Mideel Continent, Banora, Saturday, Noon
Zack had managed to get all of three steps out of Angeal's mom's house when he heard a loud crashing sound nearby. More Genesis copies, not far from the gate and roadway leading out of the small gathering of houses.
More quick work. It was almost funny, in a sick sort of way, that a bunch of men who used to be SOLDIERS around the same rank as himself, enfused with the power of the deserter, Genesis, could be taken out in packs by just Zack and his sword. And, okay fine, he used the Thunder materia that he'd picked up in the SOLDIER supply pod back before leaving on this mission, too. It was just that... they didn't seem to think. They'd stand there, twitching, each holding a wickedly curved blade, and they'd attack blindly, looking for blood. But there was nothing to them beyond that.
If there had ever been SOLDIER minds in those bodies before, they were long, long gone now.
One more thing for Zack to try not to think about.
As Zack was putting his sword away, his PHS rang. Tseng, callling to inform him that there was a factory on the outskirts of town, and he'd spotted a Genesis copy heading into it. Their headquarters, probably. A frontal attack would have been stupid, and there was a cliff overlooking the factory. Zack was to meet Tseng there. An easy enough trek! Even with the hounds and the copies and the giant spinning machines of death that seemed to be lurking all over the pathway there.
Tseng was crouched on the edge of that cliff when Zack arrived, looking thoughtfully at the glass roof below.
"Genesis's parents were in that grave."
"Wait, he... his own family?" There was that sick feeling, again. Zack was starting to wonder if this mission was going to ever see that feeling go away.
"We can't expect reason from him," Tseng agreed. "What about Angeal?"
"He wasn't at the house," Zack replied, quietly. The two of them looked down from their vantage point, and for a brief moment, Zack felt utterly defeated. A very brief moment. And then it was all exclamation points and duty all over again. That was how it had to be, or else Zack would be running in place forever, and he'd have let down Angeal completely. "But please, give me time! If I find Angeal, I can talk to him. If I can convince Angeal, maybe Genesis will come back, too."
Tseng closed his eyes. And for a second, Zack was certain that he was going to be read the riot act.
Instead, the Turk looked up at him, speaking almost gently. Somehow more gently than the mellow tone that he spoke in already.
"I understand now why Sephiroth chose you." Huh? "Genesis and Angeal. Those two were Sephiroth's only friends. He didn't want to fight them. That's why he refused the mission."
"Well," there was a definite stubborn note in the puppy's voice, now. Determined. Zack on a mission. "Angeal is my friend, too!"
"He's counting on you to bring them both back." And then the Turk was standing tall again, as though the entire conversation hadn't happened. As though he'd gone from some state of humanity right on through a filter, and now he was All Business Again. "Time is short. Let's go."
Getting into the building was an easy enough job. The roof was made of glass, after all, and they were directly above it. For Zack, it was really just a matter of jumping down and through it! And then Tseng could follow along from there.
SOLDIER: ShinRa's human wrecking balls.
When more of the copies attacked, Zack waved Tseng on ahead. He'd watch the Turk's back while they got to where they needed to be, down some stairs to the next floor down, and into a small room on the other side of the warehouse area that they'd landed in.
By the time Zack made it into that room, Tseng was already crouched over a computer, typing away. Hacking the system? Whatever info-digging things Turks did, Zack figured. That wasn't part of his own job, so he really didn't need to know.
"Looks like the copies are being made here," Tseng noted, and then he directed Zack to the second floor. Genesis might be there, after all.
"Infinite in mystery is the gift of the goddess. We seek it thus, and take to the sky." There was, indeed, a man on the second floor, perched beneath a windowsill, clad in a red leather coat. He was reading from a well-used book. Loveless. "Ripples form on the water's surface. The wandering soul knows no rest."
He paused in his reading, looking up at Zack, and he let out a short 'hnf,' as though the boy's presence amused him. Or disgusted him. Or some twisted combination of the two.
"Settle down," the man said, a sick, smug tone in his voice, "Zack the Puppy."
For the first time in his life, that nickname managed to get Zack's hackles raised. Genesis.
Tseng ran in just as Zack stepped forward, a growl catching in the boy's throat. He stopped, abruptly, beside Zack, and then he stepped to the side, to a tank of some sort that was glowing green nearby. Inside, engulfed in Mako-green fluid, there was a man. A copy in the making.
"The grave at the house," Tseng said, turning to face Genesis as well. "We found the remains of our people there as well."
The remains of the Turks who had gone missing. Zack remembered the faces on Lazard's screen, blotted out with that bold lettering that stated that they were gone.
What a horrible way to find them again.
"It didn't take much to have them send false reports," Genesis mused, not so much as looking their way from his seat on the floor. "Just some mild threats..."
And now Tseng's hackles were up, too. He was walking toward the SOLDIER deserter, intent to kill burning in his eyes.
The former SOLDIER 1st Class. That would be a good way to get himself killed.
"They would have done that anyway," Zack quickly interrupted, causing Tseng to pause mid-step. "At least your parents would have."
"My 'parents' betrayed me," Genesis said, finally looking their way. Pulling himself to his feet. Glaring at the SOLDIER and the Turk who had the gall to set foot in his domain. "They had always betrayed me, from the very beginning. What do you know?" He held up his hand, and a haze seemed to form around it, blue-green, like the Mako that ShinRa mined from the earth to bring energy to the people of Gaia. Like the hazy glow from the tube nearby. "ShinRa lapdogs!"
And when Genesis threw his hand toward Tseng, that blue glow turned into something more fierce, far more dangerous, and the Turk was sent careening backward into one of the tubes that had been holding a copy, smashing into solid metal and then slumping toward to the floor.
And Tseng was on fire.
Tseng hadn't even hit the floor, and Zack was drawing his sword, ready for a fight.
He didn't get that far before there was someone in the way, standing between himself and Genesis. Zack's sword wasn't in his hand, that other someone had it.
Angeal.
Zack wasn't breathing, now. This had gone from sick to surreal in a matter of heartbeats. Tseng was smouldering on the floor, Genesis was extending a hand toward Angeal, and Angeal? Alive and well. Just standing there. Silent.
"Welcome, partner," the deserter in red stated, his voice still sounding like sugar and smugness and sick. That kind of bile that burned in the throat when everything was going wrong. That was what Genesis sounded like to Zack.
Angeal lifted his sword. Zack's sword. Not the Buster Sword that was once again at his back.
No words. Just that sword. Pointed at Genesis.
"I see..." Genesis's tone stayed the same. "You've finally made your decision. I'll respect your wishes, old friend. However..." He walked up to Angeal, until his face was right beside that of the other 1st. "Can you really live on that side?"
Genesis left.
Angeal turned and tried to do the same.
Zack found himself yelling his mentor's name, running after him, and then being shoved roughly away. As he caught himself, Angeal plunged his sword deep into the floor. He kept going. Not a word.
He wasn't going to be deterred, damn it! It took Zack a moment to retrieve his weapon, but then he gave chase once again. He'd lost Angeal once already. He couldn't possibly give up now, not when he was so close.
There was nobody in the factory. No Angeal. No Genesis. He couldn't very well leave the way he'd come in, because it wasn't as though he could fly or anything and he didn't have any Jump Materia to his name. And when Zack had made his way to the sliding door that made the most sense as an exit, he was assaulted by a pair of Guard Hounds, angrier and meaner-looking than the ones he'd been fighting on the way in. He could handle them, of course, but they meant that he'd be slowed down.
He couldn't afford to be slowed down. He'd lose them, that way. More than he already had. He was looking for a way around them, reaching for his sword, when two gunshots rang through the building, and both hounds dropped to the floor, dead. And when Zack turned around to see who had fired them? Tseng was standing there, smoking gun in hand, all business.
Zack would be overjoyed that the man was still alive and well... later. Turks were hard to kill. He got that. But he was a tiny bit preoccupied at the moment.
Apparently, so was Tseng.
"There's no time," he explained, making a fist in front of his chest, and then thrusting his arm toward the door. "We have to leave now."
"We're not gonna go look for those two?" Zack's heart was no longer in the pit of his gut. It had found its way to his toes, and was going to just wither up and die there, now. And that was why he was yelling, yes.
"All evidence of misconduct must be erased. Company rules." What was Tseng talking about? "An airstrike will neutralize this town."
And now? The heart that was in Zack's toes was leaping upward again, to sit in his throat, where it was beating a mile a minute. More Guard Hounds leapt into the building, surrounding them, and every inch of Zack felt electrified, desperate. Angry.
"Are you sure that nobody is at Angeal's house?" How did Tseng manage to remain so perfectly calm? Zack didn't have words. "Hurry!"
And then Tseng was firing more shots at the monsters, and Zack was running through. Angeal's mother. He had to get Angeal's mother. Angeal could handle himself, but his mom...?
There was nobody else left. Nobody who would help her to escape.
All evidence of misconduct must be erased...
Why would ShinRa have a policy like that?
The first bombs to be dropped weren't ShinRa's at all. They belonged to Genesis and his men, and they were aimed at Zack. They were the same missiles that the spider-like robot had fired at him, and so they were hardly of any consequence at all, but they served to slow him down more.
He cut his way through them the same way he'd cut his way through the rest. Sword-first, heartbeat in his ears, and stepping forward with flames rising up behind him.
Tseng called in to have a short delay put on ShinRa's own airstrike. It would buy Genesis more time to escape, which was unfortunate, but Zack and Tseng themselves needed it, now. They might have made it before, even with Zack's detour to rescue Angeal's mother.
The door was open when Zack got there.
The door was open. And Angeal's mom wasn't sitting at the table where Zack had left her.
She was sprawled across the floor.
She wasn't breathing. She wasn't moving. Zack had seen enough death in his lifetime to know what he was looking at, now. He backed away toward the doorway, unable to breathe, unable to think. Angeal's mom. Angeal's mom. Angeal's mom.
There was someone beside him, standing against the wall, looking down at the body.
Angeal.
Something snapped, and all that Zack could see was red and Angeal and there was a body on the floor the body of Angeal's mother and he was just standing there looking, and someone was screaming and Angeal was being slammed up against the wall and Zack was vaguely aware that it was all himself.
"What the hell did you do, Angeal?"
Zack was shaking him, seething, and Angeal was just taking it. Limp against the wall, limp in his hands, stumbling out the door as Zack's fist made solid contact with Angeal's jaw.
No thinking. Just anger.
His mom.
"Is that... Is that your idea of honor?!"
Angeal was sprawled on the ground when he finally found words again. The first words that Zack had heard him speak since Angeal had vanished over a month ago.
"My mother... could not continue to live. And neither can the son."
"What are you talking about! What's going on here?" Zack wasn't going to stop yelling. Wasn't. Couldn't. Couldn't think, and none of this made sense, and there was the body of an innocent woman on the floor behind him that was Angeal's mother, and if he stopped screaming at Angeal, then he might have cracked and cried.
So, yelling it was.
"I told you." There was that bile, again. That smug, smooth voice that belonged to none other than Genesis, just outside the door. "You can't live on that side anymore."
Angeal was on his feet again, back turned to the both of them, head down. He put the Buster Sword back onto his back, and then once again, he started to walk away.
No more anger. Just desperation. Just Zack screaming his name and running through the door after him. About to lose Angeal again. Can't. No! But Genesis's foot caught Zack's own, and he was tasting dirt a moment later, reeling, trying to pick himself up again. Trying to make sense of anything. Angeal!
"My friend, do you fly away now? To a world that abhors you and I?" More Loveless. More Genesis bile. Zack was still screaming, vaguely aware that the words out of his mouth were just as much 'shut up,' as they were the name of his friend. "All that awaits you is a somber morrow, no matter where the winds may blow."
Genesis had his hand in the air again, a red summon Materia held in his fingertips. And once again, something was gathering in it, something strong. Zack pulled himself to his feet again as the man, the traitor, stopped reciting, and started to speak. "I don't see Sephiroth today, but... are you game?"
There was a flash of red.
And then there was a dragon.
If Ifrit had given Zack a run for his money a month ago, Bahamut managed to take Zack, turn him upside-down, and send him stumbling. The dragon was massive, all claw and wing and tooth, with a habit of flying up and away from Zack and raining down attacks of lightning from above. Zack still had Blizzard equipped after his demonstration the other week at the Magic Reserves, and so he could at least use it for attacking the huge beast from a distance, when he couldn't reach.
When Bahamut had cast Mega Flare, it felt as though Zack was being ripped apart. The entire area went so white that it took him a few moments to be able to see again, and by that time, there was another powerful dragon claw bearing down on top of him. It was all he could do to cast Cure in time to keep from simply falling over.
Attack, cure, dodge, focus. How could he focus? Angeal's mother was dead on the floor. The entire town was about to go up in flames. There was a giant dragon trying to kill him. He'd lost Angeal again.
He'd lost Angeal again.
That was the last thought he had before he brought his sword down, hard, against Bahamut's chest, and in another flash of light, everything was normal again. Zack walked forward, picking up the Materia that fell to the ground when the dragon roared and disappeared.
Now, it was just Zack and Genesis again.
"Summons aren't meant to be used like this!" They were for quick-hits. For backup. Come in, do some damage, leave. They weren't there for fighting the battle for you. "What happened to dreams and honor?"
Genesis had his back turned on Zack. He lifted a hand to his forehead, and his words were less bile, now. Something else. Something that almost stung.
"We are monsters."
SOLDIER and monsters. The same. Again, Zack was hearing it.
And when Genesis threw his hand to the side, and a black feathered wing tore out from the back of his red coat, for the first time since hearing it, Zack believed it.
"We have neither dreams nor honor," Genesis finished. And then he was in the air, ebony feathers drifting downward around Zack, and then he was gone.
Zack held out his hand, and a feather floated lazily down into it, and he lost himself in it for a moment. A feather from the wing of a monster. The same as him? As all SOLDIER, as the men he'd been fighting since Wutai. And Angeal was gone, and his mother was dead, and nothing made any sense anymore.
No.
Zack looked up at the sky, and he found himself murmuring.
"SOLDIER... doesn't mean monster."
An explosion nearby rocked him back to the moment, and the ShinRa helicopter lifted up over the hill, Tseng hanging out the door, waving for Zack to hurry up, to get on. The airstrike had begun.
Banora was burning.
As Zack watched, hanging out the door of the helicopter, a blue apple withered, smouldered, and then fell to the ground from what was once the largest, most perfect apple tree in the town.
He didn't say another word the entire way back to Midgar.
[Second verse, same as the first. Ganked from Crisis Core, NFB and NFI for distance, OOC welcome, and ow. That gave my heart a hurty.]
More quick work. It was almost funny, in a sick sort of way, that a bunch of men who used to be SOLDIERS around the same rank as himself, enfused with the power of the deserter, Genesis, could be taken out in packs by just Zack and his sword. And, okay fine, he used the Thunder materia that he'd picked up in the SOLDIER supply pod back before leaving on this mission, too. It was just that... they didn't seem to think. They'd stand there, twitching, each holding a wickedly curved blade, and they'd attack blindly, looking for blood. But there was nothing to them beyond that.
If there had ever been SOLDIER minds in those bodies before, they were long, long gone now.
One more thing for Zack to try not to think about.
As Zack was putting his sword away, his PHS rang. Tseng, callling to inform him that there was a factory on the outskirts of town, and he'd spotted a Genesis copy heading into it. Their headquarters, probably. A frontal attack would have been stupid, and there was a cliff overlooking the factory. Zack was to meet Tseng there. An easy enough trek! Even with the hounds and the copies and the giant spinning machines of death that seemed to be lurking all over the pathway there.
Tseng was crouched on the edge of that cliff when Zack arrived, looking thoughtfully at the glass roof below.
"Genesis's parents were in that grave."
"Wait, he... his own family?" There was that sick feeling, again. Zack was starting to wonder if this mission was going to ever see that feeling go away.
"We can't expect reason from him," Tseng agreed. "What about Angeal?"
"He wasn't at the house," Zack replied, quietly. The two of them looked down from their vantage point, and for a brief moment, Zack felt utterly defeated. A very brief moment. And then it was all exclamation points and duty all over again. That was how it had to be, or else Zack would be running in place forever, and he'd have let down Angeal completely. "But please, give me time! If I find Angeal, I can talk to him. If I can convince Angeal, maybe Genesis will come back, too."
Tseng closed his eyes. And for a second, Zack was certain that he was going to be read the riot act.
Instead, the Turk looked up at him, speaking almost gently. Somehow more gently than the mellow tone that he spoke in already.
"I understand now why Sephiroth chose you." Huh? "Genesis and Angeal. Those two were Sephiroth's only friends. He didn't want to fight them. That's why he refused the mission."
"Well," there was a definite stubborn note in the puppy's voice, now. Determined. Zack on a mission. "Angeal is my friend, too!"
"He's counting on you to bring them both back." And then the Turk was standing tall again, as though the entire conversation hadn't happened. As though he'd gone from some state of humanity right on through a filter, and now he was All Business Again. "Time is short. Let's go."
Getting into the building was an easy enough job. The roof was made of glass, after all, and they were directly above it. For Zack, it was really just a matter of jumping down and through it! And then Tseng could follow along from there.
SOLDIER: ShinRa's human wrecking balls.
When more of the copies attacked, Zack waved Tseng on ahead. He'd watch the Turk's back while they got to where they needed to be, down some stairs to the next floor down, and into a small room on the other side of the warehouse area that they'd landed in.
By the time Zack made it into that room, Tseng was already crouched over a computer, typing away. Hacking the system? Whatever info-digging things Turks did, Zack figured. That wasn't part of his own job, so he really didn't need to know.
"Looks like the copies are being made here," Tseng noted, and then he directed Zack to the second floor. Genesis might be there, after all.
"Infinite in mystery is the gift of the goddess. We seek it thus, and take to the sky." There was, indeed, a man on the second floor, perched beneath a windowsill, clad in a red leather coat. He was reading from a well-used book. Loveless. "Ripples form on the water's surface. The wandering soul knows no rest."
He paused in his reading, looking up at Zack, and he let out a short 'hnf,' as though the boy's presence amused him. Or disgusted him. Or some twisted combination of the two.
"Settle down," the man said, a sick, smug tone in his voice, "Zack the Puppy."
For the first time in his life, that nickname managed to get Zack's hackles raised. Genesis.
Tseng ran in just as Zack stepped forward, a growl catching in the boy's throat. He stopped, abruptly, beside Zack, and then he stepped to the side, to a tank of some sort that was glowing green nearby. Inside, engulfed in Mako-green fluid, there was a man. A copy in the making.
"The grave at the house," Tseng said, turning to face Genesis as well. "We found the remains of our people there as well."
The remains of the Turks who had gone missing. Zack remembered the faces on Lazard's screen, blotted out with that bold lettering that stated that they were gone.
What a horrible way to find them again.
"It didn't take much to have them send false reports," Genesis mused, not so much as looking their way from his seat on the floor. "Just some mild threats..."
And now Tseng's hackles were up, too. He was walking toward the SOLDIER deserter, intent to kill burning in his eyes.
The former SOLDIER 1st Class. That would be a good way to get himself killed.
"They would have done that anyway," Zack quickly interrupted, causing Tseng to pause mid-step. "At least your parents would have."
"My 'parents' betrayed me," Genesis said, finally looking their way. Pulling himself to his feet. Glaring at the SOLDIER and the Turk who had the gall to set foot in his domain. "They had always betrayed me, from the very beginning. What do you know?" He held up his hand, and a haze seemed to form around it, blue-green, like the Mako that ShinRa mined from the earth to bring energy to the people of Gaia. Like the hazy glow from the tube nearby. "ShinRa lapdogs!"
And when Genesis threw his hand toward Tseng, that blue glow turned into something more fierce, far more dangerous, and the Turk was sent careening backward into one of the tubes that had been holding a copy, smashing into solid metal and then slumping toward to the floor.
And Tseng was on fire.
Tseng hadn't even hit the floor, and Zack was drawing his sword, ready for a fight.
He didn't get that far before there was someone in the way, standing between himself and Genesis. Zack's sword wasn't in his hand, that other someone had it.
Angeal.
Zack wasn't breathing, now. This had gone from sick to surreal in a matter of heartbeats. Tseng was smouldering on the floor, Genesis was extending a hand toward Angeal, and Angeal? Alive and well. Just standing there. Silent.
"Welcome, partner," the deserter in red stated, his voice still sounding like sugar and smugness and sick. That kind of bile that burned in the throat when everything was going wrong. That was what Genesis sounded like to Zack.
Angeal lifted his sword. Zack's sword. Not the Buster Sword that was once again at his back.
No words. Just that sword. Pointed at Genesis.
"I see..." Genesis's tone stayed the same. "You've finally made your decision. I'll respect your wishes, old friend. However..." He walked up to Angeal, until his face was right beside that of the other 1st. "Can you really live on that side?"
Genesis left.
Angeal turned and tried to do the same.
Zack found himself yelling his mentor's name, running after him, and then being shoved roughly away. As he caught himself, Angeal plunged his sword deep into the floor. He kept going. Not a word.
He wasn't going to be deterred, damn it! It took Zack a moment to retrieve his weapon, but then he gave chase once again. He'd lost Angeal once already. He couldn't possibly give up now, not when he was so close.
There was nobody in the factory. No Angeal. No Genesis. He couldn't very well leave the way he'd come in, because it wasn't as though he could fly or anything and he didn't have any Jump Materia to his name. And when Zack had made his way to the sliding door that made the most sense as an exit, he was assaulted by a pair of Guard Hounds, angrier and meaner-looking than the ones he'd been fighting on the way in. He could handle them, of course, but they meant that he'd be slowed down.
He couldn't afford to be slowed down. He'd lose them, that way. More than he already had. He was looking for a way around them, reaching for his sword, when two gunshots rang through the building, and both hounds dropped to the floor, dead. And when Zack turned around to see who had fired them? Tseng was standing there, smoking gun in hand, all business.
Zack would be overjoyed that the man was still alive and well... later. Turks were hard to kill. He got that. But he was a tiny bit preoccupied at the moment.
Apparently, so was Tseng.
"There's no time," he explained, making a fist in front of his chest, and then thrusting his arm toward the door. "We have to leave now."
"We're not gonna go look for those two?" Zack's heart was no longer in the pit of his gut. It had found its way to his toes, and was going to just wither up and die there, now. And that was why he was yelling, yes.
"All evidence of misconduct must be erased. Company rules." What was Tseng talking about? "An airstrike will neutralize this town."
And now? The heart that was in Zack's toes was leaping upward again, to sit in his throat, where it was beating a mile a minute. More Guard Hounds leapt into the building, surrounding them, and every inch of Zack felt electrified, desperate. Angry.
"Are you sure that nobody is at Angeal's house?" How did Tseng manage to remain so perfectly calm? Zack didn't have words. "Hurry!"
And then Tseng was firing more shots at the monsters, and Zack was running through. Angeal's mother. He had to get Angeal's mother. Angeal could handle himself, but his mom...?
There was nobody else left. Nobody who would help her to escape.
All evidence of misconduct must be erased...
Why would ShinRa have a policy like that?
The first bombs to be dropped weren't ShinRa's at all. They belonged to Genesis and his men, and they were aimed at Zack. They were the same missiles that the spider-like robot had fired at him, and so they were hardly of any consequence at all, but they served to slow him down more.
He cut his way through them the same way he'd cut his way through the rest. Sword-first, heartbeat in his ears, and stepping forward with flames rising up behind him.
Tseng called in to have a short delay put on ShinRa's own airstrike. It would buy Genesis more time to escape, which was unfortunate, but Zack and Tseng themselves needed it, now. They might have made it before, even with Zack's detour to rescue Angeal's mother.
The door was open when Zack got there.
The door was open. And Angeal's mom wasn't sitting at the table where Zack had left her.
She was sprawled across the floor.
She wasn't breathing. She wasn't moving. Zack had seen enough death in his lifetime to know what he was looking at, now. He backed away toward the doorway, unable to breathe, unable to think. Angeal's mom. Angeal's mom. Angeal's mom.
There was someone beside him, standing against the wall, looking down at the body.
Angeal.
Something snapped, and all that Zack could see was red and Angeal and there was a body on the floor the body of Angeal's mother and he was just standing there looking, and someone was screaming and Angeal was being slammed up against the wall and Zack was vaguely aware that it was all himself.
"What the hell did you do, Angeal?"
Zack was shaking him, seething, and Angeal was just taking it. Limp against the wall, limp in his hands, stumbling out the door as Zack's fist made solid contact with Angeal's jaw.
No thinking. Just anger.
His mom.
"Is that... Is that your idea of honor?!"
Angeal was sprawled on the ground when he finally found words again. The first words that Zack had heard him speak since Angeal had vanished over a month ago.
"My mother... could not continue to live. And neither can the son."
"What are you talking about! What's going on here?" Zack wasn't going to stop yelling. Wasn't. Couldn't. Couldn't think, and none of this made sense, and there was the body of an innocent woman on the floor behind him that was Angeal's mother, and if he stopped screaming at Angeal, then he might have cracked and cried.
So, yelling it was.
"I told you." There was that bile, again. That smug, smooth voice that belonged to none other than Genesis, just outside the door. "You can't live on that side anymore."
Angeal was on his feet again, back turned to the both of them, head down. He put the Buster Sword back onto his back, and then once again, he started to walk away.
No more anger. Just desperation. Just Zack screaming his name and running through the door after him. About to lose Angeal again. Can't. No! But Genesis's foot caught Zack's own, and he was tasting dirt a moment later, reeling, trying to pick himself up again. Trying to make sense of anything. Angeal!
"My friend, do you fly away now? To a world that abhors you and I?" More Loveless. More Genesis bile. Zack was still screaming, vaguely aware that the words out of his mouth were just as much 'shut up,' as they were the name of his friend. "All that awaits you is a somber morrow, no matter where the winds may blow."
Genesis had his hand in the air again, a red summon Materia held in his fingertips. And once again, something was gathering in it, something strong. Zack pulled himself to his feet again as the man, the traitor, stopped reciting, and started to speak. "I don't see Sephiroth today, but... are you game?"
There was a flash of red.
And then there was a dragon.
If Ifrit had given Zack a run for his money a month ago, Bahamut managed to take Zack, turn him upside-down, and send him stumbling. The dragon was massive, all claw and wing and tooth, with a habit of flying up and away from Zack and raining down attacks of lightning from above. Zack still had Blizzard equipped after his demonstration the other week at the Magic Reserves, and so he could at least use it for attacking the huge beast from a distance, when he couldn't reach.
When Bahamut had cast Mega Flare, it felt as though Zack was being ripped apart. The entire area went so white that it took him a few moments to be able to see again, and by that time, there was another powerful dragon claw bearing down on top of him. It was all he could do to cast Cure in time to keep from simply falling over.
Attack, cure, dodge, focus. How could he focus? Angeal's mother was dead on the floor. The entire town was about to go up in flames. There was a giant dragon trying to kill him. He'd lost Angeal again.
He'd lost Angeal again.
That was the last thought he had before he brought his sword down, hard, against Bahamut's chest, and in another flash of light, everything was normal again. Zack walked forward, picking up the Materia that fell to the ground when the dragon roared and disappeared.
Now, it was just Zack and Genesis again.
"Summons aren't meant to be used like this!" They were for quick-hits. For backup. Come in, do some damage, leave. They weren't there for fighting the battle for you. "What happened to dreams and honor?"
Genesis had his back turned on Zack. He lifted a hand to his forehead, and his words were less bile, now. Something else. Something that almost stung.
"We are monsters."
SOLDIER and monsters. The same. Again, Zack was hearing it.
And when Genesis threw his hand to the side, and a black feathered wing tore out from the back of his red coat, for the first time since hearing it, Zack believed it.
"We have neither dreams nor honor," Genesis finished. And then he was in the air, ebony feathers drifting downward around Zack, and then he was gone.
Zack held out his hand, and a feather floated lazily down into it, and he lost himself in it for a moment. A feather from the wing of a monster. The same as him? As all SOLDIER, as the men he'd been fighting since Wutai. And Angeal was gone, and his mother was dead, and nothing made any sense anymore.
No.
Zack looked up at the sky, and he found himself murmuring.
"SOLDIER... doesn't mean monster."
An explosion nearby rocked him back to the moment, and the ShinRa helicopter lifted up over the hill, Tseng hanging out the door, waving for Zack to hurry up, to get on. The airstrike had begun.
Banora was burning.
As Zack watched, hanging out the door of the helicopter, a blue apple withered, smouldered, and then fell to the ground from what was once the largest, most perfect apple tree in the town.
He didn't say another word the entire way back to Midgar.
[Second verse, same as the first. Ganked from Crisis Core, NFB and NFI for distance, OOC welcome, and ow. That gave my heart a hurty.]