Update: Wake Chapter 6-1

[sunnepho]

I feel like I've been bitten by a zombie.



Part 6A. Safety net strings
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.

Yeah. I have no good excuse for you this time, sorry. Life is occasionally shitty.

This chapter quickly became ridiculously long, so I've delayed the actual mission bit yet again.f

Thanks as always go to Poisonberries for being super awesome beta. And gamma.
--

Cloud did not wait well. He dug the fingers of both hands into a thigh, trying to squeeze out the tension in muscles that lurked just at the edge of spasm. He'd already tried fidgeting, but that just shifted the buzz to the rest of his body. Lifting the leg, he kicked out, flexing his foot. The hollow metal bars holding his folding chair in shape groaned.

The airships docked in an enclosed dome at the Junon base, accessible only through an interminable elevator ride. At the far end, where the ceiling folded in on itself like a massive bronze fan, bottomless pits chewed into the floor, sending up an incessant draft.

On the second kick, he clipped one of the legs of Robertsson's chair, and the other Second unfolded his arms at the clunk and turned a bit to glare at Cloud.

"What the fuck, Strife. Go do some squats or something."

Cloud scowled back at the man, but he stood up. "I hate this shit. Waiting. We could have been halfway there by now," he said, jiggling out his legs.

"Yeah, well, too fucking bad. You hopping around dancing the tango isn't going to make it any more likely that the POWs aren't already belly-up in a ditch somewhere."

"Dammit, Robertsson-"

The Second raised his voice to speak over him. "And if you tell me how tough your buddy Travers is one more time, I'm going to sack him so hard next I see him he's going to be vomiting testicle juice for days."

Cloud stared. His face twisted at the imagery. "What crawled up your ass and died?"

Robertsson sneered at him, crossing his arms again and leaning onto the back legs of his chair, tipping it against the wall so that he could press his shoulders into the surface. The motion pulled at the skin on his upper arm, and Cloud saw the man's eyes tighten. It was the closest the frigid ass got to wincing, as far as he could tell.

Cloud stuffed his hands into his pockets. "Way to hold a grudge," he muttered.

"Just lemme break your arms and we'll call it even," Robertsson said shortly.

Cloud pivoted, resisting the urge to tip Robertsson's chair over. He took a few shuffling steps forward before a couple of Regs carrying a crate hustled by, and he had to sidestep them.

He'd spent a lot of time at the Junon airbase before, with Evans and Hoffe, and sometimes Travers when he’d  been dumped by another girl and wanted to pretend that he was going to take a flying leap off one of the dock ladders. The engineers had always been inordinately enthusiastic when they saw him and Evans. It had taken Cloud a while to realize that they hated the clunky cranes they usually used to move the parts.

He pulled out his PHS and thumbed through his contacts until Hoffe's name flashed white against the background of his screen. The message log was dated two months old. He should-

Evans's folded hands scratched themselves across the insides of his eyelids, his clean nails pale against his dark skin.

When Cloud opened his eyes again, there were snow lines racing over the PHS screen, and he hastily loosened his fingers. The leather of his gloves creaked. He slapped the flip shut and shoved it into his pocket.

Maybe later.

He'd forgotten how many times it'd been maybe later.

Hissing long and low, Cloud shoved his hands into his hair and scrubbed hard, shaking his head.

The sleek airship sat under the closed dome of the airbase, its sails tightly furled around tall masts. Personnel scuttled around it like a school of fish hovering in the wake of a shark. There was a loud snap, a jumbled yell, and Cloud put on a burst of speed. The huge sandbag that had been hanging as ballast from one side of the ship thwapped into his palms, sending stinging shocks up his arms and deforming with the force of the impact. His back groaned as the bag started wobbling in his hands.

He grunted, dropping it from over his head and stepping back so that when he caught it again, he hugged it to his belly and shifted the weight into his braced legs. He let it fall again, this time slapping thickly to the concrete ground.

The infantryman he'd knocked aside sat on the floor, staring up at him. Cloud tried to put on a friendly smile, but the kid just glanced over at the side of the dome, where Robertsson still sat with a bored slant to his face and an ankle propped up over his other knee in the distance, and he turned back to Cloud with his mouth working soundlessly.

"Not hurt?" Cloud said.

The private blinked for a moment, and then shook his head widely. "Nossir."

Cloud looked up at the faces hanging over the rail edging the deck of the ship. He caught a few of the poorly concealed flinches.

"The hell were you idiots doing?" The sack listed at his feet, slowly tipping further on its side as its sand settled. "Quit fucking around and do your job properly."

There were scattered mumbles.  He could have sworn a muddled "goddamn Soldier" emerged somewhere in the noise.

ShinRa Security members wore the dumbest shit he'd ever seen. The red lamps set into their helmets shone down at him like malevolent headlights on a runaway train. The men stared at him, unmoving.

"Well?" Cloud snapped.

Not that he was any better, with the way Soldier eyes turned reflective in low light.

Someone fumbled around for a second and started to let down a rope for the ballast.

Robertsson was picking at a scuff on the side of his boot when Cloud got back to the crooked little row of chairs tucked near the elevators. He looked up when Cloud dropped down into the seat beside him, and a slow smirk crossed his face. "That one was pretty good," he said. "Barely saw you move."

Cloud snorted. "You oughta know."

The Second gave him a dirty look.

Robertsson had offered to spar when he'd come across Cloud doing drills by himself the first night, long after the gym on the sixty-fourth floor had emptied for lights out. The man had won one match, lost three, and then Cloud had misjudged a strike that sent Robertsson's weapons hurtling through the drywall and three inches of concrete, right about when he broke the Second's arm in three places. The magic had healed the man up pretty well, but there was still a stretch of shiny pink skin on the underside of his arm, blanching to a pale white colour whenever Robertsson moved it. Cloud had been restricted to the VR room by a glowering nurse after that. Robertsson only pissed her off more by refusing to wear the sling, and they'd beat a hasty retreat in the end when she'd started threatening them with syringes.

He looked down at a gloved hand, squeezing it into a slow fist. Soldiers tended to hate needles. Cloud was pretty damn eager to find out who the asshole was that decided the support staff should capitalize on this as leverage.

He pushed the memory of spiralling feathers away.

The VR room had a weird hollow sort of smell, just under the astringent fumes of the cleaner they used to mop up the patches of sweat and occasional blood that the Soldiers who got too enthusiastic left behind. It always started out faint, but after a couple of training programs, it would have soaked through Cloud's skin and embedded itself into the walls of his airway until he wanted nothing more than to go chase down a skunk. He figured it was something caused by the lasers they used to generate the projections, and Kunsel thought he was just batshit.

Maybe it was just the smell of being alone.

He remembered when it wasn't quiet. It snuck up on him often, little droplets of hope tickling his skin like some giant sprinkler was watering the restless Soldiers left behind. They rolled before they dried, leaving a damp, chilled streak of fear in their wake. The thoughts rebelled, sticky fingers snatching for purchase, when he tried to shove them back. This was stupid. The same whiny anxieties had been running around his head for days like chocobos galloping around a racetrack, following the same mindless path until their feet left permanent grooves in the track. Robertsson was a dick, but he was right. He couldn't accomplish anything by fussing.

The Soldier floor was filled with dead air these days, so he'd more or less had the VR room to himself for the day and a half he spent beating his muscle memory back into submission. The second evening, the Colonel who'd supervised the training regimen of his cadet corps had dragged him into the Officer's Mess and grilled him for details about Wutai. When Cloud had first seen Colonel Karrida, he'd thought the man was the oldest person he'd ever seen, hardened with age like teak. He'd heard that the Colonel had been overseeing the recruits since Sephiroth went through the program. The man had been kind enough to Cloud when he'd told him to shape up or ship out the time he'd been written up for being a mouthy pain in his drill sergeant's ass.

When he'd gotten back to the VR facility, he'd paused in front of the door, hand hovering over the lock release just as he noticed the figure inside through the tinted glass. He'd nearly walked away before he saw the long pale hair spilling out from the back of the sensory immersion helmet. He'd stopped, watching the General sit alone in the centre of the training floor with his back to the door, leaning back from his crossed legs and looking up at something only he could see. The man's shoulders had shifted jerkily, and he'd tucked an arm under his nape as he lay back.

There'd been a second, just the space of a couple of heartbeats, that it had been Angeal's back he saw, the First unreadable as he stared into the Wutai sky. The taste of damp grass and blood in the air had been so strong that it rasped against his tongue.

Cloud had clamped a hand hard over his mouth and slipped away from the closed door.

Kunsel had let him stay on his stumpy couch for the rest of that night while some sort of dry documentary about microscopic organisms, hovering right over the line between alive and dead, that lived in and purified the Lifestream played inobtrusively on the old tube TV the Second had. They sipped up old, worn out streams, chewed them up, and spat them back out crisp and new. Or something. He hadn't been paying much attention. He'd wondered briefly if they were swimming around his veins now, too.

Replacements, every-fucking-where he looked. ShinRa was big on replacements. Colonel Karrida had talked to him like he was a replacement, too.

Shut up shutup.

The elevator dinged over Cloud's shoulder, and he hopped to his feet when Lazard came through the doors, trailed by his secretary and a specialist kid with the wide-eyed stare of a new intern.

"Good morning, Strife. Robertsson."

"Director," Cloud greeted. He saw Robertsson snap a salute.

Lazard gave him a reserved smile. "At ease, Soldiers."

Cloud tipped back in his stance, and he waited while Lazard scanned the idling airship. There was a burst of laughter from the deck. The sandbag was gone, and Cloud could hear the low creaking of the mast beams straining against the ropes securing the sails. Figures were starting to file down the docking ladder and disperse toward the doors studding the clean grey walls. Cloud glanced at Lazard's back. The man's shoulders were relaxed and square, but he could see the way he was rubbing his thumb over the sides of his knuckles.

The Director was still watching the workers when he said quietly, "I'd like to apologize. I would greatly prefer to send more Second Class operatives with you." He made a short, abortive noise and jerked his wrist. "For that matter, I would prefer to send Sephiroth with you, but given the low probability of success of this mission, the President has placed priority on Midgar security. Director Heidegger has offered use of the Blackwings special strike team, but..."

Robertsson grunted dismissively. "To talk frankly, sir, they'd just get in the way."

Lazard turned then, a short laugh on his mouth. "I'm of the same opinion." He pressed his lips together, and suddenly, he looked tired. "Strife," he said, "as we've discussed, you have direct command over this operation. Communications will be down once you enter enemy territory because of altitude, even if we hadn't detected jammers in the area, so we won't be able to provide distance support." There were jumbled thumps of boots over the concrete floor as Thirds began lining up across from the row of chairs. "All of our attempts at negotiation with the rebels have met with hostility, so we can only surmise that you will encounter the same. As field command, I expect you to judge the risks as you see fit."

The helmets of the Thirds were thickly opaque in the low light, but the glow of mako eyes cut through the shaded material. Cloud surveyed the Soldiers, standing at poster-perfect attention and watching him intently, and Lazard stepped closer to him. Cloud met the Director's eyes.

"Strife," he said softly, "these men."

When the Director didn't continue, Cloud smothered a wince. There were about fifty billion different things he probably couldn't promise. He wished hard for Angeal's poker face.  The Thirds were watching him like he was going to pull some miracle out of his ass, and damned if he was going to show doubt now, in front of the people ShinRa deemed expendable enough to send on this mission. Half of them looked like rookies, their armour still smooth and unworn.

Luxiere had already tried to make his not so subtle farewells. At least Kunsel had been within earshot at the time, and he'd been the one who'd laid the other Second flat with a fierce swing.

He'd never seen Kunsel so pissed. It had been kind of impressive, even when it had transferred over to him when he'd started chortling and couldn't stop.

A heavy ringing filled Cloud's ears, and unbidden, phantom blood splashed across the shiny new uniforms of the Thirds, filling the air with its metallic tang and bringing bile up to sting at the back of his palate. Ring ring. Riot in the house. Party in Wutai. He wrenched his eyes away.

"I'll watch out for them," he said. The words echoed in his head, swollen wavelengths banging into one side of his empty skull before another.

Lazard didn't respond for a moment, but then he smiled tightly. "Yes." He paused, frowning as if he had more to say. "Yes, do.”

--

It never got old, flying.

The new airships Shinra was developing flew on metal-cased turbines linked to the main materia engines and hooked up with bundles of wires as thick as a man's waist to the wall of computers covering the Gravity construct core. The engineers had referred to it fondly as their brain the time Cloud had wandered into the bay while one was in the process of being serviced, parts laid out carefully in a ring and looking like a whale in the midst of exploding. The ships flew fast enough to leave a thunderous bang when they outstripped the speed of sound, but they roared continuously in the sky until it was either wear constant full-cover headphones or go deaf after about five minutes.

Shinra brought them out when they needed to flex some steroid muscle, and Cloud still remembered the time he and Angeal had perched on the cliff overlooking the bright golden haze of light from one of the major villages in Wutai. That high up, the people in the village were little more than specks of black, meeting, joining, and rebounding off each other in continuous chaotic motion. He'd been watching when they scattered, motes under a sharp gust of air, as the warning sounded. He'd plugged his ears to the shriek of the air raid sirens before getting flattened to the ground by the force of the ships streaking past overhead, dark, thin cylinders dropping from its hatches. The smoke from the shelling had been thick enough to block out the sky and cake the surface of Cloud's gums with black slime, but Angeal hadn't moved until the ships had long passed and the sound of the fire smothered the sirens and painted the horizon orange.

Angeal had looked at him like he'd been expecting something from Cloud afterward. Cloud hadn't had anything to say, the afterimage of the milling specks still painted in inverted colours over his retinas. The First had seemed satisfied, whatever he saw, then.

He'd figured it had been some kind of lesson, but he'd always sucked ass at guessing the plot. Maybe Angeal had had something to say.

Maybe it was "haha, loser."

He'd forgotten the sound of Angeal's voice as the weeks ground by, and so his mind helpfully supplied his own. The sound of his gleeful laughter chased him in his head as he ran. Well. Hard to top spiteful shit like that.

Saliva pooled, sour and hot, in his mouth, and Cloud spat over the side of the ship. It whipped away.

The ship humming through the sky under him was one of the older ones, warm wood polished smooth by hands, feet, and slipping winds. Careful varnish gleamed under Cloud's palm. He sat at the prow, on a thick guardrail hung with big signs that edged the open deck. The signs were inscribed with tall red letters: "Do not climb." The rail rumbled up against his thighs, turning his brains into froth, and he wiped sweaty palms against his uniform pants as he stared ahead into the sky.

The propellers sliced the air, but they were small, set at the base of the ship to provide directional nudges, and the ship really flew on the glowing hub in the control room, slowly spinning, suspended by a crest of thin bars. He'd gone in there, once. In addition to the standard Gravity and Barrier, it was set with locked materia that no one could name anymore, the magic within it ancient and carefully maintained. The hub had seemed almost sentient, glittering beads watching him carefully as it twirled, and Cloud had abruptly walked out of the room to the unsettled ache in his chest, somewhere between fear and remorse for treading where he was unwelcome.

His PHS buzzed, its vibrations amplified as it rattled from where it was wedged against the rail, and he dug it out of his back pocket.

It was that damn spam again. Some jackass using the pseudonym "Ninja Princess." Cloud hit the delete key, half hoping that it'd work this time. It didn't, and he growled low in his throat, stuffing the device back into a pouch.

"The fuck did they get my PHS number?"

"What," said an amused voice behind him. "Your fanclub?"

Cloud twisted around. He didn't recognize the Third under the helmet at first, until he snapped a salute and something twinkled in his ear.

Jordon grinned crookedly as he stepped closer.

"My... what?" Cloud said slowly.

"Fanclub. You know, all the high ranking Soldiers have them. I'm sure you've joined Angeal's, right? Or at least the General's. They send out all the dirt, whether it's true or not."

Oh. Cloud felt the tips of his ears start to heat up, and he slouched back onto his seat. "Maybe one or two," he muttered.

"I get mail from all of them," Jordon said, his tone murderously cheerful. "And I joined yours a couple of days back."

Cloud choked on a cough, and he ground a palm into an eye socket. "Don't tell me this kind of shit, you ass."

Jordon snickered. He pressed a hand on the knob of a post, and he vaulted the railing in a quick hop so that he stood on the triangle of wood that tilted up into the jibboom. It dipped gently under his weight before righting itself. The midday sky stretched ahead, shading from pale grey on the horizon to blue overlaying black overhead. Cloud squinted into sunlight reflecting up off the cloud cover below.

"Not airsick this time?" Jordon shouted over his shoulder, the words half lost in the wind.

Cloud furrowed his eyebrows. "I get airsick? Since when?"

Jordon craned his neck around, holding onto the rigging for balance when the ship bobbed. "What? Last time, after the funeral. You were talking about jumping off."

A wave of vertigo hit Cloud, along with an eyeball-squishing pressure in his head that made his temples clang.

Blackness. Something soft and hot squelching under his splayed fingers.

"Ewwwww! Mom! Cloud threw up!"

He clamped his eyes shut, hunching over to dig his grip into the guardrail under him. A memory? What kind of-

He was laughing, wind funnelling into his ears and dizzying heights swooping under his feet.

It felt like two different brains were trying to squeeze into the space within his skull, pushing at shoving at each other until all the lobes started bulging outward, scraping at the bone, tight until it was threatening to burst.

A warm hand on his forehead; a warm laugh. "You'll be okay."

The thundering sound was his pulse, stampeding hooves kicking at his soft-bits as they passed.

The back of his hand, creases in his glove. Stretched out to touch. Spin, spin.

A keening noise forced its way past his tight teeth, and he bowed under the crush of a giant foot stomping down on him, cracking his bones and making soup out of his guts.

"Sir? Strife?"

"I told you you'd be okay."

It eased and vanished so quickly Cloud nearly overbalanced. A residual pound, something malignant hopping up and down on the back of his neck, was light against pain-deadened nerves. He ignored the voice.

"You alright, sir?"

Sounded like a smug bastard, anyway.

Cloud shook his head and pulled the edges of his mouth up into a quick smile. "Fine, sorry. I don't usually get motion sick, so it was probably just the goddamn loud parade and the funeral that got me last time."

He thought he heard Jordon make a vaguely affirmative noise when he looked down at his shuddering arms, elbows locked tight and knuckles white against the wood. There were indents under his nails.

Fuck. What the fuck was that? His hands were still shaking.

"What are you looking at?"

Cloud flinched, and he glanced up. The Third had turned back to the horizon, segmented by the billowing lines of the jib sails. He blinked, yanking his thoughts straight. "Uh, nothing," Cloud said. When the Third swung around and looked at him for a long moment, he shrugged. "Just sky."

"I can keep watch, sir."

"Quit calling me that, Jordon." Cloud shifted his weight on the beam. The edge was starting to dig into his ass. He flapped a hand. "I'm not keeping watch. Not much to see, this high. Birds don't even come up here without a good reason." Jordon hadn't moved. "Just... waiting."

More waiting. Again with the shitty waiting. If he had wings, too-

Cloud yanked on the thought so hard the jolt ripped his breath away.

Jordon's mouth suddenly pulled tight, parting in harsh grimace. "Strife, fuck, sir, can I ask something?" he said, something like grief at the edges of his voice. "Your honest thoughts?"

Alarmed, Cloud's eyes flickered away from the man to the empty atmosphere, the smooth wood of the ship, before returning warily. "What?" he said, carefully.

"Are they still alive?"

The wind scoured his eardrums so that he had to strain to hear the words. They hit him like a punch to the gut, anyway, and every single fucking doubt he'd been trying to hold at bay came gushing back into his head. He swayed with the force of the howls. He opened his mouth, but nothing came out. It didn't work the second try, either, and Jordon didn't move the entire time, staring at him through the curve of his helmet while his fists clenched repeatedly at his sides. Under the dry cotton stuffing Cloud's mouth, fear dipped frozen fingers down his gullet.

They could be waiting, too, at the other end of the flight.

"The preliminary data says the odds aren't good," Cloud said finally. The sound echoed a bit, as if it was coming from a distance. "And even if they are alive, there's a good chance that they're not in any condition to come back."

Wutai wouldn't bury them, not with fancy clanking machines like the ones sitting under the shiny stone that held their names. Skulls grinned up at Cloud, edging the brown precipices he remembered in neat little rows, picked clean by carrion birds.

"But what about-"

Cloud dropped his head, expelling his breath sharply through tense teeth and shutting his eyes. "But fuck if I can't seem to stop hoping."

Evans had helped him and Travers hijack the VR equipment once, and the three Seconds had plugged themselves into a First Class training track. It had turned out to rank pretty fucking high on the list of dumbshit things he'd ever done. He remembered Travers's voice in the end, screaming at him to get up. Travers was worse than a cockroach. The harder he was stomped, the more he scuttled around.

Then again, he'd never known Evans to pick a fight he couldn't win. Or Angeal to murder an unarmed woman.

He'd thought maybe he'd have gotten used to it a bit more, every time he was wrong.

Jordon made a ragged sound, and Cloud looked up to see that he'd pulled off his helmet and was scrubbing a hand over his eyes. His bright hair whipped around his face, sticking to the glisten of a couple of tear tracks that wound over his cheeks.

Cloud gnawed on the inside of his lip, figuring this was something private and he should probably butt the fuck out, but Jordon just stood there, as if he'd forgotten his audience. The man sucked noisily at the air, making a fantastically inelegant honk as he sniffed in his snot. Cloud's eyes dropped away from the Third again, watching the slow weave of one of the sails hanging from the stay over his shoulder. He cleared his throat.

He hadn't been able to cry for years, ever since he figured out that the kids back home would eventually get bored and wander off if he kept his mouth shut. It was better being the creepy weirdo kid. It had turned into him picking the fights and the other kids running before too long, because he could, and his mother had just looked at him with tired eyes after.

Just another defect.

He cleared his throat again. "Who'd you lose?" he said. It sounded awkward as hell.

"My lover," Jordon said, before hesitating. "We were with the General during the last Wutai campaign. I came back. He didn't."

"Oh," Cloud said, and he pressed his mouth shut. He scanned the cloud cover again, heat rising up his neck and overpowered the sunlight baking the back of his head.

Jordon sighed harshly, his hand rubbing hard at his face a final time before he hunched his shoulders up to his ears. "Shit, sorry, sir. I shouldn't be getting personal affairs involved with missions. It's not like I don't... We were in the same squad as Tiny-Hoffe-you know, sir. I know he's not the only one we lost, you know, it's just that-"

"Quit that," Cloud interrupted. "You don't need to apologize."

"Sorry, sir." Jordon mumbled.

"You can quit that shit, too."

The Third snorted, half turning away to thumb the corner of his eye. "It's alright for you to say. I'm the one who'd get ass-ploughed for being disrespectful in front of a superior officer."

Cloud grinned, shrugging. "Not my problem, then, is it?"

Jordon laughed again, a bit muffled as he picked at his gloves. He was still scratching at the fraying seam when he said, "Why'd you take this one?"

What? "Huh?"

Jordon ripped out a loose thread. "The mission. Why'd you take it?"

Cloud stared. Individually, the words were familiar, their neat dictionary entries parading through the blank greyness behind his eyes. Together, nothing. He frowned down at his twisted fingers. "Didn't think about it," he said slowly.

"I heard you volunteered. I mean, you know my reasons, and some of the other guys are too green to know better, but..." Jordon's mouth tightened, and he dug his hands into his pockets. "They don't think we're going to come back."

One of Cloud's heels scuffed against the deck, beating a rapid tap tap thump. He pressed his palms together, and he squeezed hard. "I didn't think about it. Nothing to think about. We don't leave Soldiers behind. We don't."

His voice shook in his ears, sullen and quiet. Fucking bitter.

Cloud closed his eyes and breathed. "This is about the only family I've got, anyway," he said.

In the silence, he looked up to see a lopsided smile cross Jordon's face, and he scowled quickly. "Shit. You tell Robertsson or anyone I said this, and I'll gut you." His face was glowing by then, hot enough to cook a full course meal.

Jordon snickered as he turned back to the sky ahead.

"I'm serious."

Jordon didn't respond but for a briefly puzzled hum before leaning forward to flatten himself against the bowsprit.

Cloud sat up straight, stretching to peer over the Third's shoulder. "What?" he said sharply.

"I thought you said birds don't fly this high," Jordon bellowed, squinting into the glare of reflected light.

Cloud saw it, then, just a muddy speck that looked like it was more wingspread than bird. He pushed himself to his feet, and he shook out the buzz of blood rushing back out to his extremities. He shrugged, tipping forward to look over the prow. "I said I usually don't see them this high. It's fine. It's just a bird. It'll probably ignore us."

"Looks like it's just hovering."

Cloud dragged his memory for Wutai birds. It came up blank. "I don't know. Shouldn't be," he said, frowning. "It'd be struggling with the air currents. It's probably soaring." He remembered the stumpy-looking falcons that roosted on Mt. Nibel, carving through the sky with lazy tips of their spread wings before stooping with blinding speed.

"It's getting a bit bigger," Jordon said.

"Right." Cloud pulled up a shoulder again, and he turned to climb back over the rail. "It's fine. It should pass us soon."

"Strife!" Jordon said urgently.

"What? What now?"

"It's getting really fucking big!"

The bird screamed, then, the cry not so much a sound as a solid wall of sensation, the pressure driving through Cloud's torso, ripping open his eardrums, and causing every muscle in his body to seize up. Cloud whirled around, and he looked up into a sharply hooked beak surrounded by a wingspread longer than the ship was wide. Dull, mottled brown wings flapped, keeping the bird at level with the ship, and Cloud leaned hard into the blast of air that tried to rip his boots off the ground.

"Is it attacking us?" Jordon yelled.

The bird screamed again, and Cloud saw it rear back.

"Shit! Look out!" He reached out and twisted his fingers into the Third's collar, ignoring the choking noise Jordon made as he yanked the man off his feet and back over the railing.

The bird's beak scythed downward, snapping the bowsprit in a cacophony of crunching, splintering wood. Chains rattled as they came unwound, and rigging made high pitched twangs as the ropes slingshotted off to slap into their attached masts.

"How'd we piss it off this bad?" Jordon croaked, backpedalling clumsily to keep up with Cloud's arm barred across his chest.

"Maybe it hates ships!" Cloud shouted, watching the small, domed head twist from one side to the other to train both its black beady eyes on them. "Hell, maybe it wants to mate with the ship! I don't fucking know!"

"Fuck! It's coming again!"

With a flap of its monstrous wings, the bird had climbed up high into the sky. It tipped forward, beginning to tuck its wings in for a dive. With heart-scoring clarity, Cloud realized that this one would cleave the airship in half. He wrenched his sword off his back, running blind fingers over the materia slots. The beads pressed smoothly into his fingertips. Regen. Osmose. High level crud that had made him grin stupidly for days after the fusion, but utterly fucking useless in the face of a huge apeshit bird. The last materia buzzed under his hand, and his knuckles tightened. Mastered Thundara.

He poured magic into it. It seethed against his damp palm, spitting and sparking long arcs of electricity up his wrist until his hand felt charred. His jaw creaked, his teeth compressing to flint chips, and he shoved more energy into the incandescent shell.

When the magic ripped free, the recoil bit back at his fingers and made his eyes blur. He squinted until he saw nothing but a sliver, and his brains felt like they were oozing out of his ears as he wrestled for control. The waterfall of bolts smashed down onto the bird's back, piercing its hollow bones and tearing through its breast.

It screamed, spiralling into a tumble, and the smell of scorched feathers blanketed the ship.

Jordon gagged beside Cloud, falling to a knee. They stared up as the bird began to crumple in on itself, its torn feathers outlined sharply against the blue.

It shrieked again, and with a  thump like oxygen being introduced to a blistering room filled with dust, it spread its broken wings and blazed.

Cloud couldn't move, couldn't breathe. The bird reared, wings of twisting fire spread wide, boiling the sky and searing his eyes. He couldn't hear the crackle of flames, blue edged with yellow-white. The plasma danced, its light casting long black shadows on the deck, and the shape of the firebird etched itself into space before it flashed out, leaving glowing afterimages and a thin trail of ash that whipped away into the jet stream.

Cloud stood still, listening to the clinks of bubbled varnish cooling at his feet. The protrusions cracked under the chill, brittle pops ejecting clear, edged splinters.

Jordon made a strangled sound, and he twisted to face Cloud. "Was that..." His mouth worked on after his voice faded.

Cloud looked at the Third. Nothing but a hoarse grunt came out of his throat.

"I thought they were immortal!"

Cloud turned back to the sky. It was empty. Not even a trace of ash was left. The scent of burnt feathers still clung to his stinging eyes, but even that was fading.

"I think," he said quietly and paused, tracing the horizon. "I think they're just birds."

--

Cloud squatted down behind the lichen-crusted husk of a fallen tree, the damp teeth of its bark digging into his fingers. He raised a hand over his shoulder, and he heard muted rustles as just over a dozen Soldiers dropped to their haunches at his back.

"Not much of a welcoming committee," Robertsson rasped by his ear. "Think they weren't expecting us?"

The limping airship had dropped out of sight long ago, and night had fallen while Cloud pushed the team fast and hard over land. Stifled pants sounded behind him. They hadn't complained. "Doubtful," Cloud said. "This stinks of a trap." When he wrapped his right hand around his other wrist, he could feel the chaotic pound of his pulse. His chest was tight enough that it hurt to draw breath. He ignored it.

Starlight glittered overhead, chasing silver streams over the edges of flat leaves sitting against dark bark. Nothing moved, the quiet yawning until Cloud thought he could hear the forest breathe. Under the peace spread in front of him, somewhere, blood soaked through the earth. Cloud narrowed his eyes.

He tilted his head, and he eyed the stringy lines of a small Soldier Third's limbs. The guy barely looked old enough to have left his mother's apron strings.

"What's your name?"

The Third struggled visibly to contain a beam. "Timms, sir!"

"Are you fast, Timms?"

"Fastest in my battalion, sir!"

Cloud suppressed a wince, flattening his wooden cheeks. "I need a scout, Timms. Run. Keep quiet. Locate any guards or patrols. Do not engage them under any circumstances, and if they see you and come after you, sing the fuck out and bring them to me. Got it?"

Timms saluted hard, his arm clicking like he'd thrown out his elbow. "If they see me, sir, they'd hear me back in Midgar!"

A streak of white pain.

"Are you sure, Spike? Sounds risky."

Cloud's teeth creaked with the strain of compressing his snarl to a tightening of his eyes. Fuck. Fuck off.

It didn't respond.

"Good. Be careful."

TheThird darted away. The little idiot sounded like a crippled elephant crashing through the brush. Cloud scanned the waiting Soldiers. "The rest of you, loose spider formation," he said, and he pointed at Jordon, a Rocket Town man named Forenz, and a thick Third he didn't know with streaks of premature grey clumping in his hair. "You three form the hub. Others, spread. Robertsson and I will walk the web. You see anything, you signal with your short flares, collapse in, and pull the rest of the line in. We're going to take this forest."

Cloud watched the sharp nods before the Soldiers melted into the dark.

Got any smartass comments on this one? He flung the words at the inside of his head.

Nothing.

He didn't have time for this shit.

When Cloud ducked under a low branch and started picking his way over thick roots, Robertsson followed him. The Second didn't say anything until the trees swallowed the sound of footsteps.

"He's gonna lead them right to us," Robertsson said, a twist to his mouth.

Cloud shot the man a short grin. "I'm counting on it."

Robertsson laughed, a quick bark. He had one of his daggers in his hand, and he shrugged a shoulder and spun the blade sharply when Cloud frowned at him. "Cold, Strife. I'm actually kind of impressed. Sacrifice the one? Didn't think you had the balls."

Cloud growled, clenched his hand around the buckle of his sword's harness, and the urge to put his fist through Robertsson's teeth faded slowly."I'm not sacrificing anyone, you bastard. I've got a bead on him. Short distance transmissions are still good now that we've crossed the scramble zone. Why did you think we're going this way?"

The Second flipped open his PHS, squinted down at the screen for a moment, and his face contorted derisively. "You didn't tell me I was on the babysitting shift," Robertsson grumbled.

"Bitch all you want, but we're not leaving anyone behind," Cloud snapped.

"That what it says on your Chocobo Scout badge?"

The man only smirked when Cloud shot him a nasty look.

He waited until Cloud had pushed past him, upping the pace in response to a vindictive spike, before he muttered to himself, "Kid's turned me into a fucking Chocobo Scout, too."

Cloud pretended not to hear that one.

They walked, the grass crinkling under their boots.

Waiting again. Cloud had overheard some of the officers in the Regs say once that war was nothing but a long series of waiting interspersed with short periods of dying. Then the assholes had laughed.

Something was chirping in the dark. The incessant noise ran its cheesegrater palms over the bundles of nerves in the sides of Cloud's neck, and he fought to keep his fists loose. When Cloud stopped in mid-stride, cocking his head, Robertsson's hands went to his daggers. Cloud heard it again, a patch of silence, dead still against the living trees. Under the pale haze of the night sky, a darker shadow rested. He tucked his hands behind his back, tapping the back of his fingers against his palm before flicking through Soldier hand sign. Robertsson's mako eyes dimmed briefly in acknowledgement, and the Second began to circle around.

There were two Wutai privates perched under a camouflaged lean-to, one scanning the trees, and the other picking at the lid of a jar of something he was trying to open. Robertsson thumped to the ground behind the ninja peering down at the jar and brought one dagger up to the man's neck and the other flat to his back, a glittering necklace poised to shrink. The other ninja shot to his feet, raising his gun lance.

Cloud brought his sword down on the ninja's weapon in a two-handed cleave, and it crunched as it slapped to the ground. He twisted sharply, the jagged remains of the gun lance snagging on his uniform as the man lunged out at him, and he turned his blade wide and flat to the ground as he thrust forward.

The ninja's head hit the earth with a dense thunk, tipping and wobbling a bit until it lay half-propped against a panel of the outpost's wall. The body folded as it fell.

Cloud glanced at Robertsson. The Second was wiping his daggers carefully over the other ninja's clothes. There was wide gash in the front of the ninja's neck, and another across the back, his neatly severed spine smeared with spongy marrow on white. Blood glistened briefly before it sank under the grass.

Cloud's sword hummed when he swung off the rivulets of fluids. The biting smell of urine welled into the air, and Cloud tipped the headless body over onto its front with his boot. No good, the stain was on both sides.

"What are you doing?"

Cloud's foot froze for a second, hovering over the corpse. The dead guy had smudged. "Nothing."

He'd probably paused too long on that one.

Robertsson didn't say anything else, at least.

The jar had smashed on the ground, spilling its contents. A ring of glass had bloomed out as it splintered. He waited while Robertsson loped over to a patch of creepers and scraped something crumbly off his boot. The long daggers slid slickly into their sheaths.

--

"You'd think this place'd be crawling with Wutai."

They'd met the Soldier on point position soon after. The Third gave a quick salute when he saw them, and Cloud returned a terse nod.

They hadn't encountered any more guards as they headed toward the next point, and Robertsson had started looking more and more aggravated.

Cloud grunted softly. He opened his eyes wide for a moment to take advantage of every stray photon available through the thick branches brushing his shoulders. Out of the corner of his vision, he saw Robertsson doing the same. The man's eyes gleamed, flat reflective discs like a cat's. He shuttered his eyes again. "Disappointed?" Cloud said.

"Fuckin' suspicious is it."

Cloud looked up at the patches of sky. The stars hooted and jeered. "No shit."

Robertsson used a toe to pry a fallen sapling out of his way. Black tumours distended from its gnawed surface. "You ever been here before?" he asked.

Cloud pulled his face into a slow frown. He paused for a moment, and he pivoted on his heel.

For a moment, he heard nothing but the sound of his breath and the crackle of twigs as he pushed his way deeper into the undergrowth. Then Robertsson's quick steps crunched behind him.

"Eh," the other Second hissed. "Strife, you're heading off the web."

Cloud ignored the man. The cloying scent of decay grew stronger, sweet enough to turn his stomach and foul enough to make him gag. He nearly didn't see it until he'd stepped into the half-liquefied mess, hidden under fat, waxy leaves that bobbed on bristled stems. Cloud snatched at a low branch, its knobs digging into his palm as he yanked on it to slow his momentum. One boot trod into something gummy, knocking part of it loose and exposing the glisten of round maggots twining through the rot. The stink wormed its way through his nostrils.

Under his feet, something small and hairy squeaked staccato and shrill as it scuttled away.

Robertsson made a quiet sound in his throat behind him. "Is it Soldier?"

Cloud twisted his shoulder, halfway between a shrug and a shake. Something glittered under the slime, and he crouched, sitting back on his heels to reach for a wizened stick.

It took several tries before he managed to hook the blackened chain. Something had been eating the palm it rested under, neat little bite marks lining the bloodless grey tissue. Putrid flesh parted with reluctant sucking sounds as he dragged the metal out. Bloated, sausage-like fingers rolled and tore, releasing a gush of fluids onto the tangled links. A hiss, and a curl of smoke rose up. Cloud leaned back abruptly.

The tag on the chain was paper-thin, eaten through like torn cheesecloth. Anything etched into the metal was long gone, the edges soaked through with faint mako green.

Cloud pushed back the leaves again. The reluctant moonlight sharpened the shadows and lined the shape of the arm stretched out of the hollow. Thin lines, tooth marks, raced across the exposed bone. Grime-matted hair lay in clumps, a thin rind of scalp still draped over the roots.

His stomach turned violently, and he rocked back on his heels, reaching out blinding to grab at the branches and keep himself from pitching forward.

Get a goddamn grip.

He swallowed hard.

Cloud pressed an arm over his mouth and nose, but it did nothing to drown out the stench. "Motherfucker..." he whispered.

"Looks like the poor sunovabitch just melted," Robertsson said. He reached out to shove away a few more fronds. "What kind of weapon does this shit?"

Cloud surged to his feet, shuffling through a couple of clumsy hops before he caught his balance. "Fuck, I sent Timms out alone. Fucking hell. The kid better be in range." He patted his back pockets before shoving his hands into the ones at his sides. His fingers were numb when he yanked out his PHS. It clattered in his hands, and he snatched at it as it started to slip.

Robertsson let the leaves snap back into place, and he frowned. "The hell you so worked up about?"

Cloud's breath hissed sharply through his teeth. "Worked up? We just found Mister Raspberry Snowcone over here, and you're asking me why I'm worked the fuck up?" He grimaced, and he shook his head. "I'm calling him back. We'll regroup and move as a unit."

The other Soldier reached out and yanked on a handful of thin branches to heave himself to his feet. They whipped, arcing back into place. "And broadcast our position to every Wutai bastard in town?"

"If I have to," Cloud snarled. "It might be hard for you to understand, but there are some things more important than-"

"Check his position," Robertsson interrupted, smacking the back of his hand into Cloud's PHS and sneering while he fumbled with it. "Is he moving?" he said, exaggerated and slow.

Cloud stared down at his screen, and his jaw creaked tight. "Yes," he said, watching the blinking dot, scratching with bad reception.

"There you go."

Cloud scanned the silent map, his thumb scraping over the scroll, harder than necessary. He felt Robertsson's scrutiny, but he didn't look up. The asswipe would be waiting a long time if he was looking for an apology.

He could feel the nails of his other hand digging into his palm. He took a whistling breath. Fine. It was fine. The body was at least a week old. Shit shit shit, calm down. He pressed his eyes shut.

"You'll be fine."

Shut the fuck up!

Robertsson clicked his tongue against the roof of his mouth, and he sighed gustily. When he spoke, his voice was heavy, his Midgar accent thick and cumbersome. "Shiva's frozen tits, Strife, you're goin' to have to make some spectacularly shitty decisions sometime. What's important one time isn't good enough for another time. Your Chocobo Scout badge ain't gonna be much good, then."

Cloud's hand stilled, and slowly, his fingers loosened around the brushed metal frame in his palm. He closed his eyes and tilted his head back. His vertebrae creaked. The air felt damp in his mouth, but his throat still scratched, desert dry. "No, I haven't been," he said shortly.

"Eh?" Robertsson stared at him.

"You asked if I'd been here before," Cloud said, flapping the fingers of one hand. Focus. It was better than trying to push Robertsson's head through a tree. "The answer's no. The closest I came was when Angeal and I worked backup for Intelligence when they set up a station on the other side of the valley. We didn't come down here." His mouth twisted drily. "Wouldn't have helped if I did. I can't tell one goddamn tree from another."

When the other Soldier's eyes narrowed, flickers of confusion colouring the mako, cold dripped its way down Cloud's spine. Familiarity gnawed at his gut.

"Who?"

Cloud's pulse roared in his ears. He jerked his head to the side and back again. "What do you mean 'who?'" The brittle words clicked, frozen to his tongue.

"Fuck, Strife, you're not making sense."

Robertsson looked at him, his scowl half exasperated and half impatient, and when something snapped somewhere inside of Cloud and filled him with hot, raspy irritation, he figured he was entitled. He spun, fully facing the Second. "What the ball-blazing fuck is going on here? This is the second time someone's asked me who Angeal was. What is this bullshit? Do we start erasing Soldiers from the records when they go AWOL or some shit like that? You telling me you don't remember?"

He couldn't shout. Not here. Shut up.

Ringing filled his ears, bright sharp specks buzzing in the edges of his vision. An invisible hand punched through his ribcage, pried apart the bones, and clenched hard around the bulging walls of his heart. Cloud wheezed, digging his fingers into his chest. His back thumped against bark, its rough nails clawing up his skin when he sagged.

There was a blur, static and motion through the sliver of his sight. A rough voice. "The hell's wrong with you?"

Cloud tried to choke back the laugh. It bubbled, boiling over through his nose in a series of short, honking sniggers. He gasped for breath. "With me? You think something's wrong with me?" He clamped a hand over his mouth for a moment. It shook harder than the laughter warranted. "Half of ShinRa thinks we're gonna die out here. Angeal, fucking Angeal's a traitor, and the Ghost of Soldier Past is getting its rocks off on haunting me or something. It talks to me. Gives bullshit peppy cocksucker advice! And now you people tell me I see things I don't really see and I know things I don't really know and I should fucking hope I'm unhinged because I'm fucked six ways to Sunday if this is normal!"

His panting echoed in the spaces between the trees.

"You done?"

Cloud shut his eyes, letting his head fall back with a thick clunk. He chuckled breathlessly. "Never done. Asshole in my head hasn't piped up, yet.”

He could see Robertsson's eyes twitch back and forth in his peripheral vision. The man shuffled, looking truly uncomfortable for the first time since Cloud had gotten within sniping distance. The novelty caused a fresh burst of giggles to seize up his vocal cords, and he muffled it with the back of his hand. The taste of sweat stung his tongue as he bit down. In front of him, Robertsson tched and stuffed his hands into his pockets.

"No one feels right about Angeal, you know," the Second muttered, looking away.

Cloud snorted.

Robertsson shrugged a tense shoulder. "All Soldiers got their problems." He met Cloud's eyes for just a second before shifting his gaze away again. Shrugging once more, he gestured at his scar. The shiny tissue poured down the side of his face, and Cloud took the opportunity to really study it. The wan light made the thick ridges seem even more pronounced, cavernous black shadows edging the gleam. It didn't move much when Robertsson's mouth twitched up for a moment. "Try not to think too much about it," the Second said.

Saliva pooled in Cloud's mouth, filming the inside of his cheeks and frothing around his teeth. It made a gurgling noise when he swallowed. "It's fucking weird having you trying to be encouraging."

Robertsson nearly smiled again. "Don't get used to it."

"Absolute shit advice, though."

"Fuck off, Strife."

He was still snickering when there was a whistle, and a sucking pop sounded a moment before Cloud saw light glimmer through the dense tangle of branches over his head. He pushed himself away from the tree at his back, and he made an awkward little crab hop when he put his foot down in the hollow at its roots and felt something squish.

Anticipation poured through his limbs. There were squawks, the crash of footsteps, and a bellow that warbled. Cloud spun, tilting his face up to the sky. Another flare of red flushed out the stars, streaking pale ash in its wake. It was farther than Cloud had anticipated.

He grunted, weaving around tangled trunks and ducking into a sprint. His boots thudded, jarring all the way up his bones. "Robertsson, move your ass!"

"How many fucking legs do you think I have?" Robertsson shouted from somewhere behind him.

"I'm going ahead, then!" Cloud hurdled a low-lying branch. Robertsson's answering yell was lost in the howl of moving air and the pump of blood through his veins. Shapes shot by, nothing but murky blurs in half-hearted light. A sting snapped briefly at the underside of his jaw, and a prickle of heat touched him in passing a split second before it whipped away.

He nearly missed Timms.

Cloud turned his head in time to see the Third whirl toward him when he galloped past, catching a hand on a jutting branch and using it to swing himself over a patch of brambles. The wide mako eyes were flickering beacons in the shadows.

"Sir!" The sound was faint under the hissing of flares.

Cloud windmilled, ploughing his heels into the ground and kicking up a skid trail of grit that speckled his skin like hail.

"Hey, sir!" Timms shouted again. The Soldier's face fell slack when he saw Cloud bearing down on him. He raised his arms defensively, taking a step back, but Cloud had already reached out and caught two good fistfuls of the Third's mud-smeared uniform. Timms croaked loudly when Cloud lifted him up off his feet, and his hands clamped down reflexively on gloved wrists. His boots thumped unsteadily into the ground as he tried to hop along with the pace.

"Sir, behind!"

"I know!"

Cloud charged through the dense growth, ignoring the clawed fingers of the trees snatching at his skin and clothes. When he crashed through the tree line and tripped into the clearing, Jordon spun around, swinging his sword up a hair before he shouted in alarm and pulled back. He reeled, arms flinging out and legs tangling when Cloud shoved Timms off and into the other Thirds.

Cloud had already ripped his broadsword free of its scabbard halfway through his pivot. He tipped the point down, a raspy scrape echoing down the blade as it snagged under a ninja's gun lance and slapped upward. Muddled yells jostled for position in his ears, indecipherable. Cloud stepped into the opening, bringing his sword up in a wide sweep.

Blood sprayed, slapping thickly against his face and arms. The heat stung.

Gunfire rattled, and Cloud snapped his sword up. He braced the flat of the blade against the back of his fist, feeling his arms judder with every hollow ping of a bullet's ricochet. The last one glanced off the metal and sawed its way into the ground just as Cloud used the recoil to spin into a crouch. Flipping his sword into a back-handed grip as he whirled past, he swung.

Clanking, the ninja's helmet bounced.

There were shouts at his back, and the crinkle of gathered magic prodded at his ears, accompanied by the tin can smell of ice condensing out of the air.

Cloud saw Timms hunched over his blazing bracer, the materia light etching his crooked nose into sharp relief. Shards bloomed, driving into a ninja's arm and sheathing his weapon in ice. As the man doubled over and screamed, another Third stepped up behind him, dragging him down by his collar and raising a fist. With a damp crunch, the ninja's skull caved.

Timms backpedalled abruptly, catching a descending gun lance in the crook where the blade of his sword met the hilt. Twisting to the side, the Third closed his fist around the shaft of the rebel's weapon a moment before he disengaged, ducked, and drove his sword through the man's belly.

Wutai ringed them, grim faces set under caked on grime.

It was then that fire roared through their ranks, and Cloud saw the confusion drag across their faces as they started to turn, abortive spins taking them one direction after another. He saw the realization distort their mouths when the circle of Soldiers pinched closed around them, the net trawled in by the hiss and pop of flares.

Robertsson snarled, scar livid in the light of the flames.

One of the ninja brandished his weapon with a scream, a muffled torrent of words that spurred a wave of roars and rattles of lances. The Wutai language always sounded like it bristled with short, sharp thorns of syllables. Cloud danced back out of range, adjusting his grip on his sword before taking his stance again.

He bared his teeth in a grin, and he charged.

--

Cloud wiped the back of his knuckles across his mouth, grimacing when they left a streak of clotting blood up his cheek. Isolated patches of fire still lapped at the damp grass and slow embers still breathed under the charred shells of blackened Wutai armour. Behind him, he could hear Timms heaving from where the Third crouched under a tree, short sobs mingling with the retching.

Cloud lifted his boots high to step over a man's torso. It humped oddly, a disjointed slit glistening moistly, almost neatly bisected. He remembered that one. Caught the man on the upswing.

Some of the Thirds were starting to drag the bodies into a clump. Flat, glistening grass trails radiated through the clearing, like a giant hand had gone paint-happy with a giant brush. Bark bristled under his palm as he pressed a hand to a tree for balance. He leaned into it for a moment, scraping his shallow breaths smooth, and he pushed away to stand.

Timms's shoulders jerked like they were tugged on too-tight marionette strings when he pressed a hand onto the Third's pauldron. The guy scrubbed a forearm over his nose and eyes, and he turned his head to squint up at Cloud.

Cloud considered telling him that it got easier with time, when the shock of the first job, first kill faded, and that the smell would barely register. The words piled into a chunky bolus in his throat, throttling his vocal cords. He suppressed a wince. Angeal had made it seem so easy.

"Good job," Cloud said quietly, instead.

Timms tried to smile. Cloud hesitated, and he patted the clumsy tips of his fingers over the Third's shoulder again.

It felt stupid the second time, too.

There was a spray of blood across the Third's forehead. He wasn't sure if he should point it out.

He glanced over the sloppy ring of Soldiers, waiting as murmured conversations broke off, and glowing eyes snapped around to fix on him.

It had been too easy. Wutai had known they were coming. There should have been a hell of a lot more troops. There wasn't a scratch on any of them. He'd recognized the tight stretch on the faces of the Wutai who'd screamed at him. He knew the tone, if not the words. The ninja hadn't expected to live.

Fuck fucking fuck.

It was all going wrong. His head swirled like foam was being funnelled in through his ears and forcing its way into the cracks in his brain.

They had no fucking clue what to expect, but hell, he couldn't say that either, could he?

He hooked his fingers into his pockets so that they couldn't see them clench.

Shut off. Do it right.

Residual magic painted a pale haze in the air and stung at Cloud's throat.

"Good," he said again. His voice was level. "We shouldn't have any Wutai at our backs now, but we have to hit the base hard and do it fast."

There were scattered nods. Jordon swept the trees with his eyes before he frowned. "Where's the base, sir?"

Robertsson grunted, looking up from where he was picking over the materia he'd found in the ninja commander's gear. "It's underground, Soldier," he snapped. A support materia glimmered in his hand, the blue washed out by the dim flow of moonlight. Robertsson rolled the orb between his fingers. His lips curled in an abrupt sneer before he tossed the materia onto the ground and stood, wiping a darker smear over his uniform pants.

Cloud shifted, adjusting the weight of his sword on his back. His muscles were locking up, stiff joints threatening to cramp. Timms was standing near the back, staring vacantly into the dark. Cloud cleared his throat, and the Third's eyes snapped to focus. His back straightened when he noticed Cloud's attention, and he saluted slowly before tugging his helmet back over his limp hair.

Cloud nodded, surveying the men again. "Get yourselves cleaned up as much as you can. We blitz in five minutes."

--

TBC

Part 5. Part 6A. Part 6B.