phoenix for one, Hades for the other, Cloud-as-Zack voice mused.

Cloud frowned into the metal his face was mashed against. We have to go get them first. So it has to be something we can actually find quick.

Everyone was silent for a little bit, thinking. Crossing continents was just too much, but the summon also needed to be pretty damn powerful to pull off the Explosions Plan.

A quiet, hesitant voice that Cloud hadn’t heard before piped up. What...what about Commander Rhapsodos’s summon materia?

Cloud’s head shot up. ME?

He got the impression of the voice shrinking back with wide, startled eyes.

You’re me! Different me? Cloud paused, thinking hard. His heart plummeted. Oh, shit. You’re...small me, aren’t you?

Maybe, Small Cloud said, so quiet that his voice would have been lost beneath the others if they’d tried to speak. It’s hard to tell where you start and I end.

Cloud’s heart ached. Shit, kid...I’m sorry.

Why are you sorry? Small Cloud asked, puzzled. We’re saving the world! I got to meet Sephiroth! We’re a total badass! This is the coolest thing ever!

Yeah, but...you were awake for your own execution.

...we were EXECUTED?

Cloud froze. Uhhhhhhh...you know what, let’s not think about that right now. What was that about Genesis’s materia?

Small Cloud felt spooked, but also...faint. If anyone has the most powerful summons, it’s him, he said. I...think I’m gonna go to sleep now. I’m tired.

Wait, no don’t sleep! Cloud said, eyes going wide with alarm. Gods, what if he never woke up again?

It’s okay, Small Cloud reassured him, even fainter. I’ve spent most of my time asleep. I just...don’t...talk...much…when I’m...awake... His presence faded away into the back of Cloud’s head. Now that he’d felt it, he could tell where it was against the rest of the churning chaos.

...well, said Tifa.

She couldn’t seem to find any words to elaborate beyond that.

No one else could either.

OKAY, LET'S GO STEAL FROM GENESIS! Zack finally declared, loudly.

YEAH! everyone agreed, and Cloud squirmed around to head in the opposite direction. First up, then over, and—oh yeah, they’d been chasing him earlier hadn’t they? So they probably wouldn’t be in their apartments for a bit. Hopefully that meant easy pickings, but if Genesis kept the good summons on his person, then Cloud would adjust the plan and take them directly.

Shouldn’t be hard. He’d already pulled off a surprise assault once, right?

Chapter Text

Something was off.

Hojo could feel it—he could smell it in the air, like the first whiff of burning plastic in a failing centrifuge, or rotting flesh on a dying specimen. Something was off. 

Tapping his lips, he mentally reviewed all of his ongoing projects. Nothing stood out. There were strange reports about Subject S’s behavior today, but that seemed to be spurred mostly by the buffoonery of his inferior companions. Word hadn’t come in yet from Hojo’s Restrictors about stealing that girl for Deepground, but it was a delicate bit of sabotage and there was time yet. None of his remote J sample repositories or cell culture banks were returning imperfect readings.

So what was off?

“You,” he said, snapping his fingers at one of the underlings scurrying around his lab. Dr. R-something or other, he thought. She jolted, launching the clipboard in her hands out of shock, but her voice was admirably even when she spoke and she caught the clipboard before it got very far.

Good. Hojo would have added her to his specimen list if she’d actually dropped it.

“Yes, Professor?”

“Get me all the security footage involving Sephiroth from today,” he said. “I want to review it myself.”

“Yes, Professor,” she said, and hurried off to get it.

Hojo sat back in his chair and crossed one ankle over his knee, considering. He would sniff out whatever was bothering him, one way or another. If it was with Subject S, he would call the boy in for an examination. If not…there were other agents he had at his disposal.

Nothing—and no one—could hide from him for very long.

The SOLDIERs reconvened in (read: Angeal dragged them all to) Sephiroth’s apartment. Zack was the hardest to convince, but once Angeal told him about Cloud’s disappearing act, he visibly wilted and let Angeal herd him along, though he typed furiously on his PHS the entire way, guarding the screen jealously to make sure none of the SOLDIERs could see it.

Angeal’s concern climbed one notch higher, then two, when he noticed the positively predatory gleam in Gen’s eye as he watched Zack. He grimaced. So much for keeping his apprentice clear of the Genesis Mystery Theater.

“Okay,” Angeal said forcefully as soon as the door to the apartment had shut, “enough is enough. Zack, what exactly possessed you to put your friend in a duffle bag and try to smuggle him down to your rooms?”

Zack looked away and crossed his arms, standing near the door even while Genesis and Sephiroth took seats on the couch.

“Zackary Fair,” Angeal snapped, patience wearing dangerously thin. “This is serious! Not only is your friend not well, but there could have been serious repercussions if he’d been further injured during your little stunt, and not just for you! As Genesis’s—” he ground his teeth, glaring at the man in question “— apprentice, he comes under an extra layer of scrutiny and—”

He finally had Zack’s attention, as his head whipped up and he looked wide-eyed at his mentor, realization dawning. “His apprentice —” 

“Yes, my apprentice, what about him?” Genesis interrupted, smug and possessive as he watched Zack’s every move. What does that knowledge inspire in you, hmm? his eyes seemed to ask.

The answer was homicide. “YOU!” Zack said, and went for the kill.

“Will you both stop!” Angeal snarled, just barely saving Genesis from his second grapple that day by catching Zack in a hold under his arms. Genesis would have deserved it if he’d let go, but they had more immediate problems. “Now is not the time, we have an unstable SOLDIER gone AWOL!”

“He’s going to corrupt my Cloudy!” Zack hollered in outrage, squirming like a tantruming toddler in Angeal’s grip.

“I do believe he’s now legally my ‘Cloudy,’” Genesis said smugly.

Angeal toed off one boot just enough that when he kicked his leg, the boot went sailing across the room and straight into Genesis’s face. His friend (yes, his friend, they were still friends, even if Angeal had to remind himself of that) went “ACK—!” as his head snapped to the side.

Zack was too busy steaming with rage in Angeal’s grip to be placated, making incoherent, high-pitched…threats? Angeal thought they might have been intended as threats.

For once in his life, Sephiroth looked openly entertained.

“AnGEAL—” Genesis started, but Angeal was having none of it.

“So help me I will shred your first edition,” he threatened, and Genesis gasped, one hand going to his chest.

“That seems a touch harsh,” Sephiroth said mildly, hiding the upturned corners of his lips behind his glove. “What did the book do to deserve such a fate?”

“It consorted with an idiot who doesn’t know when to shut up, that’s what,” Angeal ground out. 

Zack, still thoroughly pinned, finally calmed down enough to go limp, breathing hard. The heat of his glare remained scorching. Genesis scowled back at him, rubbing at the boot marks on his cheek.

“Are we all prepared to act like adults now?” Angeal asked, sweeping his own glare around the room. Sephiroth just raised his hands placatingly, but Zack nodded and Genesis rolled his eyes viciously, which was as close to an agreement as they were going to get. He exhaled hard and finally let Zack go. “Good.”

Stiffly, Zack sat as far away from everyone as he could manage. Angeal opted for the tactical position and sat down directly between his student and Genesis, in case of another murder attempt. “Okay. Thank you. Zack, please just tell me why you were smuggling Cloud out, alright? I thought we agreed that he would be safest in my apartment. I want to know what you were thinking.”

Zack looked down at his hands. One of them was still holding the PHS. “I…”

Genesis opened his mouth when the silence stretched. Angeal reached pointedly for the pocket where he knew Gen kept a copy of LOVELESS at all times. Genesis leaned back and shut his mouth with a sharp click.

“I said I would make sure he stayed out of Science. Do you not trust me to keep my word, Zack?” Angeal asked, unable to stop the subtle notes of confusion and hurt from entering his voice.

Zack looked up at him. “Would you?” he asked quietly, and with a deadly seriousness that Angeal just couldn’t understand. Where had it come from? “If Hojo and the President demanded that you hand Cloud over to Science, would you?”

And this was all…starting to border dangerously on treason. But why? Sure, Shinra might have been behind this—Gen and Seph both seemed to think it was a possibility, at least—but why would Zack assume that? He was an eternal optimist. He loved SOLDIER, and Shinra by extension. And anyway, Angeal and Genesis (and maybe Seph) owed Cloud huge personal debts, if Genesis was to be believed about the severity of his mystery disease. Of course he wouldn’t just toss the kid aside.

“Of course not, Zack,” he said, and meant it. “I would never just hand Cloud over. But it won’t come to that, as long as we’re all smart about this. That’s exactly the reason I was trying to keep Cloud under the radar.” Unlike somebody I know, he thought, tossing a glare at Genesis.

And Zack…believed him. Angeal watched as a light seemed to bloom in his eyes, some unknown hope rekindled for reasons Angeal couldn’t even begin to understand. He didn’t know how he’d lost his student’s faith—he hadn’t even realized he had— but the sight of it returning made his throat feel a little tighter than it had any right to be.

“I would burn Shinra to the ground for much less than all this,” Genesis said casually, which kind of killed the mood.

“I check my apartment for bugs regularly,” Sephiroth said, “but nonetheless I would advise you to be a bit less cavalier about admitting such things.”

“Pish,” Genesis responded, waving a hand. “As if they don’t know that about me already.”

Angeal sighed and put his head in his hands.

Materia, Cloud thought happily, trotting down the corridor on his bare feet, shedding dust as he went. Explosions plan, gonna explode all the bad stuff before it gets too bad…

He stopped in front of Rhapsodos’s door, triple checking with Zack, and him-as-Zack, and Tifa to make sure they were in the right place. They all agreed, so he popped the cover off the locking mechanism, then pried the panel next to it off the wall and set about getting his hands deep into the guts of the electronics. After a few minutes of fiddling, the door beeped and unlocked.

You know the Turks are gonna see this eventually, right? him-as-Zack said.

Cloud waved a hand, replacing the panel and the lock cover before he slipped inside and shut the door behind him. There’s no way Explosions Plan is gonna happen without them seeing me anyway, so we’re all going to get the hell out of dodge. Besides, we have to go do Operation Raccoon right after.

I don’t know why you let Zack name it, him-as-Zack sighed, but then Cloud caught sight of Rhapsodos’s materia cabinet and all other thoughts went right out the window. Had he been slightly more cogent, he would have noticed that he was drooling a little bit.

“Oooh, small me, you’re a genius,” he said, prowling up to it hungrily. Rows of materia glinted from behind reinforced panels of glass. He examined the lock. “Yuf don’t fail me now,” he muttered, and pulled a stiff wire out from the wild tangles of his hair to set about picking it.

“HA!” he crowed when it popped open. He kissed the wire, offered up a thank you to Yuffie, and put it back into his hair.

If that lock had been even a little bit higher quality that wouldn’t have worked, Tifa-voice warned him. 

“I know,” he muttered in response, pawing quickly through the orbs to find what he needed. “But—shit! None of the summons we need are here!” There was only a Shiva and an Ifrit. He needed a Bahamut at minimum. Phoenix and Hades would be ideal, but he wasn’t sure if anyone in Shinra had those at the moment. Things were still pretty damn swimmy in his memory for big events, never mind little details. And Zack had already defied his expectations—who knew what else he’d forgotten?

I bet Genesis has Bahamut on him, Zack speculated.

Cloud took his pick of the materia, slipping them into his pockets, before he locked the cabinet back up. Let’s go get it off him, then. Sneakily! We can do it, Yuffie and Vincent knew what they were teaching me.

And if it doesn’t work we can just punch him for it, him-as-Zack voice reasoned, and that sounded like a pretty solid plan to Cloud.

Let’s mosey!

“I want to get Cloud far away where no one can touch him,” Zack said bluntly. “He helped you out, so you should help him out too.” He glared at Genesis.

Angeal kicked Genesis before he could open his mouth and inevitably make things worse. “Zack, it’s not that simple. Even before Cloud was put back in the system as a SOLDIER, it wouldn’t have been easy to get him somewhere unnoticed. Shinra is everywhere. He would have been noticed eventually.”

“There are some places,” Zack said, but he looked down at the space between his shoes and misery clouded his expression. “I would have figured it out.”

“We are getting ahead of ourselves,” Sephiroth interjected. “We first need to find Strife before we can do anything to help him. Preferably, we should find him before Hojo takes notice.”

Zack’s mouth twisted with disgust. “I would join Genesis in burning Shinra to the ground before I let that creep touch Cloud a—” He cut off abruptly.

Genesis looked keenly interested, and Sephiroth also sat up and took notice. Had Zack been about to say again?

Angeal snapped his fingers to get everyone’s attention. “Focus,” he said. There were too many questions, and not enough answers. As soon as they got sidetracked interrogating Zack, they would fall into a spiral of ‘four new questions for every anwer’ and never get out. “We need to find Cloud.”

“I can easily access most of the security cameras around the Tower,” Sephiroth said.

“You all find him,” Genesis said, standing. “And I will gather a few things to make sure he stays found.”

“Gen—” Angeal started

“The hell do you mean by that?” Zack demanded, hackles rising.

Genesis waved a hand even as he moved to leave. “Relax, puppy,” he cooed. “Just materia. My Seal and my Time, perhaps. Nothing that would harm my apprentice.”

He stopped abruptly in front of the door and made an inquisitive sound. “Mmh?” He looked over his shoulder at the three of them, a very strange look in his eyes as a smirk slowly pulled up the corner of his lips. “Ah. Or, perhaps—” he said, projecting his voice.

He yanked open the door and lept to the side. A short blond blur streaked in through the door, yelling in surprise when he missed his target and went tumbling ass-over-teakettle onto Sephiroth’s carpet. The very AWOL teenager they’d been talking about finding landed on his back and blinked up at Genesis like a startled cat.

“—I needn’t after all!” Genesis finished, slamming and locking the door. He even went so far as to block it with his body. “There you are, apprentice. I have so many questions for you.” He grinned, predatory. “And this time you’re going to answer.”

Chapter Text

Cloud was surprised when he missed tackling Genesis and went tumbling onto the carpet instead. Rats, he thought.

Ambush failed, him-as-Zack and Zack voice said in gleeful unison. Punch him!

They barely had a moment to blink at the boy lying prone on the ground before he was up and moving again. His form was startlingly fluid and controlled, a master class in understanding one’s body and it’s limits. He took Genesis down with the same precision he’d used to pour the healing water down his throat. They rolled into a grapple on Sephiroth’s floor.

“EEP!” said Genesis, somehow not expecting this.

Angeal sighed, longsuffering, and grabbed Zack to keep him from intervening. Sephiroth calmly stood up and got between their quarry and the door.

“Give, give, give,” Cloud chanted under his breath as he managed to both grapple Genesis and frisk him for…something. “Need it for— AHA!” He sat back, one foot on Genesis’s face and the other knee pinning his torso. He held a materia orb aloft in triumph.

“Mf mfmra!” said Genesis, which probably meant my materia!

“OH-kay,” Angeal said, apparently deciding that stopping an unstable SOLDIER with high-level summon materia was far more pressing than restraining his apprentice. He let go of Zack and quickly moved to confiscate the materia. “Cloud—”

Cloud whipped around to point at Sephiroth. “Drink the water!” he commanded before backflipping out of Angeal’s reach and sprinting for the window. Sephiroth’s eyes widened. Surely he didn’t mean to jump—?

He absolutely did, and it was only Zack’s panicked, full-speed, full-force tackle that stopped him. “CLOUD NO!” He shrieked in a register Sephiroth hadn’t even known humans were capable of. Both of the young men (or perhaps they were better termed boys? Sephiroth remained unclear on that point) went rolling until they hit the wall and shattered a drywall panel.

Blessed silence descended for a moment, as gentle as the plaster particles that drifted down to dust the two teenagers. Unsurprisingly, Genesis was the one who broke it.

“You brat!” he yipped in outrage, scrambling to his feet. “Give me back my materia!” He stomped over, only to run face-first into a Barrier. Cloud, blinking huge blue eyes at all of them from beneath Zack’s armpit, had one arm held out to cast it.

Genesis gasped, holding a hand under his nose as it bled. “Is that my—!”

“Zack, g’up, I have to go explode things,” Cloud said, ignoring Genesis completely as he prodded Zack.

“Explode things?” Zack said.

“Explode things?” Angeal echoed in alarm.

“My bangles!” Genesis said. “How did you even get those!”

Sephiroth deadbolted his door before moving to join the others where they were clustered around the Barrier. Then, at least, it would take a split second longer for Cloud to open it if he went that direction. If he chose the window….well, barring the sudden and unscientific acquisition of wings, Sephiroth wasn’t entirely sure what he could do to stop it.

Cloud’s expression turned alarmingly blank as Zack rolled over and helped him sit upright. Then he blinked and seemed to return to himself. “Yeah. Hojo’s—” He looked at Sephiroth again. “Seriously, drink the water.”

Hojo’s what? Sephiroth wondered, but he focused on the more pressing issue. Most things of Hojo’s deserved to be ‘exploded’ anyway. “Cloud, explain the origins and contents of the water and I will drink it.”

“It’s holy water,” the blond said nonchalantly as he equipped his pilfered materia into his equally-pilfered bangles. “I dunno what’s in it, just that it works.”

“Holy water?” he repeated skeptically. “By what metric is it holy?”

“It was blessed, obviously,” Cloud said, scanning the room with quick, experienced eyes. The Barrier still had yet to waver.

“By ‘ the healer?’”

Cloud’s eyes snapped back to him and narrowed dangerously. “How do you know that?”

“You told me. Earlier today. Do you not remember?” Sephiroth mentally added another tally to the theory that Cloud’s enhancements had been rapidly and poorly done—perhaps as a new experimental procedure, perhaps for other reasons. Both retrograde and anterograde amnesia were common side effects of mako overexposure.

“Oh. Huh.” Cloud didn’t seem too bothered by his own forgetfulness.

“Where is this ‘healer,’ Cloud? Why do they care to make something that can heal a SOLDIER?”

To his surprise, Cloud grinned at him. “Oh, you know, infinite in mystery . Down. Way down. And she did it because I asked nicely, and I did it because Zack likes you. Also genocide is bad. You should eat my mom’s soup before you make any life-altering philosophical conclusions.”

“…Cloud, what?” said Zack, which encapsulated the general reaction perfectly.

“Drink the water.” He turned to his friend, and despite the utter incoherence of his words, his expression was sharp and lucid. He clasped Zack’s shoulder with the hand not holding up the Barrier. “Zack, I have places to do, things to be. Stay safe until I’m back.”

“You’re not going anywhere , brat,” Genesis said, caught somewhere between outrage, confusion, and a cunning consideration that spelled trouble. Fire flickered at his fingertips.

Cloud smirked. “How ‘bout you run that past him?” he said, nodding toward the windows. The summon materia in his bracer lit up and Sephiroth realized what was about to happen just a moment too late.

Without the benefit of a Barrier like Cloud and Zack had, Sephiroth was forced to tackle Genesis and Angeal to get them away from the imminent destruction as Bahamut promptly destroyed half of the outer wall of his apartment.

“My summon!” Genesis screeched from where he was pinned beneath the overturned couch.

“Zack!” Sephiroth barked, hoping that the young SOLDIER could act quickly enough to intercept whatever Cloud was doing. Even in the split second it took Sephiroth to reorient and turn back to them, Cloud was already up and running through the debris, heedless of the broken glass and falling particulates.

“Cloud, wait!” Zack said, scrambling to follow. “Wait!” He ran face-first into a Barrier as Cloud reached his now wide-open (if dangerously elevated) exit route.

“I’ve got this!” the unstable teenager promised, offering a casual two-finger salute without looking back. And he did seem to “got this” as he jumped straight out of the building and onto Bahamut, who was oddly willing to listen to and obey him.

“CLOUD!” Zack screamed, and would likely have jumped as well if Angeal hadn’t gotten up in time to tackle him.

“Zack! Stop and think!” his mentor snapped, struggling to pin him.

Sephiroth went to the window, boots crunching over shattered glass, and looked out. Bahamut soared down, away from the Tower and its immediate surroundings, until it was abruptly dismissed. Even in the dark of early evening, his eyes tracked the small, falling figure of Cloud as he made a short descent down onto a rooftop. Clearly he’d landed safely, because he took off running and disappeared over the side.

“Thieving little brat,” Genesis muttered, joining Sephiroth as he made a mental note of Cloud’s position. Gleeful greed crept into his tone as he added, “I didn’t expect him to be a materia prodigy. Zack, was he always a materia prodigy?”

Zack and Angeal were both sitting up, Angeal with one hand on Zack’s arm and the younger SOLDIER with his head in one palm. He looked up and glared at Genesis.

“You did something, didn’t you!” he accused. “Cloud shouldn’t even know how to use materia yet!”

Genesis snorted at him. “How flattering that you think I can pass on materia proficiency just by taking an apprentice!”

“If anyone can corrupt him it’s you!” Zack hissed. “He jumped out a window to get away from you!”

“I’m pretty sure he didn’t even notice Gen was here,” Angeal contradicted dryly, earning an outraged noise from the redhead.

“Yeah, well—!” Zack wavered, upset and unsure where to direct it. “Well—! Leave him alone!” He jerked free from Angeal’s grip and got to his feet, heading for the door.

“Where are you going, SOLDIER?” Sephiroth said, using his command voice.

Zack wasn’t in the least deterred, which seemed strange and out of character. “To fix your mess!” he snapped, yanking the deadbolt and angrily punching the panel to open the door.

“Zack—” It was difficult to slam a automatic sliding door, but somehow the teenager managed. Angeal sighed. “Well,” he said, “we’ve lost him again. What now?”

“We chase my apprentice down, of course,” said Genesis. “And I get my materia back! Perhaps interrogate him on how he learned to master a summon so quickly.”

“Normally I would agree,” Sephiroth said. “But Cloud is so erratic that I doubt we could hope to anticipate him, and he’s already dismissed Bahamut.”

They all paused, considering. The rushing of the wind this high up created an eerie howling over the broken wall. Someone would have to put in a work order to get it fixed. And file an incident report. A faint smirk crossed Sephiroth’s face as he realized that this was entirely Genesis’s responsibility since his ‘apprentice’ had been the one to do it. Then he started to realize what the bigger picture here was and the smirk dropped.

“He has a plan to ‘explode’ things’” Angeal said, echoing Sephiroth’s thoughts. “It probably won’t be that difficult to find him at that point.”

”I hope he immolates Hollander while he’s at it,” Genesis said with a religious sort of fervor, hands clasped before him.

“Genesis please,” said Angeal, rubbing his temples.

“Well, I would have included Hojo but it sounds like he’s gunning for him anyway.” Genesis paused and his brows came together. “Although, it is somewhat counterproductive to head away from the Drum if that’s his goal. Hmm.”

It was a good point. Sephiroth attempted to triangulate any of Hojo’s known and unknown haunts based on where Cloud had disappeared, but couldn’t think of anything. Or at least, anything that he knew of. He imagined quite a few secrets were shortly to come to light if Cloud succeeded in ‘exploding’ Hojo’s belongings.

Angeal exchanged an uneasy glance with him. “We should make some contingency plans. Now.” Even Genesis sobered and nodded in agreement.

Sephiroth pulled the vial of ‘holy water’ from his coat—the level was a little lower than before, but not too low—and considered it seriously. His tests had elucidated absolutely nothing. Cloud himself hadn’t elucidated much more than that, and likely never would. Angeal and Genesis had suffered no ill effects, and Cloud himself was far more erratic than murderous. Whatever Cloud was trying to fix seemed to be real enough for him to feel if Sephiroth hadn’t drunk the water. Perhaps…perhaps it was worth the risk.

“Finally decided to trust my apprentice?” Genesis asked, uncommonly serious. “He’s odd, I will admit, but whatever he thinks he’s fixing must have merit. I say the leap of faith is worth it.”

“It’s your choice,” Angeal said. “But as crazy as the kid is, I think he at least knows what he’s doing here. I’m fine, and Genesis is…better than fine.”

“Hojo would be displeased to know I ingested anything like this without his express permission,” Sephiroth observed, a genuine smile creeping across his face at the thought. “Well. Godspeed in bringing about explosions, Cloud Strife.” He held the vial out in a toast toward where the young man had disappeared before popping the top off with his thumb and knocking it back in one go.

He took a deep breath, bracing for the unknown. 

Everything went dark.

Zack pulled out his PHS and flipped it open as he stormed down the stairs, taking them three at a time. He hit speed dial and put it to his ear. The moment the line connected, he bit out, “we have to find him!”

“Does this have anything to do with the summon that just destroyed the side of the building?” Kunsel asked. The sound of a clicking keyboard filtered through the speaker.

“Yes! Cloud came by to punch Genesis, and then he jumped out the building!”

“...onto…the summon?”

“Bahamut. Genesis’s, specifically,” Zack clarified. 

The clicking stopped. Kunsel took a deep, deep breath and let it out slowly. “Zack, this really doesn’t sound like what you told me about—”

“I know!” Zack snapped, voice cracking. Panic ate away at his chest, but he viciously suppressed it. “Genesis must have done something to him. We have to find him and fix it before it’s too late!”

“Zack—” Kunsel stopped himself and rerouted. “Okay. Don’t freak out, we’ll find him, easy.”

“Easy? He could be anywhere now!”

“Relax. I put a tracker in his hair.”

Zack stopped in the middle of the stairwell, blinking in startlement. “You what?”

“I watched the footage of how he looked before you intervened. No way he’ll be washing his hair on his own, so I put it there instead of his clothes. He might lose those. Actually, he’ll probably lose those.”

“No, I mean why?”

“You didn’t think this would happen? I assumed it was going to happen. Or it was gonna be insurance if Science nabbed him. You’re chipped too, by the way. It’s in your boxers.”

Appalled, Zack looked down at his hips. “Kunsel!”

“Come on man, if anyone starts sniffing around you because you got weird all of the sudden it’s gonna be Science. I had to have a way to find you.”

It was reassuring. And he did trust Kunsel. “Why didn’t you tell me?”

“Because you’d get all weird about it. The only reason I’m even telling you now is so you know what to save if shit goes down. Also because you’re too busy to get really weird about it and tip anyone off more than they’re already tipped off.” The keyboard clicked again. “Go one floor down and exit the stairwell. The Turks are about to come by.”

Zack did as he was told, breathing out his frustration over everything. None of this was going how he’d expected it to at all. “Okay, fine. Then find Cloud ASAP! He’s for sure got glass in his feet and I just know he’s not gonna properly take care of that.” He leaned against a wall, out of sight of any passersby. 

“On it.” The clicking intensified until Kunsel made an interested noise. “Huh. Where is he going?”

Zack’s heart jumped into his throat. “What? Where is he?”

“He’s uh—he’s in the sewers, but…I think he’s heading deeper into the Plate’s interior. I dunno. I’ll update you, just head to Sector 7. I’ll go down to the slums level just in case. Make sure you move fast. The Turks might be on us soon if the Firsts don’t distract them enough.”

Zack took a deep breath. “Got it.” He snapped the PHS shut, put it away, and took off running. “Don’t worry, buddy,” he muttered, “I’m gonna save you, no matter what it takes. I won’t ever leave you behind again.”

Chapter Text

Genesis and Angeal watched as Sephiroth tipped the vial of healing water back and drank it in one go. He straightened, looking down at the empty vial with a vaguely puzzled furrow between his brows. 

Then his eyes abruptly rolled back in his head and he fell, hitting the ground with a weighty THUD.

Genesis gaped. So did Angeal. The wind whistled over the enormous hole in the side of the building. Sephiroth laid in a graceless heap, chest rising and falling steadily. Nothing moved for a long moment.

Genesis exchanged a glance with Angeal, aghast at the extreme reaction to a little healing water. He would have been more alarmed if he couldn’t see and hear that Seph was alive and well.

“You’re doing the paperwork,” Angeal blurt out.

“I am not!” Genesis said on sheer reflex.

“It was your apprentice who did this, yes you are.” Angeal moved over to crouch next to Sephiroth, checking his pulse. “If he wakes up fast enough then you’ll only have to do paperwork for Bahamut. As long as no one sees—”

The front door opened, admitting the Turk director and his right-hand man. A squad of troopers followed behind them but didn’t enter. The Turk’s eyes quickly took in the wrecked state of the apartment, the unconscious SOLDIER, and the other two SOLDIERs watching him like kids caught with their hands in the cookie jar.

“SOLDIERs,” he said calmly, “what happened here?”

Genesis and Angeal exchanged another glance, each wondering who would end up stuck explaining to the Turk what had happened.  And the two young men had, of course, been best friends since childhood. Many of their rituals and nonverbal conversations were more instinct than thought at this point. It was clear what needed to happen.

“NOSE GOES!” said Angeal, beating Genesis by just a split second and slamming his fingertip to his nose.

“FUCK!” said Genesis.

Cloud was having fun with his new materia. A lot of fun.

Maybe too much fun.

Cloud, buddy, slow down— Zack voice was saying, and Tifa was saying Cloud let’s pause for a second— and himself-as-Zack voice was saying go faster, we need to finish this up before we collapse. Cloud wasn’t really listening to any of them. He was having too much fun with magic back in his hands, fending off the odd monster and blasting through walls.

“We’re getting closer,” he muttered to himself. The monsters were getting weirder and the decor was taking on a distinctive quality—very glowy and mismatched, like it was trying to say ‘if you thought SOLDIER was fucked up, just wait until you see these guys!’

It was also distinctly incomplete, which made sense. They were several years ahead of schedule. Not to mention that these creeps’d lost one of their most important assets before they’d even gotten her, thanks to his intervention. He hoped she was alright, especially since he was certain the poor kid had walked away convinced he was absolutely nuts.

She was probably fine. She had her sister with her, after all.

Cloud slowed down considerably as he finally broke into Deepground proper. This would be tricky even for him—he didn’t want to kill any more people than he absolutely had to, but he also couldn’t let any of the Deepground soldiers stop him. He had to hit hard and fast, and he had to take out a few key players if he wanted to get most of the rest on his side.

Hopefully they would join him in gleefully executing Explosions Plan. If not…eh. He’d figure it out.

Let’s mosey! said he, and three out of an uncertain number of voices in his head agreed with enthusiasm.

“Kuns, where is he now?” Zack asked, sprinting through the interior of the Plate. It was easy to follow the trail of Cloud’s destruction. He wasn’t trying to be subtle at all, apparently, and had left huge swathes of materia-induced structural damage in order to bust straight through walls, doors, and even the floor.

“I don’t know,” Kunsel said tightly, the background noise from his mic suddenly different. “Keep your helmet on, I’ll use the HUD feed to catch up with you as soon as I can.”

Zack grimaced—he hated wearing his SOLDIER helmet—before the full implications of Kunsel’s statement hit him. “Wait, you don’t know? What do you mean you’re catching up?” Kunsel wouldn’t bother to catch up unless he thought there was more he could do on the ground than in the Tower.

“Cloud’s gone somewhere that shouldn’t exist,” Kunsel said. Zack heard a motorcycle roar to life, deafening, before the mic’s filter kicked in and quieted it. “If there’re cameras where he is, I can’t track them. We have to follow on foot and get him out of there ASAP.”

“What do you mean somewhere that doesn’t exist?”

“Under the Tower, Zack,” Kunsel said grimly. “Something ShinRa wants hidden way deep, but still close. Something Cloud knows about.”

Zack hissed a breath through his teeth. “Hojo,” he growled. If Cloud knew about this place, it must have been where he was kept—the place where they’d scarred him and filled  him with mako. Zack felt a surge of self-loathing. Cloud had been under his nose all this time, and he hadn’t even tried to save him. What kind of friend was he?

“Yeah. I hope you’re ready to bug out of the city right after we nab him.”

“Might be difficult,” Zack said, slowing down as he noticed the architecture begin to change markedly. He’d definitely left the Plate’s interior for something else.

“No shit. That’s what all the planning was for. Woah, slow down a sec. What’s that on your ten?”

It was a man in a strange uniform, laying slumped up against the wall. Part of his helmet was destroyed, letting them see one closed eye and a trickle of blood running down his face. Zack crouched, looking him over. If Cloud had done this, he’d done it quickly, brutally, and with the intent to incapacitate without killing. A rifle, sliced in two, was at the soldier’s side.

“Zack,” Kunsel said, his voice suddenly strained. “Take his helmet off.”

“Do we have time—”

“Take it off.”

Zack was startled by the intensity in Kunsel’s voice. “Okay! Geez.” He reached out and carefully worked the damaged helmet off, fumbling around for the strap’s clip for a moment before he managed to find it. When he eased the helmet up, Kunsel gasped.

“Eli,” he said.

Zack frowned, not recognizing the unconscious man at all. “Who?”

“Elias Johannes. He was one of the earlier Firsts, but he was badly injured in Wutai and died in treatment back home. Except…apparently not.”

A chill of realization went down Zack’s spine. “If he’s here…how many others disappeared too?”

“Good question,” Kunsel said grimly. “Keep moving and we’ll find out. I’m five minutes from your location.”

“Hurry,” Zack muttered, standing and picking up the pace with sword in hand. He barely needed to be wary—Cloud had done a thorough and efficient job, littering his path with dead or unconscious bodies. Zack took careful note of who was dead and who’d been incapacitated. When a few reinforcements arrived along the path, he elected to follow Cloud’s pattern.

The one in the white lab coat died first.

“Two minutes,” Kunsel told him, breathless. Zack could hear his boots pounding across the ground and he ran.

“Hurry,” Zack said, speeding up to a full sprint as he caught the sounds of combat ahead.

He emerged out onto some kind of open, multi-storied room lined with walkways on each level. When he looked down, he found a head of bright blond hair—Cloud!—zipping around as he battled several people at once. Most notable was the woman in red and the figure in dark robes, along with what seemed to be a horde of grunts, but Cloud was somehow holding his own.

“Trust me!” the kid yelled at the grunts, swapping seamlessly between spellwork, a sword, and a rifle slung across his torso. Both sword and rifle appeared to have been pilfered. Shiva hovered at his side, assisting. “This is going to be great!”

Zack barely knew where to focus until the lady in red said something to Cloud about “bathing in his blood.” It made him, fittingly enough, see red. Without hesitation, he vaulted over the railing and jumped to join the fray below. He opened with a surprise attack on the woman who’d caught his ire.

“Don’t touch him!” Zack bellowed, deflecting the woman’s strike and delivering a follow-up that cut across her stomach. She looked surprised by his appearance. He pressed the attack, forgetting himself as gunshots rang in his ears. The phantom sensations of a scorching sun and arid waste winds shivered across his skin. His world narrowed down to the singular goal: protect Cloud.

Suddenly on the ground, the woman snarled and laughed like a feral animal, air and blood bubbling from her bisected throat. Unable to speak, she seethed with hatred. Zack turned on the grunts next. In his eyes, dark uniforms with glowing accents flickered to infantry blues and back.

“Don’t kill them!” Cloud yelled, making him jolt badly. Cloud was comatose. He hadn’t said anything in almost three years. Hadn’t he?

Zack realized all at once that he wasn’t where he thought he was. The world came into focus again.

“They’re mind-controlled! Don’t kill them if you can help it!” With less distraction, Cloud rapidly pressed the attack against the dark-robed one, driving him back.

If Cloud hadn’t still been in danger, guilt might have frozen Zack in place, but there was no time for it. He kept the grunts off of Cloud, images of the missing SOLDIER First in his head. How many of these people were the same as Elias Johannes? He hoped the woman in red hadn’t been.

He knew the exact moment Cloud won his fight, because the grunts spasmed in unison and quickly backed off, gathering up in little groups and watching warily. “You okay, Cloud?” Zack asked, eyeing them back with equal wariness. He didn’t quite dare split his attention yet.

“Fantastic! That was easier than I thought,” Cloud said. “I can’t believe he fell for that.”

“Fell for…?”

Cloud apparently had no qualms about turning his attention away from the remaining soldiers. “Low-quality bait. I set the trap a little while ago when I killed some of his underlings,” said Cloud, coming up beside Zack. He looked down at the body of the woman in red, who was no longer breathing, and clicked his tongue.

“Sorry,” Zack said, guilt twisting in his gut.

Cloud blinked at him. “Huh? Oh! Nah, Rosso was crazy. Can’t imagine a scenario where she wouldn’t force us to kill her.” He didn’t give Zack a chance to respond, instead crouching to rifle through the woman’s pockets. He stood back up with a communications device in his hand. “Alright, gimme a sec,” he said.

Something strange happened. Cloud’s shoulders shifted, his posture straightening. His facial expression changed into something that struck Zack as familiar. He fiddled with the comm device and raised it to his mouth.

“Soldiers of Deepground,” he said, his intonation so different that Zack actually flinched. His voice echoed throughout the room—and the entire facility, it seemed. “The Restrictor is dead.” He paused, as if to let it sink in. “I suggest you move quickly to free yourselves from the last of his peers. Equally, I suggest you remove yourself from this facility at once. It will not be standing for much longer. Deepground may have made you strong, but it has also poisoned you, body and soul. If you wish to be free—truly free—seek the mercy of the Goddess in Banora.”

And that, apparently, was the entirety of what he wanted to say. He shut the device off and tossed it back next to Rosso’s body. His posture melted back into what Zack recognized as distinctly Cloud. “Whew,” he said, scratching the back of his head. “Alright, now for the Explosions part of Explosions Plan!”

Zack wasn’t the only one floored by the strangeness of the situation. “Who are you?” one of the lingering soldiers blurt out, holding her rifle like a security blanket. She had three allies (friends?) huddled up around her.

“Hmm? Oh, don’t worry about it.” He pointed. “Exit is that way, if you want to go on foot. Honestly, I suggest you steal a vehicle if you have any down here. Or go wreak havoc on ShinRa, that works too. Bye!” He waved jauntily and trotted off.

“W-wait,” Zack yelped, scrambling to follow. “Cloud!”

“Zack,” Kunsel said very quietly in his ear. “I’m going to see how many of our own I can get back. Don’t let Cloud out of your sight.”

“...right,” Zack said, unsteady. So many things were different than what he expected. It was hard to keep up. “Okay.” He caught up with Cloud and fell in beside him, keeping wary eyes on their changing surroundings. The sounds of combat echoed from all directions, fading in and out as small skirmishes began and ended. Cloud didn’t seem fazed at all, instead carving a determined path toward some specific destination.

“Where are we going?” Zack asked when he couldn’t take the tension anymore.

Cloud turned bright eyes on him and blinked in surprise. “Wait—Zack?”

“Yes?” Had his little buddy gotten a concussion when he wasn’t looking?

A sheepish look crossed Cloud’s face. “I’ve, uh, never seen you in a helmet before.”

“You…didn’t know it was me?” Suddenly, he felt a little better about being brushed off and largely ignored earlier.

Cloud’s face turned crimson and he didn’t answer. Zack laughed. “How can you be so badass yet so cloudy?” he teased.

“It’s not my fault,” the blonde complained, walking faster. When a raving Deepground soldier attempted to attack them, Cloud casually swatted them away with his sword and downed them with the rifle. “I’ve been mako poisoned like…” He counted on his fingers, which made Zack’s eyes go wide. “...a lot.”

“Do you know who did this to you?” Zack asked, guilty again. Despite all his good intentions, he still hadn’t been able to save his friend from repeating fate. Did it happen here? Right under my nose?

“Hojo. Sort of.”

They came upon a barricaded room with enormous sealed doors. Several people were attempting to break the door down, but they paused when they saw the two SOLDIERs, backing off like wary animals. Cloud considered the door for a second. He slashed the door’s control pane open and efficiently cut a few wires. The door hissed open.

“What do you mean sort of?” Zack asked, watching as the angry Deepground soldiers rushed into the room. It was full of scientists who died quickly, and Zack didn’t feel particularly bad for their fate.

“He kicked off the whole thing, but at some point I think this mess is really more of the Planet’s fault.” They walked through the chaos and took a side door, which led down several flights of stairs. The warning symbols accumulated along the walls as they went, until Zack finally understood why as they emerged out into a mako reactor.

“Oh,” he said faintly. That explained a lot. “Has this been here…the whole time?”

“Yep,” Cloud said with relish. Several of the materia orbs on his bracer lit up. “And we’re going to make it not be here anymore!”

Chapter Text

T-minus five minutes to total system failure, himself-as-Zack voice said sarcastically. Hurry up. Reactor goes kaboom and then we get Zack out of here. Don’t forget to tell him about the elevator.

“Roger that,” Cloud muttered, summoning up his mana in one great surge.

“What?” Zack asked, a little wide-eyed still. “What do you mean we’re gonna make the reactor not be here anymore? Roger what? I didn’t say anything?”

“There’s an elevator out of here,” Cloud told him, distracted when the voices got into a brief argument about whether or not this was a good idea. It was a great idea, actually, so the dissenting opinions (Tifa-voice and small-Cloud, who’d woken up just in time to be alarmed) were ignored. “I think you’re gonna have to drag me out for the last bit, sorry.”

Zack tried to reply, but he was cut off when the whole room lit up and shook as Cloud poured out every last scrap of his mana to summon Bahamut. He did some other quick work in the process to make sure he’d recover some of his mana afterward, once he’d come out of the inevitable faint, but it was still going to be immensely draining.

To his surprise, it was Bahamut Zero who appeared, which didn’t seem like it should have been possible. He squinted at it for a second, wondering if he was hallucinating. There was no time to contemplate metaphysics, so he quickly shook it off and decided it was just a perk of being favored by the Goddess.

”Make it unrecoverable!” he commanded. “But try not to bring the whole city down around us! Zack, we’ve gotta go!” He turned and grabbed Zack’s wrist, booking it for the elevator he knew led up to the President's office. It was reinforced and would most likely hold even as Bahamut was wreaking havoc, which meant it was the safest way out.

“Huh?” said Zack. “Wait, why does Bahamut look different?”

“No time!” Ooh, his head was starting to swim. He blinked rapidly, trying to stave off his inevitable collapse. It didn’t work even a little bit. “Shit. Sorry Zack, you’ll have to… get us… ughh.”

He slowed dramatically, staggering. Zack didn’t miss a beat as he pulled him into a fireman’s carry and kept running. “Okay, stay awake,” said Zack, speeding up. His voice became calm and focused. “Where’s the elevator, Cloud?”

“Center.” Bahamut roared behind them. Even for Cloud, the effort to stay conscious was just too much to ask. “Under… Tower… Look for the main…” His eyes dragged shut and he slumped boneless over the uncomfortable line of Zack’s shoulders.

Well. Those were good enough directions, right?

“The main what?” Zack asked, leaping up the stairs one half-flight at a time. The ground had begun to shake as Cloud’s impossible summon destroyed the reactor. He lifted one of his shoulders sharply, trying to jostle his friend when he didn’t get a response. “The main what, Cloud? … Cloud?”

Cloud snored softly into his bicep and didn’t respond.

“O- kay,” Zack muttered. Sure. This might as well happen. “Kuns, you still there?”

“Yes.” Kunsel’s voice was tight, but Zack didn’t have time to worry about him.

“Can you get a read on my location?” Zack knew he was somewhere under the Tower, but after all those twists and turns he wasn’t confident he knew exactly where. He needed more precision if he was going to make sense of Cloud’s directions and find something ‘main’ that was ‘under the Tower.’

“We’re too deep,” Kunsel said, grunting as he lifted something. “GPS is no help and I’d need time to access the camera system.” He paused and exhaled through his nose. “Describe the route you took, maybe I can still help.”

Zack gave him a quick rundown, ending just as he re-emerged into the central room where the Deepground soldiers had descended upon the scientists like hungry wolves. Those soldiers all seemed to have had the good sense to run away after, as the only things left in the room were bodies and flashing alarm lights.

“Okay,” Kunsel said. The tremors beneath Zack’s feet got worse. “You’re back in the control room? Are there any camera feeds?”

Zack dashed over to a bank of computer monitors. “Some,” he said tersely. “A lot are out. I see—wait. I think I found it.” He searched the other live feeds, trying to piece together a mental map based on their labels. “Eeh. Three floors up? I think it’s directly above us.” He turned, stopping just long enough to fish a keycard out of the most important-looking dead scientist’s pocket, and took off at a flat sprint again.

“I’m tied up here,” Kunsel said. “Make sure you get out safely, Zack. Get back to the Tower, send backup. Angeal, if you can. Do you still trust him?”

“I do,” Zack said. Even his breath was getting a little short with how hard he was pushing himself. He dodged a falling chunk of concrete and burst into a different stairwell. “I think we got to him fast enough, and Cloud helped too. He won’t abandon anyone to Science.”

“He’d better not,” Kunsel muttered, grunting again. Zack could just imagine him hauling unconscious bodies out as fast as he could.

“I’ll— make sure,” Zack panted, hurtling two floors in a single bound. He caught the stairwell railing with one hand and hauled himself up, steadying Cloud with his other hand. Amazingly, even the destruction of an entire compound wasn’t enough to wake his exhausted friend.

Nothing but dead bodies and falling bits of debris littered the hallway that Zack ran down, searching frantically for the room that would get them out of there. He exhaled a sharp breath of relief when he found it—not that it was hard to spot, considering the room had two maximum security doors that had obviously been blown clean off. More bodies lined the inside, including one that strongly resembled the dark-robed man Cloud had killed. Zack stepped over the body and made a beeline for the only elevator in the room.

“I hope this spits us out somewhere helpful,” he muttered, swiping the keycard in the panel on the wall. Miraculously, it flashed green just as the ground shook so hard Zack had to brace a hand on the wall to stay upright. “Shit!”

“Zack, get out of there!” Kunsel shouted.

“We are!” He stepped in, briefly puzzled by the fact that there were only two buttons, both unlabeled. He groaned and hit the top one. “Cloud, I hope you knew what you were doing!” The doors shut much faster than any of the public elevators, and they rocketed up toward the unknown.

Sephiroth was swiftly taken to the medical wing by two of the elite troopers who’d accompanied the Turk Director. Genesis very testily explained what had happened as the troopers left, glaring at Angeal the whole time. Clearly, there would be retribution later for the loss of the sacred ‘nose-goes.’

The Director exhaled very slowly once Genesis had finished. He looked like he’d spontaneously acquired a headache. Which was fair. They’d all acquired a rather spectacular five-foot-four blond headache recently. “And where, exactly, did your apprentice go?” he asked.

“If I knew that then I wouldn’t still be here, now would I?” Genesis responded archly.

“Genesis,” Angeal groaned. The last thing they needed was a feud with the Turks.

The Director did not look amused. “Give me your best guess, then, SOLDIER. If he’s mentally incapacitated but still capable of this—” he gestured to the conspicuously missing side of the room “—then we need to pool our resources and find him quickly. For his sake.” The threat was implied, but very, very clear.

“I’ve never met anyone so unpredictable in my life,” Genesis said honestly, examining his glove. He gave a very elegant shrug. “Though I do have some idea of what signs would lead me to find him again.”

As if on cue, the ground beneath their feet rocked like there was an earthquake. The sound of a distant, muffled explosion reached the SOLDIERs’ ears, though not those of the unenhanced.

“Ah,” said Genesis, walking over to the missing wall and peering down at the ground far below. “Found him!”

Zack took a deep breath, bouncing on his toes as the high-speed elevator finally slowed. Wherever it opened, he was going to leave as quickly as possible. Kunsel always said that confidence was the key to making people think you were supposed to be somewhere you weren’t. All he had to do was be confident as he booked it for an exit.

The door opened. Go go go go go go go, he chanted to himself, speed walking out with head ducked in the hope that no one would notice him. Although, it was very quiet. And empty. And… fancy?

Uh oh.

“And just what—” said one of the last people Zack wanted to see right now “—do you think you’re doing, soldier? None of you are authorized to use this exit, and I don’t care what the emergency is! Get back down there and contain the situation !”

(Image note: Actually Zack is still wearing his helmet here but it's the Vibes that count)

“Uhhhh…” Zack slowly turned to peek backward at President ShinRa. The President’s face was crimson with apoplectic rage. For a lack of anything better to do, Zack pointed uncertainly at himself. Me?

The President’s face approached a truly unhealthy puce color. “Yes you!” he snapped, spittle flying. “What do you think—!” Then he stopped abruptly, which was a lot more terrifying than the yelling. His eyes narrowed. Zack desperately glanced at the door and wondered how exactly he was going to be able to get himself and Cloud out of this without committing some president-icide.

“Wait a minute. You aren’t one of my Tsviets,” the President observed. To Zack’s surprise, he had a firearm out and aimed with a speed worthy of any seasoned soldier. “Who are you?”

There were almost guaranteed to be Turks and elite security outside the door. Zack had one sword and an unconscious body across his shoulders. Best odds were on him killing the President to buy time, but then everyone else would be in the crossfire. Well— they were already in the crossfire, unless he could get out without anyone realizing who he was. But Cloud was very conspicuous, so if they escaped they would have to leave Midgar now. It would be easy to realize that the MIA SOLDIER was guilty, and everyone would be in the crossfire anyway.

Zack had very few options and he was losing more by the second, but maybe he could come up with a good cover. “I’m uh… Rosso,” he tried, tossing out the first name he remembered from his experience below.

“Rosso is a woman,” the President said flatly.

Alright, so maybe he couldn’t come up with a good cover.

The Tower shook violently again, hard enough that dust rained down from the tiles in the ceiling. Zack staggered, cursing. The President did too and screamed “WHAT DID YOU DO!”

“Hmmmn… ‘splosion plan…” Cloud very inconveniently answered in his sleep.

Zack yelped and dodged as the President finally lost his temper and fired at them.  “Eughh, sorry!” he fervently whispered to Angeal as he took cover behind a pillar and prepared to commit a murder ahead of schedule. He knew it was going to cause his mentor many, many… many headaches. 

“Worthless traitors!” the President boomed. “I’ll hand your corpses over to Hojo to—!”

The gun fired. He gasped. A moment later, Zack heard a body hit the ground.

Please be Kunsel, please be Kunsel, please be Kunsel, Zack prayed, cautiously peering around the pillar. Or Cissnei, I’ll take Cissnei too.

It was not either of his semi-treasonous friends. Instead, there was a red-caped vampire standing on the President’s desk, looking dispassionately down at the old man’s corpse. His eyes turned up to meet Zack’s as the SOLDIER gaped at him.

“...did you kill the crazy child?” the vampire asked in a deep but quiet voice, glancing at Cloud’s limp blond head.

Cloud snored softly. This seemed to reassure the vampire.

“I don’t understand anything that’s happening right now,” Zack admitted, a lot more pathetically than he’d intended.

“Zack?!” Kunsel said in his ear. “What’s happening? Are you and Cloud okay? What’s happening?”

“A vampire just shot the President,” Zack dutifully reported.

“…WHAT?”

Sephiroth came to with the ground shaking under him and the sound of distant, muffled explosions. He sat up quickly, forgetting for the moment if he was or was not still in Wutai. That turned out to be a mistake as his head throbbed viciously. He hissed and hunched over, cradling his temples.

“General Sephiroth?”

He recognized the Turk Cissnei and acknowledged her by name.

“Should I get the nurse, Sir?”

He took a deep breath and compartmentalized the pain. There was no time to spare with coddling, considering his last waking memory was of a crazy teenager with a powerful summon on the loose. “No,” he said looking up. He wasn’t too surprised to find himself in one of the inpatient rooms in the medical ward. That likely meant he hadn’t been unconscious for long, or Hojo would have had time to transfer him to the Science Department’s rooms.

Cissnei’s eyes were suddenly wide and her jaw was quite literally agape, if only slightly. He frowned at her. “What is it?” Had Cloud’s sacred water done something to his face?

“Y-your eyes,” she stuttered, a hand coming up to cover her mouth.

“My eyes?” He touched his fingertips to the delicate skin beneath his left eye. Nothing felt wrong or different. The headache itself was centered more in the back of his skull than his eyes. He would have to look for himself. 

With a silent huff, he swung his legs over the side of the bed and stood up, wobbling only a little. Cissnei reached out to steady him. There was a tiny bathroom attached to the inpatient room, which fortunately meant that there would be a mirror too. Cissnei hovered in the doorway as he went to the sink and finally caught sight of himself. 

Instantly, he understood why she’d had such a dramatic reaction. He was feeling a little dramatic himself as he leaned his palms against the ceramic sink and peered so close that his breath fogged up the mirror. His eyes, which had been green and unnaturally cat-slit since childhood, now had round pupils and a soft brown color. The only remaining evidence of his extensive exposure to mako was a ring of bright green around his pupil. 

Cloud’s holy water had given him undeniably human hazel eyes.

“Oh,” he said softly, touching the cold surface of the mirror.

The building rocked again. Cissnei gasped, bracing herself on the wall. Sephiroth refocused. There was no time to be awed by what had changed. “With me, Cissnei,” he commanded. She was a Turk, but he knew she would listen in this case. He pushed past her and found his coat hanging up in the room. He pulled it on and quickly fastened it shut.

“We have a crazy teenager to intercept.”

Chapter Text

Genesis and Angeal were already en-route to the general location of the explosions when Angeal got a call on his PHS. He frowned as he fished it out and flipped it open, sure that he’d set it to emergency mode. All of his calls should have been routed to the command center while he was occupied.

“Hewley,” he said tersely, focused on driving.

“Commander, we have a situation,” said Zack’s friend, Second Class Kunsel.

Angeal’s eyes narrowed. “Zack isn’t in the Tower, is he.”

“No sir, we followed Cloud. Hence the situation.”

Angeal sighed. “I don’t know what I expected.”

“Me neither sir. If you’re following the noise, however much backup you’re bringing isn’t going to be enough. I have at least four dozen missing SOLDIERs here and uncountable numbers of unknown agents pouring out of this underground base beneath the Tower. You have to bring more and you have to bring them openly.”

Angeal’s stomach dropped at the implications, though he spared a moment in the back of his mind to admire Kunsel’s subtle, multilayered delivery. “Under the Tower?”

“Under our noses. Please, sir, we need more manpower or we’re going to lose good people. Again.”

“I’ll get everyone I can,” he promised. “Is Zack there?” Another explosion rocked the ground. Angeal cursed as he tried to keep control of the car.

“No sir, he’s… busy.”

That phrasing didn’t bode well for Angeal’s continuing sanity. “Fine,” he said with forced calm, “Zack can handle himself. Where’s Cloud?”

“Zack’s got him.”

Angeal’s brows came together. Genesis cursed in the passenger seat as he made a reckless maneuver around some slow civilian vehicles. “What do you mean got him? Did something happen?”

“Er,” said Kunsel. “Well. He’s unconscious at the moment.”

Of course he was. That meant Zack was likely alone with a casualty hampering his ability to act. Angeal had to move faster. “You’ll have your backup,” he told Kunsel. “Just do as much as you can to keep the situation contained.”

Kunsel chuckled humorlessly as the ground rocked again. “Oh sir, we are well past that point.”

“I am not a vampire,” said the vampire, hopping down from the President’s desk with a completely unnecessary backflip.

“Sure,” said Zack, because he didn’t want to argue with a vampire. “Hey, how do you know Cloud?”

“Is that the crazy child’s name?” the vampire asked, moving closer. Zack started moving back once he was within easy striking distance. The vampire considerately stopped approaching as soon as Zack took his first step away. “He woke me from my atoning sleep and explained… too much, and yet very little.”

“Woke you?” A hazy memory stirred in the back of Zack’s head, but he ignored it. There were more important things to think about. “Wait—huh?”

“So you are unaware of the crazy child’s schemes,” the vampire observed.

“Schemes? Cloud has schemes? What schemes?” Zack paused. “Oh. Right, I guess Explosions Plan counts as a scheme. And the thing with the water.”

The vampire’s head tilted slightly. “Explosions Plan,” he echoed flatly.

“Yeah. Turns out there was a secret reactor and base under the Tower. I guess it was super bad? There were definitely a lot of uh… secret experiments going on.” As if in agreement, Cloud snored softly against his bicep.

The vampire’s eyes narrowed slightly. “Have we met before? Or perhaps…” He put a hand on his chest and looked displeased by something. 

“I’m pretty sure I would remember meeting a vampire,” Zack said.

“I am not a vampire.”

“Zack, please stop arguing with the vampire!” Kunsel hissed in his earpiece. “Get out of there!”

“Oh, right,” said Zack. He started inching toward the door. “Well, uh, thanks for the assist—”

“I will accompany you,” interrupted the vampire. “I came to find the crazy child and ask him some questions. Clearly those questions must…” He looked at Cloud’s limp form where it was draped over Zack’s shoulders like the world’s most chaotic shawl. “...wait.”

“Uh.” Zack hesitated.

“He shot the President, it’s not like you can stop him without creating problems,” Kunsel pointed out. “Just go, we’ll deal with it later.”

Zack exhaled sharply through his nose. “Okay, fine, come on Mr. Vampire. Kuns, do you have backup yet?”

“I am still not a vampire,” said the vampire.

“It’s on the way,” Kunsel assured him.

“Great,” Zack said to his friend, then to the vampire said, “listen man, you gotta give me a name or I’m just gonna keep calling it like I see it.”

“Vincent Valentine,” he replied, which was really one of the most vampire-y names he could possibly have given. “This way. The President has an emergency exit route.” He tilted his head away from the main door and moved toward a side wall. Light glinted off his feet as he turned and Zack spared a moment to goggle at the bright gold… clown shoes (?) he was somehow managing to walk completely silently in.

“Right. So, Vincent… what exactly did Cloud tell you?”

After searching along the wall for a moment, Vincent uncovered the seam of a hidden door. Rather than trying to locate the panel that would open it, he simply pulled the whole thing from its housing using the raw strength of his armored hand. “He did not ‘exactly’ tell me anything. He ‘vaguely’ and ‘incoherently’ told me a great deal of things that require clarification.”

Zack squinted. That did sound about right considering his little buddy’s current state. “Like what?”

“Names he should not have known I would care about,” Vincent said, leading the way down a long, cramped stairwell. “References to events that happened long before he was born.” He paused, his one armored hand on the stair railing. “Something about pickles?”

“Pickles?” Zack repeated skeptically. Cloud mumbled something into his arm and shifted slightly, but didn’t wake. Alright then, pickles.

“You can see why I need clarification from the crazy child,” Vincent said.

“Yeah, me too,” Zack muttered.

The vampire decided to segue. “Where were you intending to go?”

Zack blew out a slow breath. “Out of Midgar as fast as possible. Cloud needs to get somewhere safe. That’s either going to be very easy considering what he just unleashed, or absolutely impossible… considering what he just unleashed. At minimum, I need to get him to the slums.”

“Wise. I suspect this stairwell ends in the President’s private garage. It will be most effective to commandeer a vehicle.”

Zack frowned. “Suspect? I thought you knew exactly what this exit was!”

“No,” said Vincent, looking over his shoulder at Zack with his eerily glowing red eyes. “I only suspected. This Tower was completed long after I had begun to sleep.”

“...what kind of person just knows where the President’s emergency escape is going to be?” Zack asked incredulously.

“The ex-Turk kind. Be quiet, we’re nearing the end and people will likely be able to hear us soon.”

Zack fell quiet and watched the back of Vincent’s head. One thought kept repeating in a loop—a memory, with Cissnei’s voice still crisp and vivid even after everything he’d been through. She’d been hushed and serious, trying to convey weight to a Zack too young and enthusiastic to understand. He thought he might have understood now.

“There are no ex-Turks, Zack. There are only living Turks… and dead ones.”

“Sir, I hope you realize that the President is going to severely punish you for this,” Cissnei said, nervously following him to the Presidential garage. He noted that she did not say us.

“Not unless I fail,” Sephiroth responded. “Time is of the essence, and this is where Scarlet’s prototype motorcycle is being stored. Besides that, if I fail we will have far bigger problems than the President’s displeasure.”

Cissnei grimaced.

Sephiroth did, in fact, have clearance to access the Presidential garage. He was intended to be the President’s primary guard hound, after all. If things went FUBAR then Sephiroth would have been dispatched to the garage to guard the President as he escaped. He wondered, with no little humor, if that clearance would be revoked after this.

The garage was relatively small, but it was lined with vehicles that were alternately obscenely expensive or obscenely armored. He wasn’t interested in the flashy yet tactically useless sportscars. Instead, his eyes went to the monstrous motorcycle Scarlet had initially created in an ill-conceived attempt to curry favor with the President.

Too bad the man didn’t care for motorcycles.

Before he could put his hands on the prototype, he first he had to retrieve the keys from their box on the wall. Cissnei was looking at the rows of cars with a gimlet eye as he did so. His hand had just closed around the keyfob when he heard a strange noise—a pneumatic hissing, like a sealed door being opened. He turned sharply. Cissnei did too.

A hidden door opened to reveal a dark-haired, red-clad man Sephiroth had never seen before, and… Zack Fair? Cloud was slung unconscious across his shoulders, breathing softly and looking only a little worse for the wear.

“Zack?” Sephiroth asked, shocked despite himself. He’d been certain Cloud was to blame for the explosions below, but how could that be if he was here, in the Tower, unconscious?

Zack looked at him like a chocobo in the headlights of a semi-truck. “Seph?”

“Zack?” Cissnei said, puzzled.

“Cissnei?” Zack asked, his eyes turning to her then back to Sephiroth, like he couldn’t figure out why they were here together.

“Sephiroth?” the dark-haired stranger asked, something uncomfortably shocked and tender in his voice. It made him take a second, closer look, wondering if he knew the man—or if this man somehow knew him personally.

Cloud snored loudly.

“Uh,” said Zack, unsuccessfully trying to conceal his unconscious friend, “so uh… whatcha’ doing here?”

Sephiroth narrowed his eyes slightly at Angeal’s student. “What are you doing here, SOLDIER?”

Zack’s expression told him the reason was not good. Perhaps there was some merit to his assumption that Cloud was at fault after all.

“Are you truly Sephiroth?” the dark-haired stranger asked, completely ignoring the interaction between the two SOLDIERs.

“I am,” Sephiroth said, internally puzzled by the question. Who else was there who looked like him and had access to the Presidential garage? “Who are you?”

“Vincent Valentine,” he said, and Cissnei drew in a sharp breath. There was no time to contemplate that though, because the man followed up with, “your mother Lucrecia was very dear to me.”

“Lucrecia?” Sephiroth echoed, far more puzzled than before. “You must have mistaken me for another. My mother’s name was Jenova.”

“No—” the man started, but was drowned out when Cloud snapped awake with a gasp and a much louder “NO!”

“No!” the crazy teenager repeated, babbling before his hazy half-conscious eyes could even properly locate Sephiroth. “S’ not Jenova, she’s’n alien parasite from ‘th skies! Lucrecia’s your ma, she’s in a crystal in a cave ‘n…” His eyes finally landed on Sephiroth. He squinted. “Jenova’s just the way Hojo did bad science on your cells. Water? Drank the water? Yeaahg. Good Seph. Night.”

With all that delivered, he proceeded to pass out again.

Vincent Valentine pursed his lips and exhaled a slow, patient breath. “Yes… what he said.”

Cissnei and Zack exchanged two equally baffled looks. What is happening? Cissnei mouthed.

Fuck if I know, Zack mouthed back.

Sephiroth sighed inaudibly. There were too many security devices (and Turks) in the immediate vicinity for him to get the information he needed. “Perhaps we should not be having this discussion here.”

Zack perked up slightly. “Oh, yeah, right, so we’ll just go—”

“Zack.” The young man drooped under Sephiroth’s quelling look.

Sephiroth took a moment to consider their options. Zack and Cloud’s presences here unintentionally removed his primary excuse for commandeering one of the President’s vehicles, meaning that he now had to choose just how much trouble he was willing to invite. His eyes fell on Cloud, once again snoozing over Zack’s shoulders without a care in the world. If there was a priority here, it was to protect that crazy fourteen-year-old until he could finally give a coherent account of what the hell he was doing—and why.

“We will take one of the armored cars below plate,” he decided. “From there, we will assess the situation. Zack, I trust you had a destination for Cloud in mind when you stuffed him into that duffle bag?”

“You what?” said Cissnei.

Zack briefly hesitated. “...yeah.”

Sephiroth nodded. “Good. Quickly, let us move.”

Cissnei silently retrieved the key for the vehicle Sephiroth gestured to and took the driver’s seat. Sephiroth himself took the passenger seat. Zack gently laid Cloud down in the back, then got in on the other side and put his friend’s head in his lap. Vincent Valentine invited himself along, perching strangely on the floor in the back so that Cloud could remain stretched out and asleep.

“So, um,” Zack said halfway through their awkwardly silent car ride, “what happened to your eyes?”

“Cloud’s holy water altered them somehow,” Sephiroth said, keeping the bulk of his attention on watching for any sort of hostile pursuit. “I intend to ask him about it.”

“Yeah everyone seems to have questions for him nowadays, huh,” Zack muttered, automatically curling protectively over his friend.

“I would have fewer if he stopped doing strange and inexplicable things,” Sephiroth observed mildly.

“It’s not his fault!” Zack snapped. “He got all… science’d!”

“I am aware, Zack,” Sephiroth responded, keeping his tone very mild. “I don’t intend to interrogate him, but simply speak to him. It has merely been difficult thus far.”

The teenager eyed him suspiciously for a few more seconds before he relaxed. “Well… good. He doesn’t deserve any of this, he’s just doing his best.”

“I’m sure,” Sephiroth said dryly. Asleep, Cloud looked like an angelic (sleep-deprived) child, but Sephiroth had seen firsthand just how much chaos he could sow, intentional or otherwise. He seemed to be tremendously skilled at causing problems and solving problems, both accidentally and on purpose. It would be utterly fascinating to finally get the train of logic behind all his actions.

Sephiroth’s PHS went off and effectively ended the conversation. The ringtone was Angeal’s, so he flipped the device open and put it to his ear with a terse greeting.

“I was hoping you’d be awake,” his friend said, voice tight. “I’m sending you my coordinates. Meet me here ASAP, we need your help.”

Sephiroth glanced back at the teenagers he hardly dared to let out of his sight lest they vanish again in a blaze of chaos. “I found Zack and Cloud. Is it more urgent than staying with them?”

Angeal hissed a sharp breath. “What is Zack doing up in—? No, nevermind. Damn! I don’t know, bring them if you can, but it is that urgent.” He took a shaky breath. “Cloud found our men, Seph. KIA and MIA SOLDIERs, dozens of them, kept in some damn facility under the Tower and brainwashed.”

Sephiroth, who had long suspected something of the sort but never been able to find them despite all his efforts, went very still. “Our SOLDIERs,” he echoed, his voice as flat and sharp as Masamune’s edge.

“Yes. Names we all knew. High-ranking ones too. I’m looking at First Class Johannes right now. And Seph, the ones we’ve gotten to snap out of it all have the same story. Hojo did this with clearance from the President himself.”

Had Sephiroth been even slightly less disciplined, he would have shattered the PHS’s casing. “We will be there as soon as possible,” he said with deceptive calm.

“Good. Hurry. I don’t think even the Turks can keep this one under wraps, but… well. We’re not gonna make it easy on them.”

“Understood.” He snapped the PHS shut. Cissnei, the only one who he would have been wary of letting hear that conversation, was also thankfully the only one in the car without enhancements. Treasonous thoughts were best kept for an environment where a Turk couldn’t report them to the President.

“Oh, uh,” Zack said awkwardly, “I guess I should uh… tell you that the President is maybe a little bit um… dead?”

Cissnei narrowly avoided crashing the car.

Chapter Text

Kunsel was a smart young man—smarter, even, than most people gave him credit for. Most people thought he was a competent SOLDIER who would never rise beyond Second because he was just too obsessed with gossip, and that was the way he liked it. The truth was that Kunsel could have been a First any time he felt so inclined. He had the strategic chops, the martial skill, and the capacity for authoritative and decisive command. He just found it much easier to operate in the background as a Second.

But even the most seasoned First Class commander would have been overwhelmed by this.

Soldiers poured out of Deepground in panicked waves, some on foot and some in stolen vehicles. Kunsel himself had dragged out and revived as many ‘lost’ SOLDIERs as he could find, sending those who were capable back in to find more, but it was all they could do to find their abducted comrades. The Deepgrounders, the ones with no connection to SOLDIER, were unhindered in doing whatever they wanted. Some went roaring out of Midgar immediately, but some turned and headed for the Tower with malicious intent.

Kunsel couldn’t even spare a hand to send out more warnings to the personnel in the Tower. The ground rocked again, more violently than ever before. He braced himself over the unconscious body of the MIA SOLDIER he’d been carrying and felt debris rain down on his back. Civilians screamed in the distance. Most had been smart enough to run at the start of all of this. Some brave, stupid souls had stayed to help.

“Come on, Hewley,” he muttered, sweat running down the bridge of his nose under his helmet. The HUD was malfunctioning as Shinra’s data streams were interrupted. He had no time to patch in to other sources. “Where’s that backup?”

A hand fell along his arm. “With me!” First Class Elias Johannes barked, only a little shaky. He’d refused to stay down once he’d woken up free of the mind control.

“Sir!”

Together, they hauled the unconscious SOLDIER to the fortified position they’d created, guarded by those who could wield weapons but not run back and forth. Everyone knew basic first-aid, but the two or three who could recall extra seminars were acting as makeshift medics.

“How much longer is this going to go on!” one of the recovered SOLDIERs who was crouched by a makeshift barricade shouted, bordering on hysterical. He had a rifle in his hands and a bloody bandage wrapped over the concussion that made him too dizzy to stand. “The Plate could collapse at any moment! Where is evac!”

“En route!” Kunsel shouted back, infusing his voice with as much confidence and authority as he could. “Steady, man!”

Kunsel ran back into the collapsing city again, dodging through the smoke-filled corridors lit only by emergency lights that failed into pitch darkness in some places. The deeper he went, the worse the structural damage was. Most of the Deepgrounders who were conscious were already gone, but he was here to find the ones who were not. He listened hard, searching for shallow breaths and beating hearts. He went deeper and deeper, coughing into his arm as the smoke became unbearable. It was tinged green with mako. That couldn’t be good.

“Is anyone alive?” he shouted, finally realizing it was almost certain death to go any farther. Bahamut had stopped roaring. He didn’t know if that was good or bad. “Is anyone alive!”

He heard a weak, breathy cry and followed it as fast as he could. The metal supports in the walls were starting to creak ominously. It was unbearably hot. “Hold on!”

He had to kick in a door that was wedged partly open by its own buckling frame and found himself in a surgical theater that was far from sterile. Many white-coated scientists lay dead on the floor with a few Deepground soldiers dead around them too. The air smelled rotten, but he could hear a heartbeat. A heavily pregnant woman was concealed behind a curtain, strapped to a table with a surgical robot perched ominously above her belly. She looked at him with glazed, mako-bright eyes, clearly coming out of the effects of heavy sedation.

“We’re getting out of here, ma’am,” he said, breaking the restraints with brute force and hefting her up into his arms. He had no idea how she’d survived any of the carnage around her. She must have been forgotten. “Hold on.”

He was glad he’d come back in time to find just one more person, but that final run out of the collapsing Deepground complex was going to live in his nightmares for a very long time. The creaking, groaning, splintering destruction was all around, making every step uncertain. Mako fumes and black smoke turned the air choking and deadly. By the time he burst out into the open, into sight of his fellow SOLDIERs, gray was starting to crawl along the edges of his vision from oxygen deprivation.

The ground gave one final, violent heave. Metal shrieked and rocks splintered behind him. He fell, trying to protect the woman. Something struck his helmet hard enough to knock out the HUD. Debris struck his body too, drawing blood, but suddenly there was another person sheltering him, then two. He could taste magic in the back of his throat, amplified by the raw mako he’d been breathing in.

Everything stopped shaking and went eerily quiet.

Kunsel unclipped his helmet, dragging it off his head so he could see. Much of the light had gone off as the collapse destroyed electrical systems outside of the complex. The woman he’d carried out seemed alright, though her eyes were closed and she was breathing in raspy, shallow breaths. When he looked up, blinking sweat from his eyes, profound relief filled him so intensely he wondered how his arms didn’t simply give out under him.

“Sir,” he rasped, voice damaged by the smoke.

“At ease,” said commander Rhapsodos, letting the warding magic fall. Behind him, commander Hewley was directing an arriving platoon to get the injured into a transport. “Backup is here, SOLDIER.”

As soon as Cissnei had regained control of the car and they were no longer in danger of dying a violent, pointless, and probably fiery vehicular death, Sephiroth positively whipped around in his seat to pin Zack with his stare.

“What did Cloud do?” he thundered.

“Cloud didn’t do anything!” Zack protested, hunching protectively over his friend. He pointed at Vincent. “The vampire did!”

“I am not, to reiterate, a vampire,” Vincent said calmly, “but he is otherwise correct. Rupert was attempting to kill the crazy child, and I could not allow that.”

Sephiroth’s mouth opened, then shut, at total loss for words. Cissnei was muttering what sounded like a desperate prayer under her breath. It went up a bit in pitch as the ground shook again.

“…then Rufus will be in charge of this crisis,” Sephiroth finally settled on amongst all of the many observations he could have made. He sounded distasteful.

Cissnei’s expression in the rearview mirror said she didn’t relish that particular thought either.

“Yeah, sure, I guess,” said Zack, who had no intention of sticking around long enough to suffer the consequences of Rufus Shinra’s leadership.

Sephiroth looked at Zack intensely, like he wanted to ask a million questions, but his eyes cut briefly to Cissnei. Even with the President dead it still wasn’t safe to let her hear too much. He exhaled slowly. “We will handle our own men,” he said, facing forward again. “Regardless of who sits at the head of the company.”

Zack patted Cloud’s unconscious head. Don’t worry, buddy, he thought. I’ll get you out of here. Cloud hummed and curled into him, which was freaking adorable. He was just so small at fourteen. His cheeks were still squishy! Zack had to stop himself from squishing them while Sephiroth and Cissnei and the vampire could see. I’m going to protect you even better this time. I promise.

Bands of Deepground soldiers roared by on the opposite side of the road as they drove, but stopping them wasn’t their priority. Sephiroth sent messages to the personnel still in the Tower to warn them and give estimated headcounts. That was all he could do. They arrived at the coordinates Angeal had sent not too long after. Any civilians were long gone, leaving just a makeshift encampment of active SOLDIERs and recovered MIA SOLDIERs surrounded by pockets of Deepground soldiers—some hostile and engaged in skirmishes, some subdued, and some clearly siding with the SOLDIERs.

It was utter chaos. As the car screeched to a halt, Zack made a plan. Kunsel was busy, so he wouldn’t be able to help. Once Sephiroth and Cissnei were distracted trying to handle things, Zack would slip away and smuggle Cloud to Aerith’s house. They’d lay low long enough to make sure the way out of Midgar was clear, and then Zack would get Cloud to safety—far, far, far out of Shinra’s reach.

Vincent was watching him as he thought. Zack glanced over, quirking a brow. The vampire quirked a brow back. Zack amended his plan slightly: and Vincent would follow them.

Sephiroth opened his door and then paused, silently looking back at Zack for just a beat too long. “Fair,” he said evenly, “stay here and defend Cloud until I get back. Cissnei, you’re with me.”

“Yessir!” Zack lied. Sephiroth stared at him silently, again for just a beat too long. It was making Zack sweat uncomfortably. Sephiroth couldn’t read minds, even if his eyes had turned from green and kitty-like to a human shape and hazel color. He was sure of it.

Pretty sure.

…kind of sure?

Sephiroth got out and closed the door. Cissnei followed. Zack blew out a breath and slumped backward in his seat. He didn’t know why Seph was being so intense. They’d been heading near-ish to where Zack was intending to go before Angeal called anyway! Yeah, of course he planned to ditch anyone but Cloud and maybe Kunsel if he caught up, but it wasn’t like Seph knew that.

(He was starting to wonder if maybe the General could read minds after all.)

Vincent seemed content to stare at him while they waited for the coast to be clear. Cloud snored quietly. Something exploded on the far side of the makeshift SOLDIER fortifications. There was a lot of running and yelling

“That’s our cue,” Zack muttered to Cloud, hefting him up and sliding out of the car. Vincent, unsurprisingly, followed. They stayed low, darting from cover to cover. Deepground soldiers were also running or skulking around in the same general direction— away— but Vincent proved to be perfectly willing to either scare them off or shoot them outright if they came too close. Zack eyed him warily. He stared back impassively.

“You seem weirdly okay with all of this,” Zack commented.

“Well,” said the vampire contemplatively, “the alternative is engaging in several prolonged moral quandaries. And I would prefer not to.”

“Yeah fair enough,” said Zack. They were, by now, racing along the back routes Zack had long since scouted out (okay, the routes Kunsel had extensively helped him plot) to the Sector 5 slums. There were virtually no Deepground soldiers or civilians to interrupt them, only the occasional monster Vincent picked off with his rifle.

“The crazy child is, at least, fascinating even when unconscious. I find myself somewhat in awe of his capacity to sow chaos he is not awake to see.”

“It’s… not Cloud’s fault…” Zack objected weakly.

Vincent said nothing. Even though Zack was facing away, he could still sense the vampire’s raised eyebrows. Zack pursed his lips. It wasn’t. It wasn’t Cloud’s fault he’d been science’d and… gone a little feral. Anyone would. Zack would have, except he’d been busy making sure Cloud stayed alive. But Cloud had been all on his own this time. It wasn’t his fault.

Luckily, Vincent didn’t actually voice any objection and they trudged on in silence. Zack’s PHS vibrated in his pocket, but he winced and ignored it. Whatever trouble he was in would be dealt with later. Hope fluttered in his chest as they got closer and closer to Aerith’s house. For once—for once— he was actually going to succeed at protecting Cloud. They were going to be okay. Shinra was collapsing all on its own, Angeal and Genesis and Seph were healed, and all he had to do was get Cloud out. Then he could come back to Midgar and start taking care of everything else.

Like killing Hojo for everything he’d done and everything he would have done. Zack was looking forward to the moment he could finally remove the slimy scientist’s head from his body. He would never touch Cloud again.

“I’m gonna have to take care of your feet,” he remembered, speaking to his little buddy as if he was awake. “No way you cleaned out all that broken glass before taking on, er, Deepground. You’ve gotta take better care of yourself, Cloudy.”

He could smell the flowers in the garden now. A silly grin crossed his face. He sped up. “Almost there! Aerith’s gonna love you, I promise.”

He hurried across the bridges, Vincent following close behind, until he fairly flew up to the door in his excitement. It took every ounce of politeness his mama had instilled in him to knock on the door instead of bursting in. He bounced on his toes, glancing over his shoulder just to make sure no one but Vincent had followed.

The door’s latch clicked. He turned, beaming, but the face behind the glass wasn’t Aerith or her mother. His smile dropped as the door swung open. “Not you!” he said, dismayed.

But the Turk Director wasn’t looking at him as he stood on the threshold and the color drained from his face. “You,” he said to Vincent. “It can’t be. You’re dead!”

I knew it, Zack thought. He stepped out of the way and glanced between them with wide eyes.

“Ah,” said Vincent, looking remarkably awkward for a vampire. “Er. Pardon me, Zack Fair, I just remembered I’m needed elsewhere, goodbye.”

The Turk Director’s face contorted with outraged fury as Vincent took a step back.

Oh good, thought Zack, maybe this problem will solve itself.

Chapter Text

“Wow,” said Zack, “he’s pretty fast for a Director.”

“I’m impressed,” Aerith agreed, petting Cloud’s hair as they stared out the window into the garden. Veld was chasing Vincent around, hands extended and fingers curled into claws that promised an imminent strangling. Vincent kept trying to turn around and explain himself, but Veld was both shockingly spry and apoplectically furious.

“I wonder why the Director is friends with a vampire,” said Zack.

“Zack, honey, I don’t think he’s a vampire.”

“He is,” Zack asserted confidently. “The director said he was supposed to be dead, he totally rose from the grave as a vampire. How else do you explain all the…” He made a vague gesture with his chin.

“Maybe he’s just eccentric,” said Aerith, but it sounded like she was starting to doubt. As they watched, Veld ripped off one of his shoes and waved it threateningly over his head.

“Both.” 

Vincent turned around to plead again and was beaned in between his eyes by a men’s size 10 designer leather oxford.

“Hmm.” Down went Vincent in a tangle of red. Veld leaped on him like a furious Coeurl cursed to inhabit the body of a professional wrestler. “You’re right, it could be both.”

Cloud murmured something nonsensical, a happy little smile stretching across his face. Aerith cooed at him, smitten already. Zack preened smugly. He knew she’d like his little buddy.

“I think they’re going to be at it for a while,” he said, glancing back out at the pair. The Director was whaling on Vincent with his shoe and yelling incoherent threats against the Vampire’s future chances at siring progeny and current chances of living to try—which is to say, he was threatening to rip Vincent’s dick off and then murder him. 

“I’ll help you with Cloud,” Aerith said, reading his mind. “He needs a bath.”

“Yeah. He walked over glass in bare feet, too, so I’ll take care of that. Then we’ll get him some new clothes and get out of here?”

Aerith pursed her lips, but nonetheless fell in beside him as he headed for the bathroom. “Zack…”

“I know you don’t want to leave, but it’s not safe anymore,” he pleaded. “Things are exploding left and right, the President got assassinated, Cloud collapsed again… I just need to get you out until things are fixed.”

“I know. But I’m not sure we can, Zack. The Director is here. He must have other Turks headed this way too. I’m not going to put mom at risk.”

Zack coughed awkwardly. “Well… I wouldn’t be so sure backup is coming…” he hedged.

Aerith stopped in her tracks and narrowed her eyes at him. “Zack Fair,” she said dangerously, “what did you do? We talked about this!”

“Nothing!” he said, unable to hold his hands up defensively because he was still carrying Cloud. “It’s just that the situation at the reactor is kind of… intense. And uh… that’s where they think Cloud still is so… backup is probably headed there?”

Aerith, in all her sweet fifteen-year-old glory, looked distinctly unimpressed. “What do you mean they think Cloud is—“ She stopped abruptly. “Wait, what did he do?”

“It’s not his fault!” Zack defended.

“Hmmm, ‘splosion plan,” Cloud sighed, which did not help their case.

Zack studiously avoided eye contact with his girlfriend. “…you know, we don’t have much time, we should get him cleaned up right? Right!” He slunk forward, unsuccessfully ignoring her soul-piercing stare.

Thankfully she dropped it. They worked together to quickly get Cloud cleaned up (again) against a muffled backdrop of shouted threats, physical violence, and eventually eerie silence. It made Zack twitchy.

“Shit, buddy,” he muttered, examining the bottom of Cloud’s feet. Aerith made sure he stayed upright in the tub full of sooty, bloody water. “How were you running around with all this glass stuck in your feet?” He pulled out his switchblade, the only tool on hand even remotely appropriate, and started getting it all out. Thank Shiva Cloud was still asleep.

“Aerith?”

Zack startled badly, head whipping up to find Cloud definitely not asleep and smiling dopily at Aerith. “Hi, Aerith,” he said, blinking heavily. Mana overextension was a hell of a drug. “You kay?”

Zack looked between them. “You’ve met?” he asked, but that didn’t seem right. Aerith looked just as startled as he was.

“No,” she said, glancing quickly at him before she returned her attention to Cloud. “Hi, Cloud. I’m okay. Why wouldn’t I be?”

“Muh.” His eyes closed again, although the smile didn’t fade much. “Lotsss reasons. Turks. Hojo. Gotta… work faster.”

“I think you need to work a little slower, mister,” Aerith said sternly. “Look at you! What are you trying to do all on your own anyway?”

“Everything,” he sighed. “Cuz there’s only one of me.” His eyes popped open and he sat bolt upright. “Explosions Plan! Zack—you were there, right? I think? Did it work?” He glanced down at himself before Zack could answer. “Why am I in my underpants?”

Zack decided that if there was ever a time to strategically ignore certain things his friend was saying, it was now. “What was the goal of Explosions Plan, exactly?”

“Get rid of Reactor Zero.” He wiggled his toes, ankle still held by Zack above the water. “Why’re you looking at my foot?”

“Well, yep, you sure did accomplish Explosions Plan, buddy. No more uh… Reactor Zero. I’m holding your foot because you got glass embedded there in Sephiroth’s apartment, remember? You didn’t take care of it.”

“Oooooh,” said Cloud. He tried to pull his foot back. “I’ll get it now.”

“You sit still, silly,” Aerith said. “Zack will take care of it. Why don’t you tell me what you’re going to do next instead?” She nodded for Zack to continue working. He bit the inside of his cheek and did, trying to be fast so it wouldn’t hurt, but Cloud didn’t even seem to notice the pain. Zack bit down harder and didn’t think about it.

“We’re doing uuuuuuh…” said Cloud. His eyes glazed over for an uncomfortably long moment. “Right! Operation Raccoon!”

Aerith made a very interesting face. “I see,” she said. “And what’s that?”

“Gotta outrun Shinra, then go dumpster diving. Metaphorically,” Cloud explained, which actually did very little to explain things.

“And what does that mean?” Aerith asked.

Zack finished cleaning up Cloud’s foot while he zoned out again. Then he blinked a few times, surprised. “You know,” he said thoughtfully, “I don’t remember.”

“Okay,” Aerith said, not-so-subtly looking through Cloud’s wet hair for signs of a concussion. “Well, let's get you out of the tub and then we’ll talk about a new plan you do remember.”

Cloud was sleepy but agreeable as Zack and Aerith helped him stand, dry off, and get dressed in some fresh clothes. Luckily Zack kept a go-bag at Aerith’s house, so they had clean (if oversized) fatigues for him to wear.

He was dozing into Zack’s shoulder but still stumbling along on his own two feet as they went back downstairs. Zack and Aerith both froze when they found Vincent, the Director, and Mrs. Gainsborough sitting around the kitchen table. Vincent was holding a bag of frozen vegetables to a rather spectacular black eye, hair tangled up with grass and dirt and leaves. The Director was inexplicably damp, missing both of his shoes and his jacket. Mrs. Gainsborough had her arms crossed over her chest as she glared at them both.

Zack and Aerith took a step back in synchrony. All eyes snapped to them.

“Aerith—” Mrs. Gainsborough started as both Vincent and the Director opened their mouths.

“VINCENT!” Cloud shouted, suddenly awake again. He grinned loopily. “You actually got out of the coffin! Good job!”

“Ah—” said Vincent.

“Out of the what?” asked the Director dangerously.

“Hi Mrs. Gainsborough,” Cloud continued with much more deference, apparently not caring about the fate he’d just consigned the vampire to. “Don’t worry, I’m’nna… I’m gonna protect Aerith. And Zack.” He yawned enormously and slumped into Zack again. “And everyone. I promised…”

Mrs. Gainsborough blinked a few times before she stood up and came toward them. “Well, thank you,” she said. “Goodness, Aerith, who is this? What happened?”

“This is Zack’s best friend,” said Aerith, deliberately vague even though it was probably too late. “I’m not sure what happened, but he needs rest. We’ll just go—”

“Absolutely not,” the Director said, distracted from his ire. “No one will be leaving this house until the situation is contained, Miss Gainsborough.”

“Don’t you think you have bigger things to worry about than little me and my silly friends, mister Turk?” Aerith asked sweetly.

“Buh…” Cloud said, obviously three seconds from passing out again. “Turks… gonna kick your ass, Reno… you weasel…”

“Please stop talking, buddy,” Zack whispered as the Director looked at Cloud with narrowed eyes. Much to his relief, Cloud went boneless a second later and started snoring softly. “Oh, look at that!” Zack said with a nervous laugh, bending down to pick him up. “He passed out again. I’ll just, uh… take him to the guest room—”

“And climb out the window, Zack Fair?” Vincent interrupted, which, yes, he had in fact planned to climb right out of the window with Cloud and Aerith in tow.

“...no,” Zack lied. Not a single adult believed him.

“You don’t get to talk,” the Director snapped at Vincent, pointing sharply. He turned his finger on Zack. “And you aren’t going anywhere, SOLDIER Fair. I have a lot of questions for you. Put Strife on the couch and sit. Down.”

Zack narrowed his eyes, pulling Cloud closer to his chest. It would be difficult to run but not impossible, especially if Aerith followed his lead and fell back on their Kunsel-created contingency plans. But Mrs. Gainsborough…

“Zack,” Aerith said, putting a hand on his arm. He met her eyes and slumped a moment later. She was right. Now wasn’t the time to be impulsive.

“Fine,” he said shortly, not bothering with formality. He was in too deep to care about the consequences of that, even when faced with a Director. “Maybe you can answer some of my questions too, Director.”

Cloud woke up to the sound of arguing. For a long moment he thought it was his friends talking inside of his head, but no, that wasn’t right. The argument was taking place outside of his head. Buh, he thought, feeling like his mana had gotten trampled by a dozen angry Chocobos, where are we?

Aerith’s house, said Tifa-voice.

Don’t let them know you’re awake, said himself-as-Zack-voice. We have to sneak out of here without being noticed. He sighed. Again.

Cloud held still, keeping his breath deep and even. Zack (actual Zack) was arguing with someone he didn’t recognize. Vincent and Aerith chimed in occasionally. Someone was doing the dishes, and if they were at Aerith’s house he assumed that was just Mrs. Gainsborough being too disgusted with all of them to engage in the verbal fisticuffs.

How long was I asleep? Cloud asked, puzzled. He vaguely recalled waking up in the bathtub sometime after the explosions had started. Zack and Aerith had been there. Or was that a dream?

Dunno, said Zack-voice. But hey, since I’m here to protect Aerith, let’s skedaddle before anyone notices! We have Operation Raccoon to do.

Oh yeah, thought Cloud. He let his eyes open to slits. Luckily, he was facing the back of a couch, so they couldn’t see his eyes anyway. What is Operation Raccoon, again?

Uh… I don’t remember, Zack-voice admitted.

What do you mean you don’t remember! himself-as-Zack voice said in exasperation. You’re the one who named it!

We all agreed on the plan, whatever it was! Zack-voice cried indignantly. How come YOU don’t remember?

Tifa-voice shushed them. The lull was quiet enough that Cloud’s younger self was finally audible.

I don’t want to get in trouble with the Turks, he whispered, shivering. Can we go? Please?

They’re not so bad when you can kick their asses, Cloud assured him. Besides, they’re too busy with the fallout of Deepground to bother with little ol’ me yet, and that’s exactly what we need. He opened his eyes all the way and started to slowly, slowly shift.

Vincent is going to notice, Tifa-voice warned him.

Yeah, he agreed, but he’ll probably let me sneak out. I bet he has questions, and it’ll be easier to get answers without an audience to butt in, right?

You’re very optimistic, himself-as-Zack voice muttered.

Everyone who was outside of Cloud’s head was still busy arguing about him and who should take him and where he should go and for what reason. Well, if I’m wrong, he reasoned, I’m still closest to the door and only Vincent can keep up with me. Zack has to stay with Aerith, so he’ll be safe. Right? Right! So let’s go.

Maybe we shouldn’t even sneak, Zack-voice mused. Just walk out like that’s what we’re supposed to be doing, then book it. Be confident!

The outside argument had escalated to shouting. Cloud considered. He was… not great at sneaking: passable at best. Okay, he thought, shrugging to himself, and simply sat upright. Zack was standing at the kitchen table and bellowing at a man Cloud only vaguely recalled, Aerith standing by his side. Vincent had a spectacular partly-healed shiner. Mrs. Gainsborough was indeed angrily doing dishes.

Zack glanced at him. He waved. Zack waved back and returned to his shouting match. Cloud walked straight out the door and missed the dramatic double-take his best friend did. He did not miss the overlapping shouts of “CLOUD!”

Stay safe, Zack! he thought, and sprinted for the shelter of the slums.

Bonus: Cloud is skrunkly

Chapter Text

Genesis didn’t have a well-honed instinct for sensing misbehavior like Angeal did (thanks to Zack and the other young SOLDIERs he’d mentored), but he surely did have a well-honed instinct for when he was about to lose something he wanted very much. That instinct pinged very loudly indeed when he met up with Sephiroth in the chaos of the imploding top-secret facility that had been stealing their SOLDIERs. His silver-haired friend was conspicuously alone.

“Where is my apprentice?” Genesis demanded, directing an arriving medic to where the MIA and KIA SOLDIERs had been moved. “And Goddess above, what happened to your eyes?”

“Cloud’s mysterious water happened. He is unconscious with Zack in the car,” Sephiroth said tersely. He turned away to bark at an incoming squad of troopers to prioritize getting casualties onto medical transports.

Ping! went Genesis’s instincts. Sephiroth was no fool… usually. He knew as well as Genesis did that Zack wanted to steal Cloud and run away. That was, after all, what had spawned the whole ‘apprentice stuffed into a duffle bag’ incident. If Sephiroth had left Zack alone with Cloud, then that could only mean one thing.

Genesis’s prey—er, apprentice was escaping!

“We need you here,” Sephiroth said warningly, easily recognizing the glint in his eye.

“I’m sure I have no idea what you mean,” said Genesis as he looked around for a quick means of egress from his responsibilities.

“Cloud is perfectly safe with Zack.”

“Really, my friend, is now the time for non sequiturs?”

“Genesis.”

Some battles could not be won head-on, even by him. “Yes, alright. But I want you to know that I will be fully blaming you for whatever my apprentice blows up next.”

“Noted.”

It was nearly an hour before Genesis finally got his chance to sneak away and chase after his wayward apprentice. The freshly-immolated underground facility (city, really) was completely inaccessible now. Whatever poor souls might still be down there were undoubtedly dead. A small percentage of the ‘Deepground’ soldiers had gone off to assault the Tower, but most had fled either on foot or in stolen vehicles. The security at the highway entrances and exits had been overwhelmed a long time ago. Now it was mostly an issue of organizing their injured and getting them back to the Tower for treatment under the very watchful eyes of their comrades.

Genesis was terrible with logistics anyway. His time was far better served intercepting his apprentice before anything else was blown sky-high.

The car (one of the President’s armored cars, to be specific—naughty, Sephiroth, stealing a Presidential vehicle!) was unsurprisingly devoid of Zack or Cloud. Genesis narrowed his eyes. He didn’t make a habit of remembering things about unimportant people, but as he recalled the whelp had a girlfriend who lived in the slums.

And oh, look at that—someone had left a nice trail of dead Deepground soldiers for him to follow. How thoughtful of them!

He followed the gruesome breadcrumbs through the maze-like back alleys of the slums, making an educated guess here and there where the trail had gaps. It was leading him quite close to the edge of the city. Had his prey flown off like little birds? That would make them easier to apprehend since he wouldn’t have to sneak around Shinra’s employees and damnable red tape.

His intuitive sense for when chaos was being sewn without him pinged yet again. Someone was shouting, too distant for him to make out the words, but he thought it sounded like they were shouting Cloud’s name. Perfect. He followed it, emerging close to a security checkpoint but not in sight of it, just in time for a tiny blond to run past.

“Got you, you little pest!” he said, hand snapping out at SOLDIER-speed to grab the boy’s collar and yank him to a stop.

The brat blinked at him, clean once more and dressed in oversized SOLDIER fatigues. “You!” he said in surprise. “Did I fix you already? No yeah, I fixed you already.”

“You shoved some woman’s ‘healing water’ down my throat, yes,” said Genesis. Goddess above, the experiments that had turned this child into a whirlwind of chaos truly had scrambled his brains.

“You’re welcome,” said the tiny terror. “Bye.” He tried to walk off, but was thwarted when Genesis simply lifted him into the air by way of his shirt. “Uh. Put me down, I’m busy.”

“No,” said Genesis pleasantly. “I don’t think I will.”

Cloud’s eyes narrowed. “I have a lot of problems to solve, kid, put me down.”

Genesis’s eyebrows launched into orbit. “Kid? Excuse me, apprentice, the fourteen-year-old in this situation is not me. You will address me with respect! I am a sir at minimum!”

For his troubles, he promptly received a Bolt to the face. “ACK,” he said, and dropped the little blond menace.

Cloud had scampered quite a distance in the split second it took Genesis to recover his bearings. It would have been remarkable to witness, had Genesis not been pissed off. “STRIFE!” He gave chase, but the teenager was slippery in every sense of the word. At this rate, he was going to succeed in… whatever he was planning in that squirrely little mind of his. 

Unacceptable! Genesis was not about to allow his apprentice to escape his grasp!

“You there!” Genesis shouted to the hapless troopers ‘manning’ the security checkpoint. No doubt they were the most useless of the bunch and had been left to take the blame for the breakdown in security earlier, but he needed their assistance. Cloud seemed to be gunning for the Shinra vehicles parked near the checkpoint. “Stop him!”

His reputation was such that the troopers snapped into motion the moment they realized who was talking. The one closest didn’t hesitate before he lunged at Cloud, intent on tackling him. The other raised his rifle.

“NONLETHALLY, YOU IMBECILE!” Genesis bellowed.

“‘Scuse me, pardon me!” Cloud said, dodging the grasping hands of the troopers. He abruptly stuttered in his movements. “Oh wait.” He turned and tackled the nearest trooper instead, sending them both to the ground with a startled yelp. “Gimme gimme gimme—keys!”

Genesis sped up. If he had to tackle Cloud himself like a common hooligan, so be it.

“Wh— Cloud?” the trooper on the ground said. His comrade stumbled to a stop as well.

“Thanks bye!” said Cloud, springing up. He fished around in his pockets as he sprinted for the nearest motorcycle and pulled out a—

“STRIFE!” Genesis thundered, winding up to hurl a Fire at him, but it was too late. Shiva made her sparkling debut and Genesis and the troopers suddenly had more immediate things to worry about than a crazy fourteen-year-old on a stolen Shinra motorcycle. Genesis’s jaw quite literally dropped when the summon blew Cloud a kiss before turning on them.

By the time Genesis prevailed and Shiva had been dispelled, he felt an intense mixture of excitement and outrage. He panted, wiping frost off his jacket. The troopers nursed wounds of their own, but he didn’t care. How dare that tiny brat produce summons stronger than should be possible. More importantly, how dare he run off without telling his mentor how he did it!

Still, it was too late for anything except a single-minded hunt. Genesis straightened, brushing his hair back from his face, and finally started paying attention to the troopers again. They were whispering frantically to each other.

“That was Cloud.”

“No, it… it can’t have been. He—maybe that’s what made him crazy. Maybe Science’d already gotten to him.”

“But—”

“He didn’t even recognize us. It can’t have been him.”

“I… I guess you’re right.”

Oh? Now that was intriguing. Genesis walked over to them, boots crunching across the frost-dusted dirt. They snapped to attention. “You two,” he said, “do you know that brat?” When they hesitated, he pointedly let some fire play over his fingers.

“Y-yes sir,” the braver of the two stuttered. “I think. If uh, if I’m right that was Specialist Cloud Strife.”

“Correct, that was Cloud Strife. Now, how do you know him?”

If anything, Genesis’s confirmation just made them pale more. “Well, uh, we… we were in the same squad, sir.”

Oh? His interest kindled. Perhaps answers were closer than he’d thought. “Then you must know why he vanished,” Genesis purred, stepping even closer to make them nervous. “Be honest or you’ll regret it. What was all that talk about Science?”

The more cowardly trooper finally broke. “It can’t have been the real Cloud!” he squeaked, shaking in his boots. “Cloud’s dead! He got shot with a whole magazine’s worth of ammo! W-we saw it ourselves!”

The scars. Genesis’s interest only deepened as he finally started to get answers. “Who shot him?”

Both troopers clammed up. He narrowed his eyes, drawing fire to his hand again, and this time let it burn hot enough that they could feel.

“The Sargent did!” squeaked the coward. “It was a mercy kill! He was acting squirrely out of nowhere, babbling things that didn’t make any sense, and-and-and he had a glow in his eyes like the addicts do but we couldn’t let Science get to him!”

Even Genesis, hardly known for his compassion or unwillingness to commit what some would call ‘war crimes,’ was a little taken aback by the admission. “His… own Sargent?”

“Yessir,” said the brave one, nodding miserably. “We… we all agreed it was better than the alternative.”

Meaning, death was better than disappearing into the bowels of the Science Department, which was true. The whole ‘Deepground’ fiasco was proof of that. Genesis thoughtfully tapped his chin, eyes narrowed. “What, exactly, was he babbling that made you decide on a mercy kill?”

“I don’t know,” said the coward, “stuff about goddesses and the planet and Science letting soldiers rot. It didn’t make any sense!”

“That’s hardly enough to warrant death,” he pointed out.

The troopers exchanged a glance. “Well… it was really the way his eyes changed that freaked us out. We thought about just shutting him up and dragging him back until we got the helmet off and saw the eyes. He was our friend! But… there was no way it wouldn’t be noticed.”

Genesis thought hard. “Like an addict, you said. Mako addict?”

“Yessir. But it came out of nowhere! He wasn’t a user, he was way too innocent for that. So… I dunno, it just seemed really bad. Something Science would have been…” He made a hand gesture. “You know, interested in.”

“And he was normal before that point.”

“Yessir. We were in the middle of a patrol. He’d only taken one hit from the monsters we were wiping out, so we thought maybe it was just a concussion, but… yeah.”

Genesis looked at the road the crazy child had taken to escape on his stolen motorcycle. All Shinra vehicles had multiple trackers, so he wasn’t too worried about finding him again. More important was unraveling the mystery, especially if it let Genesis find him before anyone else.

“Hmm,” he said, more intrigued than ever before. The troopers flinched when he returned his attention to them. “You two. Forget you ever saw him. Tell no one. Do you understand? If you don’t, I will make you regret the day you were born into your miserable, useless lives.”

“Y-yes, sir!” they said, saluting with terror.

“Good. Now—” He held out his hand and grinned. “I will be requisitioning your remaining vehicle. Enjoy the walk back to the barracks, troopers.”

How had Zack lost Cloud. How. His little buddy was sleep-deprived, experimented-upon, barefoot, and untrained. How was he outrunning a First! Again! It didn’t make any sense!

But, sense or not, he was doing it. Zack had also lost the Turk Director and the vampire in his mad dash, so he trudged miserably back to Aerith’s house. He was failing Cloud again—a third time. Or was it fourth? First he’d failed in Nibelheim, then on those cliffs, then when he’d vanished, and… now. Four times.

Zack was really terrible at being a hero. Too bad no one else was in any kind of position to fix things the way he could.

Aerith was waiting for him in the garden. Thankfully, the Director hadn’t returned either, or sent any additional Turks. She reached for him as he moped up to her. “Listen,” she said. “Don’t worry about Cloud too much while you’re catching up to him. I’m still not very good at listening to the Planet, but I think he has her favor.”

“Cloud does?” Zack asked, baffled. “Why?”

“I don’t know. But I think he’ll be okay until you find him. And don’t worry about us, either. Subtlety may have gone right out the window, but I have a few tricks up my sleeve.”

“The Director was here and a whole underground maze full of crazies just exploded!” he argued. “I can’t just leave you. Besides, I don’t even know where Cloud went, or… why. We should all go together. I’ll get you somewhere safe outside of Midgar.”

“You know mom would never agree. Besides I was praying while you all went running off, and I feel like… I’m not supposed to leave yet.”

“Did—” He stopped and looked furtively around, making sure no one could overhear, and dropped his voice to a whisper. “Did the goddess finally answer?”

“Not exactly,” she whispered back, squeezing his hands. “I’m sorry, Zack, I don’t have a cure for what will happen to Genesis yet. But I haven’t given up!”

“Oh!” Zack straightened up in shock. “I didn’t tell you! Cloud, uh, solved that problem. Somehow. He gave them holy water. It also did something to Seph, which was uh… not what I was going for, but I guess I’ll take it.”

Aerith blinked her pretty green eyes at him. “Cloud did?”

“Yeah.”

“Where’d he get… holy water?”

“Dunno. He said from some lady ‘below.’ It wasn’t you, right?”

“No,” she said, shaking her head. “I’ve never seen that silly boy before today. I definitely would have remembered.”

“Yeah, well…” Zack looked down. “It’s like he doesn’t even know why he’s doing things either. That’s why I have to find him. I won’t let him get hurt again while he’s doing all this crazy stuff!” He slumped. “But I don’t know where he went.”

“Silly,” said Aerith, rolling her eyes at him. “Ask Kunsel.”

“Oh. Right!” He definitely should have thought of that. “Thanks, Aer!” He whipped out his PHS, strategically ignoring the missed calls and texts from Angeal, and dialed Kunsel’s number.

“Zack what the fuck,” Kunsel hissed the moment he picked up. “Why is Cloud out in the Wastes! When did he get a vehicle!”

“Oh is that where he is? Hold on.” Zack looked at Aerith and pulled the PHS away from his ear. “He stole a car or something, I have to go. Are you sure you’re not coming with?”

“I’m staying with mom,” she said firmly. “We’ll be okay, I promise. I remember all of the backup plans you and Kunsel set up.”

He nodded reluctantly and gave her a one-armed hug before he put the PHS back to his ear. He started running. “Okay, which direction?”

“South. Genesis caught up to him, but he summoned Shiva and tore off on either a truck or a motorcycle.”

Zack bristled, speeding up. “Can you get me a vehicle?”

“Everything is still sheer chaos, Zack, you’re lucky I can even talk to you. I can’t get you anything, but it should be easy to steal a motorcycle if no one will let you requisition anything. Try the R&D warehouse by the south security checkpoint.”

“Got it. Are you injured at all?”

“Nothing major. I’ll catch up to you when I can, but I have a feeling we’re going to need all the data we can get on these Deepground soldiers. This is my best opportunity before security tightens again. So don’t do anything stupid, got it?”

“Geez,” Zack muttered. “Yeah, fine, I promise. What’s the movement on Frog and Toad?”

“Toad is cowering in his lab. I can’t find Frog. He was hopping in a weird pattern before everything started, so watch your step.”

“I hope he went to check on his secret research hellhole and died,” Zack snarled. That was where Hojo had tortured Cloud. The slimy leech deserved to be buried there for the rest of eternity.

“Yeah me too, Zack, but I wouldn’t bet on it.”

Chapter Text

Sephiroth’s eyes were hazel in the security recording.

The tablet’s screen broke with a loud SNAP under Hojo’s fingers. Enraged, he hurled it across the room. It hit the wall and left a streak of black plastic from its casing before it clattered to the floor. The same recording was pulled up on his computer monitor.

“Where,” he hissed to his trembling assistant, “is Verdot?”

“He’s not answering his PHS, Professor,” she said. Normally she was so calm—Rayleigh. That was her name. She had a tremble in her voice today as the Tower rocked beneath them. Someone with more self-preservation and less lust for status and recognition would have bolted a long time ago.

Useless. They were all useless.

“I’ll try one of his—”

“Don’t bother,” said Hojo, fury climbing higher as he glanced at the recording again. Hazel eyes. Round pupils. All his work, undone. “You’re fired.”

“Professor, I—”

He pulled his sidearm from the desk and shot her point blank. Her corpse fell back, a nearly comical expression of surprise on her face and a neat hole between her eyes. It hit the ground with a weighty THUD.

“I despise repeating myself.”

Useless.

He snarled and rolled his shoulders, releasing a few specimens into the combat chamber just to watch them tear each other apart. So many years of hard work, wasted! And how? That made him angry more than anything. How?

Deepground was falling apart beneath him, nearly unsalvageable, but Sephiroth was his far greater concern. Sephiroth was the pinnacle of creation—not just his creation, but all creations. All life. His son, made perfect by Jenova. And now he was what, a human?

Terrible, bubbling rage blinded him again. He broke another tablet. This had to be the fault of one Hollander’s brats. They’d corrupted him, made him weak and unfocused, pulled him away from his destiny. There was no chance for a do-over, not with Lucretia gone. Even Hojo hadn’t been able to find her, assuming she was still alive. Her corpse would have at least been of some use to him.

Hojo took a breath and the anger simmered somewhat. He straightened his coat, eyes narrowed at his second monitor. Strife was an anomaly worth pursuing. He’d been KIA, then taken by one of Hollander’s brats as an apprentice. Perhaps he was to blame for the ruination of Hojo’s work. Sephiroth’s recent strange behavior had started after his reappearance.

Second to revenge, though… Hojo wasn’t completely out of options. He never was. Only a stupid man ran out of options. Lucretia was gone. Gast was dead. The body of his Cetra lover was still cataloged and available—what was left of it. The Cetra daughter, however, could still be found and retrieved.

Hojo punched the intercom. Someone had the good sense to answer immediately, despite everything going on. “Yes, Professor?” he asked, voice quivering as another explosion rocked the Tower.

“Get me the President. Now.”

Angeal’s eye twitched a little. “Where,” he said, enunciating very precisely, “is Genesis?”

“If I knew that,” said Sephiroth, “I would not be standing here.”

His eye twitched a little harder. “And where are Zack and Cloud?”

“Presumably,” said Sephiroth, “wherever Genesis went.”

The car he’d left Zack and Cloud in was conspicuously empty. Angeal growled and pinched the bridge of his nose. Was it good luck or bad luck that he couldn’t hear any new explosions? At least then he would have had some idea of where the trio of troublemakers had gone. This silence was almost more ominous.

He pulled out his PHS and angrily hit the speed-dial for Gen’s PHS. Just like every single one of his messages to Zack, the call went through to voicemail within a few rings. “Gen,” he said, “call me back or I will strangle you.”

Sephiroth put a hand on his shoulder. “I doubt he will be calling you back any time soon.”

“I know,” Angeal grit out, “but now I’ll have an excuse to strangle him.” They didn’t have time for this. The President was dead, they’d uncovered a huge mess beneath the Tower, and now dozens upon dozens of lives were at immediate risk. The last thing they needed was to add on Genesis’s misbehavior on top of everything else. With their luck, he’d start a mass defection.

“We can’t leave SOLDIER alone,” said Sephiroth.

Angeal sighed. “I know. Someone needs to stay here.”

The hand on his shoulder squeezed. “It should be you.”

That startled Angeal. He’d expected Sephiroth to say the opposite. “What?” he asked, looking at his newly-hazel-eyed friend.

“I don’t doubt Hojo will be stirring up trouble soon,” Sephiroth told him, expression serious. “He must have noticed the changes in me by now. If I go, it will draw his attention away from our soldiers before he has a chance to ‘acquire’ them again.”

“And toward Cloud,” Angeal pointed out.

“Well, yes.” The ghost of a smile crossed his face. It was an unusual thing to see outside of the privacy of their apartments. “But I think that will only benefit us.”

Angeal arched a skeptical brow.

“Who better to outwit one of the most cunning men in Shinra’s employ,” said Sephiroth, “than a boy who doesn’t even seem to know what he’s doing as he’s doing it?”

Sephiroth’s description startled a snort out of Angeal. “You can’t predict unpredictability,” he agreed. 

He glanced behind them at the absolute mess. It was less of a mess now, with ordered chaos as their MIA and KIA SOLDIERs were being transported back to the Tower. SOLDIER would be circling the wagons after this revelation. It was probably a good thing the President was dead and couldn’t retaliate. As long as Hojo didn’t turn his attention on them, Angeal was confident he could fend off Heidegger. Lazard would be helping whether he liked it or not.

“I’ll keep them safe,” he promised, clasping Sephiroth’s arm in return. “No one is going to be taking our men again. Not while I’m alive.”

“I’ll do my best to bring them back in one piece,” Sephiroth promised in return.

“Genesis can be in multiple pieces. I won’t mind.”

There was something weird about those troopers, himself-as-Zack voice commented as they rocketed across the highway on the ‘borrowed’ motorcycle.

“Yeah,” Cloud agreed, voice lost to the wind. A bug splattered across his teeth. He spat it out. “Dunno what.”

From the deeper part of his mind, trooper-Cloud cleared his throat and whispered: They were part of my squad. Our squad?

Cloud sat up straight in his seat. “Oh!” He considered. “Nope. Don’t remember. But I believe you.”

Thanks, said trooper-Cloud with the barest hint of dryness. I’m glad you didn’t hurt them. Especially since they, er, executed me?

“It’s understandable,” said Cloud. “I wasn’t exactly coherent when Gaia crammed me into your body. I’d much rather they off me than let Hojo get his mitts on us.”

Trooper-Cloud shivered, brushing against Cloud’s disjointed memories of the man. You’re going to kill him, right? Before he drives Sephiroth over the edge? I know he went… uh, evil in your time, but… he’s not a bad guy.

Cloud waved a hand. They went past a Shinra highway patrol vehicle so fast that they had no chance of being even vaguely identified. “Already taken care of. He drank the water—” Cloud paused, doubting himself for a moment. “He did drink the water right?”

Yeah, said Zack-voice, and the others agreed.

“Okay good, yeah, he drank the water, so the J-cells won’t transmit her voice anymore. Hojo’ll have to find a different way to turn him genocidal, and I’ll kill him before he gets any good ideas. First we’re gonna go rob Junon blind because uh… I still don’t remember what Operation Raccoon was supposed to be.”

Wasn’t it something with AVALANCHE? Zack-voice said. Cloud imagined him ruffling the back of his hair. Or… the Turks?

No, I think it was Corel, Tifa-voice disagreed.

“Doesn’t matter,” said Cloud. “Robbing Shinra at Junon is the new plan and we’ll deal with whatever else that pops up. Then on to Gongaga!”

Woo! Zack-voice cheered.

How are we going to get there, exactly? himself-as-Zack voice asked. It’s not like we can repeat our old trick.

“Nah,” said Cloud. “We don’t need to be subtle. This time I’m just gonna steal a submarine.”

Absolute mental silence met his declaration. He basked in it… maybe a little too much. It was making him sleepy, which was a bad thing to be on a motorcycle pushing two hundred and fifty miles per hour.

Into that silence, the tiny remaining sliver of evil Sephiroth-voice said “Cloud—”

YOU SHUT UP, said Zack, kicking evil Sephiroth-voice like a particularly enticing rubber ball. He was joined by the rest of the voices, including trooper-Cloud. Real-life Cloud winced a little at the cacophony, but it did work pretty great at shutting up Sephiroth.

“Good work,” he said, giving them a thumbs up. The clinging shreds of evil-Sephiroth—it was unclear if he was real or just a persistent hallucination—was kept mostly quiet by the rest of the equally-unclear-if-they-were-real voices. Cloud supposed that was just the cost of having so many people meddle directly with his mind and memories at various points in his life… and then being sent back in time and crammed into his younger body.

Eh. It would all work out, he was sure.

Say, said Zack-voice, do you think we’re forgetting anything else?

“Hmm.” Cloud thought about it. He slalomed through a few stolen Shinra vehicles while he was distracted, not taking much note of them—or the way they took a few potshots at him. Was he forgetting anything else important?

“No, I’d remember if I was forgetting something else,” he decided, and pushed on toward Junon.

“Brother,” said a young, dark-haired teenager, riding in the passenger seat of a stolen truck, “who was the man that killed the Restrictors?”

His older brother looked out over the road, driving as fast as the vehicle could go. “The Restrictors spoke of him before he arrived,” he said eventually. “He stole an important prize from them. They said he was going to come… for us.”

“Us?”

“You and I, Nero.”

Nero frowned. “But he didn’t look for us. He only destroyed the reactor.”

“The Restrictors were fools. He came to set us free. From everything. Why else would he have sent us to Banora?”

“Is Banora important?”

A sly smile crept over the face of Weiss the Immaculate. “Of course it is. That’s where our oldest brother came from. We’ll go there and be set free. And once we’re done…”

Nero smiled back. “Then we can go find our new brother.”

There was no time to spare. Veld checked his PHS, scowling at the texts and voice messages from Hojo’s current assistant. No doubt it would be something he didn’t have time for but also couldn’t afford to ignore for long. If he was really unlucky, it would be something about the very people whose yard he was standing in.

“Don’t you have a vampire to chase down?” Aerith Gainsborough asked him, swinging her basket full of flowers. The sweet image was at odds with the sarcastic brow she quirked at him.

“Yes,” he agreed, restraining his fury. That would be taken out on the rightful target—a second time—when he caught up with his formerly-dead partner. “But first, go back inside. I need to speak with your mother.”

“Hmm… alright, Mr. Turk,” she said.

He shut the front door firmly behind him and drew all the curtains closed. Aerith stood by her mother. Mrs. Gainsborough watched him with narrowed eyes and barely-concealed fear.

“Don’t leave the house,” he told them. “Don’t let anyone in. Don’t let anyone see you. I’ll make sure you get food and whatever else you need. Someone will always be watching the house.”

“Is that a threat?” Elmyra asked evenly.

“It could be later. Right now, it’s not.” He pulled the rifle Reno had delivered from his shoulder. “Take this.”

Elmyra recoiled, eyes widening, but he didn’t let her. He pressed the rifle into her chest, backing her up until she grasped it and tried to push back.

“We don’t need—”

“You might,” he snapped. “Take it.”

She took it. He stepped away. Her husband had taught her to shoot a long time ago, and he knew she knew how to use it.

“And what if I turn it on you?” she asked, lips pressed into a displeased line as she checked it over. It wasn’t loaded. He tossed the boxes of ammo in his pockets onto the table.

“Then I take Aerith back to the Tower right now. But if you don’t, then you have a way to protect her. Don’t mistake me. If she disappears because the department was stretched too thin to stop these escaped experiments—or worse—from taking her, then it will be my head on the line.”

Aerith smiled at him. It was more than a little unnerving. “I think we’ll be fine,” she said. “You should get going before anything else explodes, Mr. Turk. Your vampire friend was pretty fast earlier. He’s got a good head start now.”

It shouldn’t have been so easy for a little tiny teenage girl to get under his skin, but today was a weird day. “Stay in the house,” he said one more time, and stomped away to go put out Shinra’s many fires.

Cloud had a substantial head start, but Kunsel managed to get Zack through the R&D warehouse and onto a prototype motorcycle that might actually let him catch up. He routed the data from the tracker in Cloud’s hair to Zack’s PHS and signed off. Some of the blood on his face had dried enough to itch. He swiped a hand under his nose and took a breath.

Tucked away on a floor of the Tower where he definitely wasn’t allowed, he hooked his laptop into the server that wasn’t being guarded for the moment. There would be no other opportunity to get this kind of intel and damned if he wasn’t about to take advantage.

Alright, Hojo, he thought, what is it you’ve been up to?

Chapter Text

Tracking Cloud was hard. Well, sort of. Zack wasn’t really able to track his buddy across the continent as much as track the very obvious trail of destruction and chaos. He couldn’t even tell which parts were intentional or unintentional! Like, had Cloud meant to leave the Mythril mines in shambles? Had he meant to distract Shinra highway security by bogging them down with all the Deepground weirdos so that he could sneak through without fighting all of them?

Actually, Zack was pretty confident the answer on that last one was ‘no.’ Feral half-asleep Cloud loved fighting. And blowing things up.

Where did my nice, shy little buddy go? Zack despaired as he pummeled the shit out of even more Deepground weirdos who thought he looked like a soft target. It was pretty cathartic. I hope he at least stole someone’s shoes.

Anyway, tracking Cloud down⁠—or rather, catching up to him⁠—was hard and Zack really would have been up shit creek without a paddle if Kunsel hadn’t routed the data from the tracker stuck in Cloud’s hair to his PHS. Even going as fast as he possibly could, Cloud had been sitting somewhere in Junon for hours before Zack actually caught up. He wished the tracking was more precise than ‘yeah he’s in Junon somewhere,’ but Kunsel was the only one who could splice in multiple data sources like that.

Still, if Cloud had blown through security to get into Upper Junon, there would have been an uproar. Since there was no uproar (yet) Zack deduced that his friend must have gone into Lower Junon first. He stashed his stolen motorcycle in as safe a spot as he could find and ventured into the shadowed undercity. The inhabitants didn’t seem to be in much of an uproar either, though a few looked puzzled as he raced around and searched for a head of blond hair.

He was just about to stop and start asking civilians if they’d seen a small sleep-deprived teenager when he caught a glimpse of a familiar bright red cape. Relieved, he changed course and jogged down to the edge of the cove, where Vincent was standing. The ex-Turk had, since the last time he’d seen him, recovered from his Veld-induced injuries. And fixed his hair. “Hey, Vampire man!” he called. “Where’s Cloud? You tracked him here, right?”

Vincent side-eyed him (most likely for the vampire comment), then looked away and silently pointed up. Zack followed his pointed finger to find—

He shrieked. “AHHHHH! SPIKE, WHAT ARE YOU DOING!” he yelled, gripping his hair in terror as he watched his squirrely, unwell friend climb the boat hoisting mechanism toward Upper Junon.

“I don’t know why he’s doing that,” Vincent murmured conversationally. “He could have just taken the elevator.”

Zack gripped his hair even harder. “Wh⁠—Why are you just standing here watching? Help me get him down before he passes out!”

“He will not. He’s too busy climbing to remember his exhaustion. I suggest you preempt him by taking the elevator yourself instead of attempting to wrestle him when he’s in such a precarious position.”

Zack glared. “Well… I… fine! But that doesn’t explain why you’re standing here!”

Vincent considered for a moment. “He is… entertaining to watch.”

With a disgusted noise, Zack turned away and sped off toward the elevator. There was a security checkpoint, of course, but he just jammed his helmet back on his head and presented his ID. Technically no one had reported him as a traitor yet, even though he definitely was, and being a SOLDIER Second gave him a lot of operational leeway. Despite (or maybe because of) the chaos in Midgar, he was allowed up without a problem.

Getting over to where Cloud would re-appear was much more of a problem, surprisingly, but he managed to bluster his way through. “Make sure you get your documents in order,” said one trooper lieutenant as he let Zack pass. “We just got orders from Midgar to get everything shipshape around Rufus Shinra. No more sloppiness, even from you SOLDIER types!”

“Yessir, you got it,” lied Zack, and skedaddled as quickly as he could.

Thankfully there were only a few halls in the aerodrome that Cloud could go through once he reached the top. Zack intercepted him the moment he appeared, grabbing his shoulders and dragged him into the nearest fortifiable position: a storage room stocked entirely with life jackets and preservers.

“Cloud!” He yanked his friend into a hug, relieved beyond words.

“Wha⁠—Zack? What are you doing here?” asked Cloud, muffled into his shirt.

“I followed you, Spike.” He pulled back and held Cloud’s shoulders, looking him over. The young former trooper looked wired and wind-swept. His enhanced healing was making quick work of a seriously gnarly rider’s sunburn. Clearly he hadn’t stopped or rested on his way to Junon. “Hey, have you eaten or drank anything recently?”

“No. Wait, yes. I busted open a ShinRa vending machine and drank all their Redbull.”

Well, that explained the dilated pupils and why he was practically vibrating in place under Zack’s hands. “Cloud, buddy, you have to rest. And eat something. And you shouldn’t have run off without me! How am I gonna protect you if you keep doing that!”

Cloud blinked at him. “I’m going to protect you this time,” he said with sudden and jarring soberness. He reached up to grip Zack’s wrists on his shoulders. “Trust me. I’m strong enough to fix everything now, and that means I have work to do here. We can catch up later.”

“Uh, no way are you ditching me again,” said Zack. “We’re in this together, Spike. Whatever this is… what are you even doing in Junon?”

Cloud’s eyes glazed over for a moment. “Oh right,” he said, blinking rapidly, “we’re robbing ShinRa blind.”

“...what?”

“Yeah I was going to steal a submarine, but then I realized you need a bunch of people to pilot one of those. So we’re probably gonna steal a chopper instead. After all the other thefts, of course.”

“...what?”

“That is ill-advised, crazy child,” said Vincent, suddenly right next to them. Both Zack and Cloud screamed, startled, and Zack couldn’t help but yank his small friend up off the ground protectively.

Vincent slowly blinked at them. Zack thought that he detected a hit of spiteful amusement in his eyes.

“What the⁠⁠—how did you even do that!” Zack sputtered. “We’re in a closed room! You’re literally wearing metal clown shoes!”

“They are sabotons, Fair.”

“Sorry Vince but they really do look like clown shoes,” Cloud agreed. “Hey wait, what are you doing here?” His eyes glazed over again for a second before re-focusing. “Didn’t I ask you to take care of Shelke and Shalua?”

“Who?” said Zack, but the vampire said, “I escorted them to safety before following you, crazy child. I would like answers, though I suspect it will be some time before you are able to give them. Perhaps after an extended nap?”

Zack scowled at his tone and turned so his body was partly between Vincent and Cloud. “Are you mocking him?”

The vampire man met his glare with just the barest hint of amusement. “Perhaps.”

“Too busy for naps, Vincent,” said Cloud, evidently not bothered by being mocked. “Zack, put me down, I have work to do.”

Zack⁠—suddenly torn between telling him ‘no, you really should take a nap’ and not wanting to agree with the irritating ex-Turk vampire making fun of his best friend for something that wasn’t his fault (being science’d)⁠—hesitated. “What’s even so important that you have to steal it now?” he settled on asking. He also did not put Cloud down, paranoid that he would leap out of the nearest window if he did.

“Oh, a bunch of stuff… actually I’m not sure if everything is here right now, but for sure the huge materia powering the canon is coming with me. Gotta get down to the reactor for that, though.” He suddenly perked up. “Hey! If you two come with me we can steal a submarine after all! Then we can sabotage the reactor and get out of here.” He managed to escape Zack’s grip by using his toes to grip Zack’s pants, climbing over his shoulders like he was a tree, and slithering down to the floor before anyone could stop him.

“I really don’t think stealing a submarine is a good idea, Spike,” Zack stressed.

Cloud shrugged. “Chopper works too. Or a plane. Hey Vincent, do you know how to fly a gelnika?”

“No,” said the vampire, who seemed to be contemplating the life choices that had led him to this moment as he watched Cloud’s antics.

“Yeah, neither can I. I can do a chopper, though, and a sub. First I gotta rob Rupert blind, though.”

Vincent and Zack both blinked. “Um. He’s dead, Cloud,” said Zack. “Your vampire friend killed him when he tried to kill us.”

This time, Cloud’s eyes glazed over for a very long moment. “Really?” he asked when they refocused.

“Really,” said Vincent. “You were unconscious at the time.”

“Huh.” A wide, feral grin slowly grew on his face. It made him look even more unhinged than before. “So I get to rob Rufus blind, then. Oh we are going to enjoy this one.” He briefly rubbed his hands together in glee and headed for the door.

Zack fumbled to catch the back of his shirt. “Cloud, wait, you can’t just stroll out and rob the new President without a plan, especially when he’s here in Junon! Security is going to be nuts!”

“True,” said Cloud, who only looked more excited. “Hey, do you think I could steal his dog?”

“What?”

“I really really really want to steal Darkstar.”

“We are not stealing a dog!”

They were stealing a dog.

Zack still wasn’t sure how it had happened, but Cloud had stolen the remaining pieces of a SOLDIER Second uniform (including actual boots and a helmet to ward off further brain damage, thank Gaia), Zack had returned his helmet to his head, and Vincent was dipping in and out of the shadows beside them as they worked their way toward the former Vice President’s headquarters.

“This is a bad idea, Spike,” Zack muttered as they passed a platoon of elite troopers marching in lockstep. They’d already taken a few detours to steal some weapons and other… eccentric… items at Cloud’s insistence. Security had only intensified since then.

“It’s a great idea, actually, we love bothering Rufus. He deserves it.”

“Why are you saying that like you know him? And what do you mean we?”

Cloud didn’t answer because they were too busy being yanked into a blind alcove by Vincent. The ex-Turk vampire shushed them; a moment later Reno and Rude sprinted by.

“I get to bother the Turks too!” Cloud whispered rapturously. “This is the best day yet!”

“I really think you should take a nap after we’re done here, Spike,” Zack said desperately.

“Yeah, sure, once we’re done I’ll take a nap.”

The amount of effort it actually took to reach the new President’s office was shockingly low in Zack’s estimation. Sure they had to sneak and lie and bluster and avoid giving their IDs at all costs (Cloud had stolen one for backup; it wouldn’t hold up under close scrutiny), but this was the new President. And the previous one had been assassinated within the past two days. Realistically, they shouldn’t have been able to even get into Junon, much less close enough for Cloud to kick the door in.

The chair at the large, ornate desk spun around. “I’ve been expecting you,” said Rufus Shinra, flanked on one side by Tseng and the other by Cissnei and yeah, okay, that did explain it.

“Woah, really?” said Cloud, audibly surprised. “Why?”

Rufus, who had seemed on the verge of some kind of monologue, paused and squinted. “What do you mean why, you assassinated my father and destroyed his entire secret operation. I’ve been tracking you since you entered Junon.”

“Oh, no, I didn’t kill Rupert,” said Cloud. He hooked a thumb over his shoulder. “That was Vince.”

“It was indeed me,” Vincent agreed, appearing suddenly and nodding. He had a third Turk in a submission hold. The poor man’s eyes were huge and he wasn’t even trying to get free, but was instead texting frantically on his PHS. For whatever reason, Vincent didn’t bother to stop him.

“Cloud,” Cissnei said delicately, “why don’t you put down the weapons so we can talk and make a deal? Rufus is very interested in… working with you, even before this. We’ve all seen the footage of you breaking into Genesis Rhapsodos’s apartment by this point. It was very impressive.”

“Uh, no, I’m not working with him again,” said Cloud flatly. “I’ve had enough of being a delivery boy, thanks.” He grinned, bared teeth gleaming from beneath the SOLDIER helmet. “I’m here to steal your dog.”

An expression of profound incredulity crossed Rufus’s face. “...Tseng, I believe the projected recovery time that Mr. Strife here needs should be doubled. He’s more out of it than the reports suggested."

“Cloud, if you put the weapons down and talk I’ll give you an entire case of Redbull and some materia,” Cissnei said with palpable desperation.

“You should have offered six hours ago. Anyway, Darkstar, catch!” He pulled a forearm-length gourmet steak (stolen from Rufus’s own kitchens, of course) from his pocket and chucked it at the President’s guard hound. The hound, which had been standing attentively in front of the desk, perked up and leaped forward to catch the steak in its jaws. “Follow me and there’s more where that came from!” Cloud promised.

“You can’t be serious,” said Rufus. “Darkstar is loyal only to m—“

The guard hound trotted over to Cloud and circled around him, sniffing inquisitively, and then sat at his side and licked its chops.

 “—are you fucking kidding me,” Rufus finished flatly.

Zack turned a laugh into a cough. Tseng sighed quietly. Cissnei grimaced and rubbed her forehead. The unknown Turk was barely paying attention. If Vincent had any kind of reaction, it was hidden behind his cowl.

“I… ugh,” said Rufus, pinching the bridge of his nose. “Subdue them, we can deal with this after the inauguration ceremony.”

Cloud laughed at the threat, readying his materia, but there was no need. Behind them, the door was kicked open for the second time in less than ten minutes.

“Hands off my apprentice!” a familiar voice smugly demanded. Zack grabbed Cloud’s harness and immediately began to strategize about which window would be the best to throw themselves out of.

Genesis Rhapsodos had arrived.