Night 49: Home World - Gaia

[zack_fair]

[From here.]Upon stepping through the door, Zack had suddenly felt kind of dizzy, almost like the floor was falling out on him. He didn't know what that was about, but he didn't even get the chance to try and come up with a reason for it, since the next thing he knew he was being overwhelmed by a whole new set of sensations. First of all, he was

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[thatdamnedninja]

"Like you wouldn't be right down here with me if you weren't flying this thing," Yuffie grouched.

She straightened slowly, swinging her shuriken into place. Ugh. She hated airships, with the impassioned fury of a thousand burning stars! Always would. It was like a universal constant, right up there with the one that said everybody with the last name Shin-Ra is a gigantinormous prick.

Still, no time to be wasting. They'd landed already; her stomach might still be playing catch-up with her brain-meats, but she had tons better stuff to do than whinge. Like, finding out what in Leviathan's name was happening here. Oh, and correcting Zack. That too. "I said pretty much, not that it was." Yuffie hopped back to her feet, ignored the wobble in her legs, and started back for the deck. There was no other exit. "We did stop it, yeah. Stopped Meteor from smacking the whole planet into next Tuesday. But that-this-isn't the end. And we weren't in time to stop Midgar getting wrecked." She paused at the door, facing into the rusty, meticulous

[notthistrain]

...Right. Zack wasn't used to fighting with them. Even if there was a time difference, Yuffie knew how to handle a three-man team. His other friend must not have had to team up much at all while working with SOLDIER. The perks of being a 1st class operative. He'd only had a team when the job was a big one, and even then he hadn't seen him coordinate much with them

[zack_fair]

The shuriken came in with pretty perfect timing. Zack might not have been used to it if he hadn't fought with Cissnei a few times, but in this case he was just glad that he had a few helping hands for this. It sometimes took a while to take a Tonberry down, but with them ganging up on it like this, the thing would be a goner in no time.

Yuffie's attack had made for the perfect opening to slash at the thing again again, but before Zack could do that, Cloud swept in with a pretty impressive assault of his own. Zack paused for a moment (this was a Tonberry, after all -- he wasn't too worried about the thing's agility) to send his friend a wide, cocky grin. "All right!" he exclaimed. "You've totally got it now." It really made him glad to see how far Cloud had come, and Zack found himself further exhilarated by having this chance to fight alongside the other man. With all of their mako-induced strength untouched, at that

[thatdamnedninja]

Tonberries were notorious across the world. Yeah, they were slow. Real slow. And that, well, that was hella handy. While they plodded along, measuring and meticulous and murderous, its prey, if smart enough and experienced enough, would have time enough to dispatch it. But, since there's always a but, that pro came with a boatload of cons.

The real problem with Tonberries was that they didn't have to get right up close to hurt you. Kill you, yeah; that big ol' butcher knife didn't exactly have a whole lot of range, and hell if she'd ever seen one of them actually throw something.

When Tonberries went to hurt someone-

Yuffie caught the shuriken on the backswing, even as she ran up to join her teammates. She dodged around to the other side, skidding to a stop when she'd found a space. But it was too late.

Before she had a chance the lash out and finish it, the Tonberry, injured and angry, was already unleashing its attack. There was a nickname that went with it, and lore; about how Everybody's Grudge was a person's choices coming

[notthistrain]

Cloud saw the Tonberry moving. He wasn't sure if he'd be fast enough to intercept it with his blade, but since when had he been limited to physical attacks? He recalled what materia he'd had equipped on him when he'd been taken, and as far as he knew he should still have those equipped on him now.

The blond didn't take the time to glance at his wrist to double-check. There wasn't really time to do anything but take the matter on faith. There should have been a mastered lightning materia there, and while a summoning spell might have been the better answer, he wanted something that was guaranteed to hit quickly. Simple was better when you weren't certain that world mechanics were still going to work as they should.

"Heads up!" was about all the warning he gave Zack before the high-level Thunder spell connected. It shouldn't do the other man any harm, but it wouldn't hurt to stay back from an electrical charge that strong. They were trying to keep the other ex-SOLDIER from harm, anyway.

[zack_fair]

Seeing how Zack had run around in his fair share of caves and had been forced to deal with fighting multiple Tonberries at once, he knew what they were capable of. While the attack was called Karma as far as he was aware, what he knew about it was 1) that it came out of nowhere, and 2) that it hurt a lot. In fact, he thought he was kind of crazy for the idea, but he was pretty sure it'd come to hurt more and more as time had gone by

[thatdamnedninja]

When Yuffie heard Cloud's warning, she got the hell out of dodge. No way was she sticking around to get zapped by a high level Thunder, nuh uh, not happening. A quick backwards handspring was enough to take her out of the spell's range.

The Tonberry wasn't so lucky.

Lantern and the knife still clutched tight in its hands, it finally went down for the dirt nap. Serves it right, too! Yuffie thought. She didn't care that it was stuck all the way out here, far away from its home; it'd attacked them. Monsters were monsters. Vicious, and nine times outta ten, just asking for a major butt-kicking.

Yuffie planted a hand-the one not occupied by a giant shuriken-on her hip. "So much for that," she said, not even out of breath. So much for exercise. So much for a toughie. In a way, it was almost disappointing. Except, oh yeah, the thing'd got Zack. Oops. Yuffie looked around at the guy quickly. SOLDIER or not, an attack from a Tonberry had to hurt. "You're not gonna curl up and cry on us, are ya?" she asked, blasé but without bite. If it

[notthistrain]

Cloud rolled his eyes at Yuffie's taunt to Zack, though he knew it was a harmless comment. The blond walked over to the fallen Tonberry just to make sure it wasn't going to get back up again, poking at it with the end of his sword. When he was sure, he reached for the bangle on his wrist and unclipped a green materia. This he tossed back toward Zack.

"That one's a cure." Rather than heal the man himself, he'd let his friend decide how much he wanted healed. He didn't know if Zack even had any materia equipped just then anyway. It couldn't hurt to share. Speaking of which, he really needed to double-check what he had on him. It hadn't been long since he'd last been in his world, just a few days, but things could have been altered for all he knew.

A quick look over his inventory told him this wasn't the case. All his materia was just how he'd left it. That was good to note just in case something else attacked them. "Yuffie, what do you have on you?"

[zack_fair]

"Since when have I been known to cry?" Zack asked, tone only slightly tight with pain as he straightened up, recovering as fast as his mako-laced blood would let him. He sent the two a strained grin to let them know that he would be bouncing back in no time. And the Tonberry? It was very much dead after that spell, which meant that they were back to square one

[thatdamnedninja]

"Every night," Yuffie cheerfully replied. "Into your pillow."

Good thing she'd thought to do inventory before they'd jumped ship, huh? Yuffie bounced on the balls of her feet, restless. "Lessee," she said. "Crapton of small blades, little of this, little of that-set of lock picks, cell phone, smoke pellets… Seal materia, too." She gave her shuriken a wriggle. "And a hella nifty one that doubles up as a flash bomb

[notthistrain]

That wasn't a bad inventory, though it wasn't as if the cell phone was going to do them a whole lot of good if there was no one around to call. Wait, didn't he have his own

[zack_fair]

That was a lot of stuff. It looked like Yuffie hadn't completely lost her urge to hoard things, and Zack just shook his head as he watched the girl run off. He didn't even know who it was that they were looking for. Cloud had something about Marlene earlier, but the name meant nothing to him

[thatdamnedninja]

Yuffie didn't dawdle. She flat-out sprinted, or close enough; found the house in seconds, and searched the bottom floor thoroughly in about the same. It was full of a whole load of nothing. A big, fat, stinking pile of nothing. She took the stairs seven at a time. Wash, rinse, repeat. Hullo, empty house! I'm the Great Ninja, how's it hangin'? There wasn't even anything worth stealing, and, yeah; Yuffie'd totally checked.

"Marleeeene!" she called, cupping her hands in front of her mouth. "C'mere, kiddo! I've got a totes new materia for you to try out on, er-Cloud, maybe, since it's a crossdressing materia; isn't that awesome? Yeah? I thought so. That's why I bribed old man Reeve into inventing it for me

[notthistrain]

Cloud wanted to be thorough, and he didn't like the idea of just leaving without checking the other buildings. Even though he knew Yuffie was probably right and the others wouldn't be anywhere around here, he couldn't help but hope that maybe they were all just holed up in one of the buildings - a basement or something.

It couldn't hurt to check, right? It wouldn't take long, and right now they didn't have any other clues to go by. He shook his head at the ninja's statement. "No, we need to take a look. Even if it's just a quick one. I won't feel satisfied that we've done all we could until then."

That said, he took a step forward--

[to here]