Update: Wake Chapter 5
Woot, consider us officially caught up! At the time, I'd been trying to skip Crisis Core plot to avoid rehashing the game, but I've come to the conclusion that that's just awkward, given how I then have to continuously reference it. So. After this confusing mess of a chapter, I've included a note summarizing the relevant Crisis Core plotline that this chapter springboards off of. I don't believe it's actually necessary to know the Crisis Core story to go along with this story, but it would untangle some of the references I've shoved in here. I won't do it again, promise.
Part 5. Calling collect
Disclaimer: All recognizable characters and settings are property of Square Enix. No profit is being sought from the writing of this fanfiction, and no copyright infringement is intended.
Progress: I've more or less unlocked everything in Theatrhythm now and am just grinding for trophies at this point.
Progress that isn't bullshit: We're looking at about thirteen or fourteen chapters plus an indulgent interlude coming up after the current story arc.
Beta: Much, much credit to Poisonberries for making this edible.
--
The sky boiled. Blue light cored with white so bright it screwed into Cloud's retinas seethed overhead, and wisps of energy danced by his knees before shooting up to join the mass. A couple splashed over his skin as they passed, their frenzied careen dissolving into a spray of short-lived sparks. It felt like muted zaps of static shock.
Bahamut arched its wide wings, big enough to swallow the horizon, and Cloud stared up into Megaflare.
Fuck. Oh fuck.
Panic tripped its way up his spine, driving spikes into all the soft, hollow bits as it hopped and skipped. The smooth bindings on the hilt of his broadsword creaked under his grip, and Cloud clenched his other fist over his sword arm to stop its sporadic shake.
Banora (1) was deserted around him, the emptiness oozing from the ramshackle houses vibrating with his nerves. Evacuated. Dead. He didn't know. The clearing between the ragged row of homes filled up with clumps of dust as the shaking slowly sheared the buildings apart, beam by deliberate beam.
There was the roar of air being compressed and propelled in ragged spirals, carried along and pushed away in turns by the spin and flow of magic. His eyes skittered over grey, broken terrain, searching for a focal point away from the roil of blue. An unbroken door, a fucking rock that wasn't moving under the pressure. Anything to centre himself, let him dredge up his years of training, and pummel his jackknifing muscles back under control. His imagination slithered its way past the desperate blocks he'd erected in his mind, and a vision of his skin being flayed away burst across the inside of his skull, complete with lurid colours and the scent of scorched flesh. Exposed bone grinned at him, buried in clumps of half-seared hamburger meat.
Quit bitching and focus!
The words assaulted his head, expanding through his skull and attempting to squeeze his brain down his nostrils. Cloud suppressed the jump as surprise drove its way into his senses, but his breath snagged in his throat, doubled back, and pounded on the mucus-soaked flap covering his windpipe from both sides until he seized and gagged. His eyes darted to the side before dragging back up to Bahamut's improbably airborne bulk.
It hadn't sounded-he'd heard that voice before. He was pretty sure that-
His memory was hot wax melting under the scream of fear, and he shook his head, balancing his other palm against the butt of the sword hilt.
You know what to do, Spike! You'll be fine!
The words were accompanied by a stab of incandescent agony through his temple.
It hadn't addressed him since Wutai, that damn voice. He'd thought it had been a hallucination brought on by thinner air and the way every fucking thing had been trying to take his head off over there. It-
Grey-blue eyes imprinted themselves across his mind, tired and old in a way that made them look just a little less like Angeal's, and fury flared radiant-hot in his gut. It soaked into his limbs, heat and tightness and the itch to streak blood over his blade, and he welcomed it like a returning friend. His head snapped up, and he glared at Bahamut.
"She didn't have to die like that!" he shrieked over the thunder of Megaflare's charge.
The great summon ignored him. It arched its back, poised to fire.
Steady...
"Angeal!"
Now.
Megaflare screamed through the air toward him, and Cloud launched himself straight upward, rejecting the wail of the muscles in his thighs at the abuse. He tucked his sword in tight, his arms clamped to his sides to minimize drag.
The magic baked his face, not exactly heat and not exactly sensation, making the hairs on his neck curl. It howled, growing in perspective as it loomed until it dwarfed Bahamut's black-scaled form, and Cloud wrenched himself to the side. He spiralled tightly, feeling Megaflare scrape like thorns down his limbs, and then he was past it. The sound of the Planet's crust crunching and collapsing rose from under his feet and the winter-grey sky stretched ahead.
Bahamut twisted its serpentine neck, mafic black eyes fixing on Cloud and its incongruously thin arms flexing out to balance it as it tried to turn in the air. Its webbed wings beat hard, flinging out to swat at him, but Cloud had already shot past. A bellow rumbled through its breast, and the draconian body began its pivot, the crackle of lightning adhering and compacting at its wings as it prepared another attack.
With a yell that ripped his voice raw, Cloud spread his legs, pedalling at the wind to direct his arc. At the apex, he raised his sword, gripped it tight with both hands, and he let himself fall into the swing.
The impact sent pain carving up his knees when he hit the ground, and he loosened his joints, tumbling into a roll that spun out of his control and sent him skidding and scraping harshly across the stone. Gouts of black blood thumped to the earth, etching ink blot patterns into the dust, and keening, Bahamut began to fall. It liquefied as it plummeted, runny streaks clinging to the sky like stains of paint on a wall, dissolving segment by segment into nothing.
A speck dropped out of the watery haze of Bahamut's belly while it slowly dissipated into the air. It hit the cobblestone and bounced, ringing out a sharp tone as clear as a bell. The next bounce hit a patch of dirt, and skipping over bloody mud, it spun to a halt in the square, the glimmer of mako wavering in the core of the materia. Slowly, it intensified to a solid glow, pulsing to a slow heartbeat.
His breath rasping in his throat, Cloud dragged his feet under him, nearly overbalancing before he pushed himself upright. He glanced around. His sword had clattered to a stop, half buried in dirt at the base of a wall. His mouth felt like it was coated with every mote of dust the ground was capable of fountaining up, and he spat. Too dry. He sucked at his cheeks, pulling in every drop of spit he could, and he spat again. Looking up, he snarled at Genesis's calm, blank stare.
"Can't even fight your own fights?" he shouted.
The black wing snapped as it flapped once, its imbalanced shape keeping the First afloat. Genesis watched him.
Cloud swung his hand hard, wishing for his sword. "Where's your pride as a Soldier, huh?"
Something flickered over the flatness of Genesis' eyes. He looked down at the spread of a gloved hand. "We are... Monsters," he said.
"What the fuck are you talking about?"
Genesis smiled, a thin, sardonic twist of his lips. "We have neither dreams nor pride. Monsters that have lost both, these unnecessary burdens to our flight."
Blood thrummed in Cloud's ears, the rush making him sway, lightheaded. "Don't give me that cryptic shit, too!"
By the glaze on the First's face, Cloud could tell Genesis had forgotten about him. Stretching a languid wing, he reached out and ran a gentle finger over the long black pinions spreading out from the angled joint near the tip. A ghost of a sigh stretched his face, and Genesis closed his eyes, a shoulder curling in and an arm wrapping around his waist.
"Soldiers aren't monsters!" Cloud tried again.
Genesis didn't seem to hear him. His wing snapping out again, he turned. A flap carried him up, soaring farther than the wing should have been able to carry him.
"Hey! Don't you fucking run, you coward!"
Black feathers rained down, twirling as they fell, as if the sky was moulting.
"Hey!"
His face turned up to empty space, Cloud didn't notice the buzz of his PHS until it started its shrill ring.
"Shit."
He fished through his pockets, finally finding it in a flat panel of fabric at about knee level. He fumbled with the flip, accidentally clapping it shut and cutting off the call. It was silent for only about a second before it started vibrating again in his hand. Cloud thumbed it open.
"Strife here."
There was a burst of crackling noise, and Cloud winced, pulling the earpiece away from his head.
"-mbing to commence in-pare for-" said Tseng's voice.
"Hold on, what?" Cloud said into the speaker.
The voice came clearly this time, accompanied by the roar of machinery. "Strife! Air raid on Banora is starting. Prepare for extraction!"
Cloud's eyes widened. "Extraction? How?"
There was a loud whistle, modulating in pitch as it approached, and an explosion rocked the earth. Cloud bent his knees, absorbing the shock as he threw out a hand for balance.
"Tseng?" he yelled.
There was no response, but he'd seen the chopper by then, dipping down out of the grey sky and heading straight for him. Another shell blared through the air, turning knives in his ears until he thought he felt them leak. The force of the missile's hit made the ground shudder and roll under his feet. Dust whirled , metallic-edged against his tongue and clogging his eyes with gunk, and Cloud rubbed his arm over his face, feeling the damp grit smear. The din was fucking with his senses, making it difficult to tell up from down. Spinning in a drunken circle, Cloud squinted through dirt-sealed eyes and propelled himself into a run. Sliding on locked knees, Cloud snatched up his sword, slamming his other hand into the wall it had rested against and using the recoil to fuel his sprint toward the twisting rope ladder dangling from the chopper's open door.
He'd barely climbed through the gap before Tseng glanced back at him, twisted his fist on the throttle like he was trying to rip the skin off someone's wrist, and sent the machine shooting through the sky with enough speed to lift Cloud off his feet and dump him into the thinly upholstered bench. His head snapped back and hit something that clanged and set his teeth shaking.
"Ow, fuck!"
Explosions blasted waves of pressure from behind their tail, the force of the air hitting Cloud's eardrums hard enough that he couldn't differentiate between that and the sounds of the missiles blowing. Smoke and dust compounded thick and opaque mushroomed into the sky, spits of bright fire springing up at their bases. He saw Tseng's mouth move, the Turk's face twisting sharply, but he didn't hear anything as the straining chopper reached decibels he hadn't known existed. Tremors jarred his bones, clacking them together like strung beads, and Cloud crouched low while dips and jerks tried to bounce him up off the floor. The helicopter's tail spun, its broadside tilting against an explosion, and for one disorienting moment, Cloud looked up through the windshield at the marble brown earth. The machine wobbled itself right side up, but from the way blood was flushing his head and making his brain feel like it'd swelled to twice its size, they were still losing altitude. Cloud reached for the other headset, fingers that felt fat and clumsy trying to untangle the speaker prong from where it wound around the band, but then another solid wall of pressure slammed into the helicopter, and he toppled. He felt more than heard the crunch of his shoulder going into a steel beam, and Tseng's bellow vibrated in his head, too muffled to form words.
There was the rush of air past his skin, accompanied by a sudden drop in gravity.
Through the stinging furls of pain waving in his vision, he saw Tseng's hands both go to the collective-pitch and yank furiously. It had to have had some effect, because the helicopter's fuselage shook, tipping one way and then the other.
It fell.
It continued to fall.
--
Cloud blinked, feeling his eyelashes scrape the dirt and seeing a fuzzy outline of the crust gathering on them. He tried his legs, taking inventory of his limbs. They seemed fine, an unbroken ache sinking into the marrow but not impeding his movement when he pulled them in toward his torso. Right arm. It creaked like an old windy door. Left arm.
Fuck fuck fuckfuck.
In increments, Cloud levered himself up into a hunch, cradling his left elbow to his chest as soon as he could spare his right hand. He hissed through tight teeth, and he twisted his twanging neck to look around.
The helicopter sat on the flattened dirt, looking relatively intact except for the long scars on its skids. Cloud was more concerned with Tseng, the man's limbs wrung oddly as he sprawled twenty feet away. He must have been flung out first while the chopper was bucking through its landing. Cloud tried to get to his feet, and his shoulder howled its displeasure. More than half a controlled stumble, he managed to skid to a stop near the Turk before his knees wobbled and he landed on his ass.
He squinted through bloated eyes at the slow ooze of blood from a ragged gash slashing across Tseng's hairline, and he moaned. "Oh, you've got to be fucking kidding me..."
Tseng murmured something at the noise. It wasn't coherent by a long shot.
Cloud prodded at his shoulder, digging his fingers into the swelling and biting back snarls at the blistering waves of pain. Not broken. Dislocated. Going to be puffed up to all hell.
He glanced around, seeing a tree that looked like it had been mauled by a giant suction cup that stripped its bark down one side. Staggering to his feet, he walked to it, using his right hand to extend his left and press it against the smoothed wood. He felt around the dislocated shoulder again, poking carefully before he pressed his palm flat against the inside face of the joint. Taking a deep breath and loosening his jaw slowly, Cloud shoved hard with his right hand at the same time as he leaned into the tree.
It was actually a bit impressive, the way his scream echoed like that.
The sound died away into an abrupt sob, and he sagged, sitting down hard. The black edges of his vision swung on him, vertigo trying to upend his stomach, and he turned it into a choked laugh. A memory flickered through his mind. The voice probably thought he was losing it. Gasping for breath through another chuckle, he poked at the inside of his head like sticking his tongue into a cavity.
Hello, hello.
The voice didn't respond.
Cloud wasn't sure how he felt about imaginary disembodied voices ignoring him. He'd been ignored plenty already, between Genesis, who couldn't hold up his end of a damn conversation, and Angeal, who'd-
Cloud screwed his eyes shut and slammed the door on that train of thought. He squeezed the hand over his shoulder, bleating heat streaking down his arm and distracting him from the acidic fury that simmered in his gut. Gillian Hewley's limp form, delicate thin fingers splayed out on the dirt floor, painted itself across the inside of his eyelids and punched a shock of ice through his chest.
Angeal, who'd left. Again.
Cloud growled and shook his head. Rotating his torso around, he kept his eyes fixed on Tseng to provide a focal point for balance as he half-crab walked, half slid on his ass toward the Turk.
"Oi, Tseng," he croaked. He cleared his throat. "Tseng. Can you hear me?"
The Turk muttered.
Cloud could see the deep blue of the bruise soaking its way across the man's forehead and down the side of his cheek. He was going to have one mother of a headache. "Got a Cure on you?" he asked.
"Cure?" The response was halting.
"Yeah, you know. Shiny, green, not much good for a game of marbles."
Tseng managed to make an irritated noise without opening his eyes. "Bracer," he said, finally.
"Oh good, you're actually lucid."
Tseng groaned deep in his chest.
"Mostly." Cloud checked the wrong wrist first, and then he leaned over the man and tugged up his other tattered sleeve. The expensive suit was beyond salvage. Cloud wondered if the Turks would ever change their uniform to something more practical. Or colourful. He exhaled loudly through his dust-clogged nose when he found the bracer undamaged, studded with twinkling beads like a localized constellation. With soft clicks, the materia came unchambered. Sitting them in his palm, he examined them. The Cure gleamed a pale green, softer and more alive than the darker shade of the Fire and the Thunder. Hesitating for a moment, he mouthed the Cure, keeping it clenched between his lips as he tucked the attack magic and the Long Range into a pocket. He'd return them later, but they might be useful for now. The last thing he needed was Turks breathing down his neck over stolen materia on top of the rest of the shitfest.
Rolling the Cure back into his palm, he frowned down at its glossy shell for a moment. It was quite a bit more difficult to direct spells without first equipping the materia, but he didn't think he could get the Turk's bracer off with one hand.
Breathing deeply, he closed his eyes, concentrating on the smooth weight of the ball in his hand and pulling to mind an image of a flower unfurling. Angeal had taught him that meditation techniques greatly enhanced focus with materia what felt like centuries ago. The materia flared to life.
He pressed the healing spell into Tseng's skin first. There was a glimmer of green, sinking gently into the dark patch of the bruise, and Cloud watched the Turk's eyelids flicker. Not wanting to risk scarring from overdoing the healing when the recipient wasn't able to respond with clarity, he shrugged, and he turned the next spell to his shoulder.
It always felt weird, little pinpricks and prods snagging on the flesh under the surface of his skin and tugging any torn tissue together like miniature tweezers dragging on the severed ends of muscle and connective tissue fibres. Reconnecting the severed strands also cleared up the drainage pathways, letting the edema subside a bit. It couldn't get rid of the swelling entirely, though. That would take care of itself with time, using the stream of natural healing flowing through any living thing's body.
Cloud had generally been good at casting, but Angeal had said that understanding the basis of the spell would increase his efficiency and output by several times, and he'd ground the texts into Cloud's head.
Cloud's teeth grated together.
Angeal. Always fucking Angeal.
A shredded groan dropped heavily from Tseng's mouth, and Cloud clawed together his focus. He tested his arm, scowling when it eased slowly into position, resisting his attempt at movement. Dull throbs pounded out from his shoulder. Better than nothing.
He could already see the twisted husk of Tseng's PHS lying forlornly next to shards of black plastic and a heavily scraped rock. Pulling his own out, he flipped up the screen. It flashed a bunch of grainy lines at him, blinked, and subsided to darkness. Cloud punched at a couple of buttons with his thumb, but it didn't respond, showing only his hazy reflection on the murky display. Cursing long and low under his breath, he slung it off into the distance with a jerk of his elbow. It made a faint crunching sound when it hit the ground.
Cloud looked up at the darkening sky. The barren landscape contained nothing but rocks and brown grassy stubble.
He could try to light a signal fire or something. Shinra would probably come looking for them when they didn't report back within a day or two.
He tilted his head to look over his shoulder when Tseng moaned again.
Well fuck.
He eyed the curled edges of the scuffed paint job on the helicopter.
Mumbling an apology, he hooked an arm around Tseng's waist, grabbed one of his arms just under the ball of the joint, and he heaved the Turk up onto his good shoulder. There was a loud retching sound, and something warm splashed down his back. The smell made his stomach surge in response, but he tamped down the urge to follow Tseng's lead.
He laid the Turk flat on the bench in the back of the chopper, arranging him so that his knees hung off the end of the fixture in a way that didn't look too uncomfortable. Climbing over the partition between the pilots' seats, he settled himself at the controls. The ignition key was still in place.
Inhaling slowly through his teeth so that it whistled, he sent a quick prayer to anything that could be listening and merciful, and he gripped the head of the lever at his side, slowly twisting his wrist to open the throttle. The rotor hummed to life over his head, and he let out his breath in a quick whoosh. Adjusting his hold on the collective pitch, he began to pull.
An alarming clanking noise echoed through the fuselage, and Cloud hastily cut the throttle.
The clanks slowed, becoming isolated thunks before rattling to a stop, and Cloud leaned forward to thump his forehead against the dashboard. He did it again for good measure. He sighed, sliding out of the chair and balancing himself on the rim of the door frame.
Emptying his stomach and the subsequent sound of the rotor grinding to life had yanked Tseng from his stupor, it seemed, because as Cloud inched along the door frame, clutching at the smooth, heated canopy with open palms to maximize the friction keeping him up, the Turk's apprehensive voice wound out of the back.
"What are you doing?"
Cloud grunted, swinging his legs to propel himself up onto the roof, a hand snagging at the rotor mast. "Getting us out of here."
"What?" There was a distinctly worried tinge to the Turk's voice now.
"Look, shut up. I know what I'm doing. This is just a standard military chopper."
Tseng didn't say anything else, but Cloud could hear his restless movements.
He pulled at the loose nut holding the upper swash plate flush against the lower, and he groaned. The threads were gone, scraped clean off, and one of the control rods was bent. The rod was easily fixed, but... Cloud shifted his weight, and the materia in his pocket clinked. He paused.
"Hey, pass me up your bracer. And something small and metal," he called.
He heard some shuffling, and eventually a glittering shard appeared in Tseng's extended hand. It looked like it had been chipped off a larger blade.
"Thanks."
Cloud clicked the bracer shut around his wrist, slipping the Fire into the first slot. Channelling a bit of energy into it, he directed the heat into the metal pressed against a smooth area of the bronze bracer, keeping it contained inside so that it couldn't be exposed to oxygen and catch the thing on fire. One of the edges fused easily enough into the bronze.
The thick leather of his gloves was starting to smell like burnt cow, and he pulled his fingers off briefly to shake them. Narrowing his eyes, he heated the metal again, one of its ends still melted to the bracer, and he began to pull at a snail's pace.
The silence frayed at the nerves squirming down his neck into his shoulders, the swollen one trying to seize up on him again, and as he worked, he gnawed at a lip.
"So why'd you join Turks?" he said, offhand.
Tseng didn't respond for so long that he thought the man had fallen unconscious again.
Then, "Pardon?"
Cloud snickered at the tone. "You know, just making conversation. Helps me concentrate. What made you join Turks?"
It was quiet again for a moment. "I utilize my talents to the best of my abilities in the department," Tseng said, stiffly.
"What, that's it? Come on, I know that you're good at what you do. That's not really a reason, though."
"My motives do not concern Soldier."
Cloud sighed, rolling his eyes. He stilled his motions, surprised, when Tseng started speaking again, his voice soft.
"I was originally slated for the Soldier program before being recruited for Turks. There is... someone I wish to protect, and I was convinced that I would best be able to do so as a member of Turks."
Cloud dragged on the growing string of metal again, frowning. "The Vice President?"
There was a quiet sound, like a laugh that didn't quite stir Tseng's vocal cords. "No."
"A girl, then?"
Silence.
When Tseng spoke next, his words were slow, as if coming from far away. "I owe a debt of gratitude to the Director of Soldier, and to Angeal. It was due to their influence that-"
"Shut the fuck up about Angeal."
The silence echoed in Cloud's ears.
"You saw him just as well as I did," Cloud said, tension strung tight in his voice. "He left. He decided to desert. Nothing else. He decided to-" he cut himself off, listening to his breath whistle in his nose as he pressed his mouth closed.
"Strife, I am aware that you-"
"Actually, I don't think the small talk is helping," Cloud interrupted.
Tseng hummed and subsided.
Cloud shut his eyes and leaned his forehead against the roof of the chopper. He snorted, the conversation replaying itself in his head without his consent. Bastard probably changed the subject like that on purpose.
Cloud examined the stout nut again, satisfied that the thin thread of steel had settled properly against the inside of the ring. He pumped another spike of energy into the materia, and the wire fused to the surface of the nut. Spitting onto his gloved fingers, he ran a couple over the new thread. It sizzled briefly, and when Cloud tested it again, it was cool to the touch.
Cloud screwed it onto the plate, using his enhanced strength to wrench it tight until the metal groaned under his hand and his grip had to either start slipping or dent the surface. Sliding down the side of the canopy on his stomach, he tapped to the ground lightly. He checked the engine next, remembering the grinding noise that preceded the rotor starting. There was dust in the valve, and the spark plug, set with a glittering little chip of thunder materia, was gummed up. Cloud tugged off his gloves with his teeth.
When he looked up again, Tseng was sitting in the co-pilot's seat, watching him with slitted eyes.
Cloud swung himself up into the cabin, easing into the other chair. He ignored the way the Turk's gaze followed him.
"That ought to do it," he said mildly, and he reached for the ignition again. The engine barely sputtered before turning over.
He was pulling on the collective pitch, carefully adjusting for torque, when Tseng leaned closer. "Where did you learn to fix a helicopter, Strife?"
Cloud glanced at the Turk, confusion tugging at his mouth. "What? At Shinra. I get called down to the garage to do this kind of stuff all the time." The cyclic pitch lever shifted smoothly under his hand, and the chopper banked while Cloud eyed the bearing on the compass.
Tseng's eyes were unreadable as they fixed flatly on his face. "No, you don't. To this date, you didn't display any knowledge on how to pilot one, either."
"Huh?" Cloud scowled, and then he shook his head. "Your Turks sources must not be as well-informed as you think. I've always been good at this shit."
Tseng sat back, face still closed. Cloud thought he caught a flicker of disorientation in the man's blank eyes.
He looked over, open sky stretching out ahead of him, and he saw Tseng's frown. The Turk's eyebrows creased, and his lips parted, mouthing something soundlessly. He looked up at Cloud, squinting hard. "Did you succeed in your objective in Banora?" he said slowly, the words dragging out like putty.
Cloud blinked. "Uh, well, considering both Genesis and Angeal are still alive and flapping, I'd guess not. I assume you managed to get some information about how they're making these Genesis clones from the warehouse or Genesis's parents' house or something, doing your Turk thing." His hand clenched around the lever at his side for a moment. "Didn't manage to talk some sense into them either, no matter what the General thought I could possibly do. Angeal never listens to me, anyway."
"Who?"
Cloud stared at Tseng. The man's eyes had nearly glazed over, and the bruise down half his face had gone a particularly bright puce.
"Guess that bump on the head scrambled your brains more than I figured," he said, mostly under his breath.
"Strife?"
"Try to get some rest. It's gonna be a bit of a trip, even with the way people tell me I drive." He tried for a grin.
The Turk slumped back, shutting his eyes without acknowledging him. The chopper's blades thumped steadily, and Cloud flexed the shoulder that ached.
"You're not the only one Angeal left behind," Tseng said, his voice suddenly sharp. "You should not let personal feelings interfere with your quality of work."
Cloud gritted his teeth, staring ahead into the empty horizon.
--
Cloud's eyes felt scratchy, lumpy sandpaper coating the insides of his eyelids and scoring shallow lines over his corneas. He reached up, slapping his palms into his sad sack of a pillow in a futile attempt to puff it up under his head before settling on lacing his fingers at his nape.
The apartment was dark, the heavy blinds drawn over the windows hanging limp. There was a clock hanging in the little galley of a kitchen that Travers had gotten him on a trip down below-plate once, a simple round face on which a cartoon girl with black hair and a short red dress sat. The gimmick was that her breasts jiggled with the tick of the second hand. Travers had found that sort of shit utterly hilarious. He'd grinned every time he saw it, even years later.
It had a distinctive tick, that clock, a grumbling whirr preceding each sharp click of the counter.
He could hear it through the wall from his bed, whurrrtick-ing away, and he considered forcing his stiff muscles to let him get up and yank the batteries out of the thing so that he could finally get some fucking sleep.
Something in the radiator clanked and gurgled, and Cloud sighed, tugging his shoulder blades closer together in a stretch and grinding the back of his head into the pillow.
He was still in his uniform pants, though he'd shucked the belt and vest when he got in, and the movement made something in his back pocket crinkle. Shifting his hips just enough to stick a couple of fingers into the deep pouch, he tugged out a scrap of paper.
Once he'd landed the chopper on base, ground control had thoroughly bitched him out for coming in at reckless speeds and so help him Planet the only reason they hadn't gunned him down was because the kid waving the semaphore sticks had recognized him and came running to stop them. He'd handed Tseng off to the medics under the hostile stares of a couple of other Turks after that, and trudged up to the executive floors to report.
Lazard hadn't looked very surprised at his account of the stolen Shinra technology and Genesis copies swarming the Firsts' hometown, but Cloud had been watching the man closely enough to notice when the thin lines around the Director's eyes tightened at the news of Gillian Hewley's death. When he'd tried to explain about Tseng's injury precipitating his rush to get back to Midgar and that he'd been in complete control of the helicopter at all times, the Director had lowered his head into his hand before waving the other to stop Cloud. The man's angular shoulders had jerked as if he was laughing, but his voice had been steady when he dismissed Cloud with an order to attend a meeting the next morning.
Cloud hadn't said anything about the voice shouting at him in his head.
On his way out, the Director's secretary had flagged him down and asked him to move an unnecessarily large printer-copier combo across the lobby. She'd followed him and palmed his ass when he leaned over to put it down again, but he'd been too tired to do much more than grin at her and excuse himself. She must have slipped the piece of paper into his pocket then.
Squinting, he read it, the crisp lines of the ink edged in the mako glow of his eyes.
Mandy. And a PHS number.
Groaning, Cloud dropped his forearms over his eye sockets, crumpling the slip in his hand. Fuck, he was going to have to requisition a new PHS.
There were several heavy thumps against the door to the hallway, and Cloud froze. Whoever it was pounded again.
Cloud kicked off the sheets, and with a quick roll, he was padding toward the narrow door.
It was a trio of MPs, the one in the back tall enough to tower over Cloud. The man who had his fist raised to knock lowered his arm, and he nodded at Cloud, his helmet opaque over his face.
"Soldier Second Class Strife, sir?"
"What?"
The MP seemed to grimace at the impatience in his tone. "Apologies for intruding so late-"
"Could we get to the point?"
The MP paused, his mouth thinning. "Please come with us, sir."
Cloud scrubbed a palm over his face, the other hand still on the edge of the door. He debated slamming it shut, but then they'd just start knocking again, and he didn't think he was allowed to hit these guys on those grounds. "Can't it wait until tomorrow?"
"It's urgent, sir."
Scowling, Cloud turned to get dressed, but the MP slapped his hand against the door frame right by Cloud's arm.
"It's really urgent, sir," he said, shrugging a shoulder lightly.
They watched as he stuffed his feet into his boots and grabbed his lanyard.
--
Something Cloud couldn't explain clawed its way up his spine at the sight of the hunched back, long white coat drooping to the man's knees.
"Well, it's about time," the Professor said, a peevish cant to his speech.
The MPs saluted behind him before clattering off down the hallway. They'd descended far enough through the tower that the chill soaking in through the walls pebbled Cloud's bare skin, the hairs on the back of his neck raising with a slow crawling sensation. He clamped his heels together, straightening his shoulders to stand to attention.
"Are Soldiers so lofty now that they ignore PHS summons?" The Professor's mouth twisted, and he tilted his head back to stare at Cloud down the length of his nose, where his glasses looked precariously perched.
"Unfortunately, Professor Hojo, I am no longer in possession of my PHS due to unforeseen circumstances relating to my previous missi-" Cloud's words cut off with a hiss at the jab of thin fingers into his inflamed shoulder. His knuckles popped loudly when his fist tightened, and he snapped his jaw closed, staring just a bit above and to the left of Hojo's temple.
Hojo hummed, pacing around him and pressing cold fingertips against sore bruises he hadn't known he'd had.
Cloud refused to flinch.
"Not my concern, Soldier. Get yourself another one so that you don't waste my time again."
"Yes, Professor."
The scientist grunted, completing his circuit and stopping in front of Cloud. "Well, come on, then."
Cloud's eyes flickered around the lab. There was a reclining chair in the centre of the room under the clustered beams of several theatre lights, padded restraints on the arm bars and leg rest that stood up from the body of the chair with all the stiffness inherent in their steel bar cores.
Spirals and surges of nausea weaved their way around his stomach.
"Come on where, sir?"
There was a sharp sigh. "Your stupidity exceeds my expectations," Hojo said, rolling his eyes behind the thick lenses of his glasses, the curvature magnifying the sallow bags under them.
The Professor stalked toward the chair, and reluctantly, Cloud followed.
He rarely saw Professor Hojo, since the scientist barely ever came up to the Soldier floors. There'd been that time he'd been in the VR training room, and the Professor had come in, told Cloud that he was employing his services in a simulated field test of a strength serum made for Soldiers, and jabbed a syringe of red fluid into his neck while he'd been trying to watch the technicians who'd entered with the Professor fiddle with the simulation dials.
When he'd woken up, flat on the floor, the VR equipment was trashed, pungent smoke curling up from the blank gauges, and his limbs looked like they'd been through a meat grinder. Through the shitstorm of physical misery, he remembered Hojo sighing and walking out, muttering something about berserker side effects. His memory of the rest of that week was a bit hazy, but he recalled Angeal's voice, more unnerved than he'd ever heard, and wide hands patting his face and hauling him down to the infirmary when his lungs collapsed on him.
"Sit," the Professor said, snapping his fingers at the chair.
Cloud perched on the edge of the seat, slowly nudging himself backward into the yielding leather, still scanning the room as if a means of escape would suddenly present itself. "What's this for, Professor?"
"Be quiet. You've already wasted an hour of my time, and I have no desire to squander any more." The Professor flicked a hand, and a couple of technicians were hovering over the chair, snapping the cuffs into place over Cloud's wrist and ankles.
"What the hell- hey, wait!" Cloud yanked at the restraints, but they didn't even wiggle. "The fuck do I need these cuffs for?" His breath was coming faster, shallow pants that did nothing to oxygenate his blood.
Green was oozing down his vision, pooling at the bottom of his field of view like his eyes were filling up with gallons of mako. He opened his mouth again, and a flurry of bubbles raced up the wall of colour, bursting with little popping noises when they slapped against the point of his nose, and what felt like battery acid was pouring down his throat, flooding his trachea and stomach. He gagged, coughing, but that just forced more of the fluid into his lungs.
Cloud clamped his mouth closed on a ragged moan, what felt like every one of his organs screeching desperately for air, and he screwed his eyes shut as well.
The sensation of liquid smothering him vanished, his lungs sucked at chilled oxygen filtering in from the air, and the burn of concentrated mako over his skin wisped to nothing.
Not real. It wasn't real.
His mind chanted, over and over again, and his breath whistled harshly in his throat.
His eyes slammed open at the jab of a needle into the crook of his arm, and he whipped his head around in time to see the plunger finish its depression, and the last of the green glow vanish from the syringe.
Heat seared through his skin, flowing outward from his elbow and flushing its way through his veins, rushing up into his heart. The cardiac muscle slammed through a spasm, clenching into a massive contraction that sent the feverish burn racing out through every artery into every last cell of his body.
Someone was screaming, he realized.
It sounded like him. Shit.
Fire engulfed him.
--
Burn. It burned.
The smell of singed hair assaulted his nostrils, and he curled up instinctively, hacking until it felt like his lungs were sliding up out of his windpipe. He cracked his eyes open, and the heat of the fire immediately made them yowl like they were blistering and peeling out of their sockets, so he clapped them shut again.
Shit, there were flames everywhere.
Cloud used his arms to shield his face, forcing the sensation of the skin on his forearms slowly desiccating and cracking open into leaking slits and fissures into the back of his mind, where its muffled squeals gnawed at his consciousness. Crouching as low as he could, he heaved himself to his feet, his boots feeling like they were lined with coals. He shuffled for the draft he felt, just on the edge of the skin over his ribs, and he nearly ploughed into the ashy ground when he tripped over a prone form.
He juggled his hands, as the floor was too hot to touch with bare skin for more than a few seconds at a time, and he pushed himself up onto his haunches.
"Oi, are you okay in there?"
It took a few tries to locate the man's head under the twisted coat he had hiked up over his hair. Cloud gave the man's shoulder a shake. "Oi," he said again, before pressing a couple of fingers over the major pulse point at the man's nape.
He needn't have bothered.
He tugged the ripped coat back over the body's head, and he peered around with bleary slits of eyes.
Window. Its shutters were half closed, one of them banging erratically against the window's frame in response to gusts of wind that flapped into the room and flared the flames they fanned. Shielding his head, Cloud made a shambling run at it, and he felt it crunch and drive splinters into his bare skin as he crashed through.
The cooler air outside hit him with the force of a brick between the eyes, and he ended up flat on his back on sandy earth, gasping for air as his vertebrae squealed and creaked.
Cloud rolled onto an elbow, ignoring the way it complained at the grit digging into the joint, and he flipped over onto his hands and knees. They shook a bit, and his vision swam black for a long moment, but they held his weight when he pushed himself up.
Everything was burning. The crackle of flames sounded oddly cheery against the muffled roar of every fucking thing burning to the greasy soot-blackened ground. The dark shapes of bodies lay strewn over the dirt, a couple lying in a tangle under half of a blazing wooden beam. It collapsed further, rolling into the dips of a body and spitting out a shower of sparks.
Cloud didn't approach the corpses, turning eyes smarting with acrid, unctious smoke from combusting body fat toward the centre of the clearing. A water tower loomed, silhouetted black against the fire, driving cold spikes into his brain at the familiar shape.
"What the fuck is this?" he whispered, turning fully to face the tower.
The heat vanished so quickly it felt like a vacuum had opened, and Cloud barely had time to stagger, his boots clanking over the steel-plated floor, before his body jerked. Silently, he tipped his head down to look at the glistening blade embedded in his stomach, squishing through his soft innards, though it didn't seem to have torn through any of the fragile, slick membranes, judging from the lack of stench. A trickle of blood beaded up at the edge of the gash where his skin split, tickling and making his muscles clench reflexively as it started rolling and prickling all the little fine hairs set in his skin.
Sweeps and crests of incandescent sensation, interspersed with shocks of numbness, rippled through him as the nerves sitting under his ripped skin caught up with the stimulus, and an ugly squawking sound forced its way out of his throat.
It was too bright to be pain, too sharp. He brought his hands up, wrapping his stiff fingers around the sword crushed through his body.
Through the fog of numbness spreading over his skin and into his eyes as his insides shut down, piece by piece, he looked up at the tall shadow gripping the hilt of the sword. Nothing. He saw nothing there. It looked like a black cut out, an amorphous singularity siphoning away the light.
A wrench, and the sword ripped free of his body.
Falling to his knees, Cloud clutched at the slippery fluids and rubbery walls of something trying to nudge its way out of the hole. He pressed hard on it, but it was squelching muddily between his spread fingers. Cloud stared at the pebbled metal under his knees, rasps, gulping and bubbling, clawing at his trachea.
"What the fuck is this..." The words came garbled to his ears.
A dream. Some kind of fucked up nightmare.
He remembered being injected with something. Green. Mako. Where had he been?
Blanks stretched in his memory, eating away at his mind, chewing and spitting grey matter and leaving putrid, pus-filled holes.
What the hell had happened to him?
A hand, heavy and wide, clamped on his shoulder, and Cloud whipped around, an elbow and a fist lurching out defensively without thinking.
"Whoa, calm down!"
Cloud blinked, his vision free from the grainy fuzz of dying, and he looked up into exasperated blue eyes. The gloved hand that had been on his collar was raised, tilted to catch his fist and block his other strike at the same time. It was steady, solid as a wall, barely straining to stop his blows.
White feathers brushed the side of his arm.
Snarling, he ripped his hands away, and his feet skidded, his ankle turning violently under him as he yanked himself up. The skin over his stomach was whole and smooth, even if everything inside still felt sliced to ribbons.
"You're not real!" he growled, twisting his face at Angeal's faint smile.
A short laugh.
"You're right. I'm not real. This is a dream."
"I'm not dreaming about you!"
The thing that looked like Angeal shrugged, his wing curling and flexing over his shoulder blade, brilliantly bright against a dead white landscape. "You don't have much of a choice. I'm here to make sure you wake up."
It hurt, being this angry. It ripped at his chest, squeezing and rending the walls of his ribs and crushing his organs to pulp. "I don't need any help from some cuntwad that left!" he shouted, backing up another step. "You left me behind! You didn't even say anything!"
"What would you have wanted me to say?"
"A reason!"
Angeal looked at him, something gentle in his tired eyes. He sighed, and the sound tore tattered holes through Cloud worse than the sword in his gut. "Wake up, Cloud. There's something you have to do. You're probably the only one who can."
"I'm not doing anything for you," he said through tight teeth, staring at the blank, shadowless ground under Angeal's boots.
Angeal snorted. There was a rustling noise, and something touched his head, almost too light to feel. The scent of warm leather and mineral oils seeped into his mouth, coating his palate, and he choked on a pure, froth-tipped wave of longing.
His sight blinked out.
--
There were hands. Cold, thin fingers. They pried open a set of his eyelids, and a pinpoint of light so bright it seared flashed into his retina.
Cloud tried to flinch away, but he couldn't move.
A wall of thick, muffling phlegm was stuffing every inch of his respiratory tract. It was hard to breathe. Hard to think. He forced his lungs to expand, the effort a fanged drain, barbed edges dragging on his mind, and air whistled through nostrils that felt smashed to his skull. Thump. His head spun. Weight crushed down on him until he couldn't feel anything but the compression of his chest and the shudder of his ribs.
"Hmm... Recovery time better than expected."
The voice. It poured into his bones, sent fear seeping through his marrow, ground his cartilage to dust with shame.
"And how are we feeling?"
The voice. The voice was speaking to him. Useless. He was useless. He cracked his mouth open, a gurgle scrabbling up his vocal cords.
"Number..." he tried to say. It came out a reedy whistle. "Please, Professor. Give me a number..."
"Hmm?" Sterile antiseptic smell leaned over him. "What was that, Soldier?"
Too soft, too soft... Couldn't hear. Failure. He was... He parted his lips, licking at them with a dry, swollen tongue that flopped fatly.
Come on, Spike.
His breath caught. Warmth.
Please, Spike. You've come so far.
He listened to the echoes, deep in his head.
Cloud. Hold on. Please. For me.
Cloud drew chilled air into his mouth, down into his dust-cracked lungs. Crunches, wet snaps reverberated when his tightly ground joints popped, like chains falling unlinked. Pain, sharp in his mouth where he dug an incisor into his cheek, and a warm drizzle tapped onto his tongue. He hissed, prying his eyes open a sliver to white light.
"Just peachy, Professor," he croaked.
He couldn't see. Just a sense of movement.
There was a short hum, and a jarring flash as the light was pulled away. "Good enough," the Professor said.
He heard the clatter of footsteps, clops slurred and muffled in thick, raw wool.
--
Cloud woke to a faded stucco ceiling.
His head felt like a herd of elephants had used it for a game of football, but he wasn't strapped down anymore.
There was a jaw-cracking yawn to his side, and he turned his head to see Kunsel hunch over, propping his arms on his knees.
"About time you woke up."
"Kunsel?"
"The one and only." The Second made a move to help when Cloud inched up onto his elbows, but he waved the man off, pulling himself backward to lean against the grated bars of the bed at his back. "You were out for nearly a day. Missed a meeting with a couple of the directors." Kunsel tilted his head, a pale reflected gleam laying a streak over the curve of his helmet and making Cloud squint. "How much do you remember of what happened?"
Cloud stared up at the ceiling. Light from outside, yellow from the play of light pollution on the low-lying mixture of fog and greenhouse gases, traced a shadow of the window frame onto the ridges of the stucco overhead. It brightened momentarily, beams swinging around upon the passage of a grumbling truck's headlights. His forehead creased as he dug through his memory.
"Just four inches south of abso-fucking-nothing," he said, frustration edging his voice. "I get back from an investigation mission with Turks in Angeal's hometown that the General refused to take, and the next thing I know a bunch of MPs are bashing my door down and Hojo sticks something in my arm before I wake up here."
Kunsel made a face that could have been either a grimace or a smile. "The Professor bumped up your mako levels. You didn't react so badly last time, so Lazard figured you'd be fine this time around, too." He leaned back, shifting around like his ass had gone numb. "At least you're not scheduled for another pump for a little while," he said with a vague wave of his fingers. "And getting your enhancements up will mean you can be even more of a monster with that thing you call a sword."
Kunsel paused, his mouth pursing, and Cloud realized that he must have winced at the word. "Sorry, headache," he said, because it wasn't that much of a lie. He cleared his throat, his tonsils feeling like they were rattling around like marbles. "Meeting?"
Kunsel pulled out a crumpled brown folder that he tossed into Cloud's lap. "It was about a mission to retrieve the Soldiers we lost during the war. They think they've found where those Wutai bastards have been keeping their POWs. Details are in that file."
"You think-" Cloud paused to wet his cracked lips. "You think they're alive?"
Kunsel watched him for a moment, and then he shrugged slightly. "We really don't know. Since you're stuck here, though, they're thinking of giving the mission to someone else."
"Bullshit. I'm fine."
Kunsel sighed. "If you say so. Director Lazard wants to see you when you're up, anyway. Take it up with him." He was digging in a pocket, and when he turned again, he reached over to press something black and angular into Cloud's hand.
Cloud ordered his rigid and unresponsive fingers to loosen. He ran a thumb over the shiny face of a PHS, a newer model than his last. He frowned, looking up. "Have you just been waiting there?"
Kunsel shrugged again. "Same number. It's already hooked up to the network, so all your backed up contacts should be intact. I took the liberty of making some corrections while I was sitting here."
Cloud narrowed his eyes, flipping open the screen. Nothing seemed out of place until he scrolled through his contacts and came across "Kunsel the Man" and Robertsson's name replaced with a penis joke. He snorted.
"Fine. Thank you."
"I'm just awesome like that."
Kunsel leaned back with a sigh, scrubbing at his face and pressing a hand over the dome of his helmet to block out the thin artificial light.
He tilted his arm, turning his head to Cloud under it. "You sure you're going to be okay, Cloud?" he said bluntly. "You look like shit."
Cloud let his head droop on his wooden neck. He eyed the tension lines around Kunsel's mouth, raising his eyebrows until a dry, lopsided grin crossed over the Second's face. He laughed, more exhale than sound, and he smiled back. "So do you."
--
The mako surged through him, drying his mouth and coating his teeth with fuzzy gunk, and even his hair ached. His body didn't fit right. He kept overshooting his step, and he'd already smashed a mug by accidentally slinging it across the waiting area outside Lazard's office. It'd hit the wall a few feet from where the secretary's desk was, and Mandy had given him a nervous smile when he'd apologized anxiously before refusing to let him help clean up the ceramic splinters.
One of Hojo's assistants had discharged him after poking and prodding him for a few minutes, and she'd told him in a bored tone that he'd adjust fairly quickly before walking off.
He stood to attention in front of Lazard's desk, ignoring Heidegger's aggravated grunt.
The executive groused, turning to Lazard. "You want to send an operative who's going to need to relearn how to walk? We don't have time for this nonsense, Lazard! Valuable resources are in the hands of Wutai rebels! We could stand to-"
"When's the mission, Director?" Cloud interrupted. He knew that speaking over Heidegger like that was just going to piss him off even more beyond belief, but at that point, he could not be bothered to give a fuck.
Lazard leaned forward, eyeing Cloud over his laced fingers. "Two days' time, Strife."
"This is a disaster waiting to happen, man!"
Cloud nodded sharply, meeting the Director's quiet look. "I'll be ready."
--
TBC
(1) As I said, this is a note for anyone who has not played Crisis Core and would like to know wtf's going on. The mission in Banora is lifted from canon up to the start of the air raid, but the rest of the chapter is not. I do not believe knowing the plot of Crisis Core is necessary for this story, but knowing what happened will give a few references embedded in the chapter added context. I'm terribly sorry for the confusion. Please skip if you do not wish for spoilers.
Zack gets sent to Banora to investigate the town with Tseng and figure out why Genesis flipped out. Zack finds out that he was deployed only because Sephiroth refused to do the mission, as Genesis and Angeal were his good friends, and he recommends Zack instead, hoping that Zack can convince Angeal to return. They don't really find out anything except that there's some sort of deep dark secret in the town (involves a scientist named Hollander that'll show up soon) and Zack meets Angeal's mother, Gillian, who explains why the Buster sword was so important to Angeal and suggests that something has damaged the pride of their family. While there, they discover that Genesis has apparently killed his own parents, and when Zack rushes back to Angeal's house, it looks like Angeal has just killed his mother. Angeal refuses to talk to Zack, basically, and flies away while Genesis summons Bahamut to fight Zack. That's where I picked up, and the rest of it, including the mission coming up, isn't canon.
Part 4. Part 5. Part 6A.