Chapter Text
A storyteller’s game
Lips that intoxicate
The core of all life is a limitless chest of tales
– from Nightwish: Storytime
Prologue/ Chapter 1: ~2.5 Years After Meteorfall…
It was another dry and scorchingly hot day; the tenth consecutive day thus far in the year.
The sun slowly dipped below the horizon, but the furnace it had continuously imposed upon the wastelands that rippled across Gaia lingered like the stench of Mako. This dry season was looking to become an exceptionally debilitating, especially so soon after Geostigma had been nearly eradicated. The formerly infected weakened immune systems and bodies were still recovering.
Isolated places still suffered from Geostigma. But, thanks to the coordinated effort of the WRO working with independent contractors and the like, vials of the precious rainwater from the Sector 5 church were being shipped.
Of course it didn’t stop smugglers and extortionists from attempting to make a profit. Cloud’s current job was not just being an escort for some of the vital shipments. He was there as enforcement to ensure that those needing the cure were not being taken advantage of.
Negotiating wasn’t something he was good at, but since returning to live with Denzel, Tifa, and Marlene, the children themselves had taught him the art of negotiation. He was still getting the hang of it, but at least the angry looks that people gave him whenever he arrived with the shipments were lessening.
Still, riding solo across Gaia in Fenrir had both its disadvantages and advantages. He’d returned to living with his ‘family’, but things still weren’t comfortable between him and Tifa. They kept it from the children, but Cloud couldn’t help but feel relieved each time a phone call came for him to leave with a shipment.
Cloud shook his head, the dust kicked up from his motorcycle trundling through the wastelands thick and heavy. It made the heat of the waning day ever more potent and heavy.
The appearance of a blurred figure on the horizon in front of him, kicking up as much of a copious amount of dust as he more than likely was, was unexpected. Most vehicles tended to stay on the roads – however in disrepair they were – and did not off-road. Fenrir was customized specifically for necessary off-roading.
Cloud slowed, a wary eye on the approaching figure. Mirage from the heat made it difficult to identify the rider, but it looked as if it were a lone person on a motorcycle.
Though his thumb hovered on the button to eject the sword slots open, he didn’t press it as the rider continued to approach. The colors were not WRO, but were something seemingly familiar—
The figure suddenly waved – non-threateningly.
Fenrir rumbled to a stop, as Cloud furrowed his eyebrows, frowning behind polarized goggles. He briefly pulled out his PHS and checked it.
[No new messages.]
He pocketed his PHS. Reeve wasn’t one to send couriers after him, acquiescing to Cloud’s contact preference after the first unfortunate time. The courier had been duly returned, scared out of his wits; Cloud unapologetic. If the man became incapacitated, Cait Sith would have sent an automatic notice.
The rider arrived and stopped before him in less than a minute. Cloud’s thumb still hovered over the button to eject the sword compartments, as he took in the rider – or more specifically, the uniform that the rider was wearing.
SOLDIER.
Specifically, it was a Second-Class uniform. Complete with a typical standard broadsword across his back, that Cloud distinctly remembered both Second and Third-Classes carrying. According his memories of a long ago discussion with Zack, customized swords were not allowed until First Class.
Even stranger, the rider was wearing the hated helmet that was issued to Third and Seconds as part of their standard outfit. While it was clear that this man clearly carried the entire ensemble of SOLDIER, Cloud was still ever so slightly hesitant to identify him as a SOLDIER.
Most, if not all SOLDIERs had either died during the days leading up to Meteorfall, or succumbed to Hojo’s mad experiments. Cloud remembered how difficult it had been just to reach Hojo at the Sister Ray – fighting all of those mutated SOLDIERs; trying to quickly put them out of their misery.
“You’re a very difficult man to find and pin down to even get a word with these days, Cloud.”
Cloud’s frown became a little more pronounced. “Do I know you?”
“I’m not sure.”
The shrug was incredibly casual, the tone of the words even stranger – friendly even, tinged with hope. Cloud didn’t press the button to open his sword compartments, but he did feather it ever so slightly.
The action could not have been missed; SOLDIERs were capable of picking out very minute details, due to conditioning. Yet, the man before him didn’t even acknowledge the movement. Clearly this man knew who he was, probably what he was capable of, and yet—
“Our mutual friend, Zack—”
Cloud sucked in a tiny breath.
“—may have mentioned me once or twice,” the man continued, tone affable. “But, even if he didn’t I’m Kunsel. SOLDIER… or rather former SOLDIER Second-Class.”
Cloud briefly rolled the name around his thoughts. There weren’t any memories that he had absorbed from Zack of this man, but rather, his own memories – however fuzzy it was.
“Huh. Hey, Spike! Check this mail out!”
Zack shoved the PHS in front of him in a rather sudden and intrusive, but jovial manner, stopping both of them . Cloud couldn’t help but smile at the antics, as he took it and read through the message, while Zack suddenly dropped to do a few squats to warm up.
The message was… both interesting and worrying, to say the least. C loud returned the PHS to Zack as soon as he sprung up.
“So Rhapsodos might be working with anti-Shinra groups?”
Trudging through the snow seemed to warm Cloud up better than doing squats. Besides, he needed all of his strength to put one foot in front of the other to get through the thick bed.
“Eh… who knows.”
Zack’s careless wave, coupled with that tone of confidence settled any worries within Cloud. He heard of Zack, and it was quite clear that the SOLDIER First-Class was incredibly strong. Zack knew what he was doing, and Cloud felt a lot better with him around.
“Modeoheim,” Cloud murmured. “A prospective place for a reactor before plans were shelved. Zack said that we didn’t have to worry about anti-Shinra activities – to focus on the hunt for Rhapsodos.”
The SOLDIER before him sighed; fondly exasperated. If there weren’t a helmet covering the upper half of his face, Cloud would have thought the man to be rolling his eyes as well.
“Typical—”
“Zack,” they both said at the same time.
Cloud snorted. The mutual agreement was reassuring, his trust in this former SOLDIER who had somehow survived everything up to and including Meteorfall, rising. But, it still didn’t explain Kunsel’s presence, or the flag down.
“Guess I need to talk to Reeve about my contact preferences again,” he muttered.
Kunsel quickly shook his head. “He didn’t send me. Neither did Shinra or his Turks.”
Cloud waited.
The former SOLDIER loudly sighed, strangely scratching the back of his neck, as if suddenly and inexplicably uncertain and nervous. “I… I need your help, Cloud.”
Cloud blinked once even though Kunsel probably couldn’t see his eyes behind the dark goggles. He waited for the other shoe to drop. Kunsel knew of Reeve, Rufus, and the Turks. It was safe to assume that Kunsel knew of Strife Delivery Service and the fees behind the service.
Hesitation was clear on the former SOLDIER’s body language. “There’s a problem—”
Whatever the problem was, both it and Kunsel’s words were lost to the sudden hissing noise that enveloped the two of them. It was accompanied by familiar dark shadows – shades and wispy like. Uncanny swiftness and yowling screeches governed their appearances, just as Cloud snapped Fenrir’s compartments open.
He grasped the handle of his Fusion Sword just as the shadows solidified into twenty-three tattered cloaked Remnants. Two manifested between him and Kunsel. All were accompanied by a rather large horde of Shadow Creepers; pouncing down upon the two of them with their unforgiving maws wide open.
Determined and unwilling to die in these wastelands, Cloud snapped the broad blade up. The Lightning materia paired with All was nearly done charging up for a Thundaga attack—
He saw Kunsel’s mouth move, a hand reaching up towards the neck. There was a flash of blindingly grey-white light accompanying an ear-piercing whine drilling into Cloud’s skull—
—and everything was gone.
Midgar in all of her ugly, shining green-and-metallic glory was right there .
Zack sighed; exhausted and worn. “We drag our asses all this way… and this is the welcome we get.”
T he sight wasn’t all that much prettier when he turned around. In fact, he could have sworn that it got just a smidge uglier. Those tri-lensed helmets of red trilled like a bobbing Chocobo’s head as the Shinra Army locked their weapons upon him. The buzz of helicopters was as loud as gnats flying by his ear s .
With hands on his hips, Zack gave the welcome party another appraising look. “Boy oh boy, the price of freedom is steep.”
H is dear friend was tucked away, just a few meters behind the largest, strongest outcropping of a boulder he could find. He couldn’t bring it within him to allow the despair to color his tone. So long as C loud could hear, could respond even through Mako poisoning, that hope had to be kept buoyant.
It was hope for both of them that somehow, they would both survive these next few minutes.
Zack let his right hand drop, slowly reaching back to grasp at the handle of Buster Sword. None of the army moved; their discipline showing.
Slowly and deliberately, he unhooked it and drew it up and over, arcing widely. The army kept their weapons trained on him. Seeing the irony of what they gave him in this last stand, he returned it.
Buster Sword snapped up, a perfect salute if there ever was one to be judge d .
“Embrace your dreams,” he murmured, prayer and epithet in one, “and… whatever happens, protect your honor… as SOLDIER!”
H e swung his sword laterally to the side , blade bared and stance at the ready – and charged.
“Come and get it!”
Cloud snapped his eyes open, the shout familiar, and at the same time loud enough that it didn’t feel like a memory—
Debilitating pain unlike anything he had felt since being flushed out of that Mako tank in Nibelheim socked his awareness. He tried to blink, tried to make some sense of the roaring noise that rushed passed his ears.
Gunfire… and cannon fire…?
Lethargy and that continuous pain gripped him as he desperately tried to blink, tried to see through fuzzed vision as to what was happening. Had he miscast Thundaga on all Remnants and their creatures he had seen, or worse, somehow chained it to the temperamental—
Another yell focused his attention.
For a brief moment, his thoughts and vision cleared. Mako poisoning; the symptoms oh-so-familiar. He was somehow afflicted by it, again.
However, what he saw immediately chased and completely dashed any and all thoughts of his current condition. A SOLDIER was fighting a few meters away from where he laid crumpled against a massive boulder. A SOLDIER with dark mane of hair, wearing a dark blue SOLDIER uniform, and wielding a massive broadsword that reflected bullets and sunlight.
Zack.
Zack was here, was alive, was breathing, was not dying—
Cloud’s panicked thoughts screeched to a halt as the hail of bullets – gunfire, cannon fire, and even grenades pushed past the roar across his ears. That, and the sudden surge of determination, of whatever the hell had happened to land him here, suddenly dulled the pain of Mako poisoning.
It was both creepy fortune, and absolute madness that his right hand reached out and curled around an equally familiar hilt. Materia and their song of power burned through the brief silence that fell over him, as Cloud leapt up.
Thundaga exploded in the midst of the Shinra Army, scattering them. Cloud pushed past the adrenaline-fueled pain of Mako poisoning, as he swept up and into the heart of the fight.
There was not going to be a ‘last stand’ today. Not for either of them.
He crashed down, Fusion Sword bisecting a Sweeper in half. It’s sparking husk keeled over to either side, as Cloud sprinted in to the left, and swept his sword from side-to-side. Soldiers were battered back, smashing into jutting rocks, broken or dead by his blade.
But the second wind was temporary; his body somehow not the limber, relatively healthy form he knew it should have been. Mako poisoning stabbed at him; the agonizing pain growing with each step he took, each swing of his blade, each connection against an enemy felt through tremors.
Even as he pivoted and twirled this way and that, his blade dealing death wherever he saw and touched, he was slowing. Drawing breath was getting more difficult as his strength rapidly ebbed.
Just as the heavens began to open with drenching rain, Cloud felt his muscles seize. Unable to will his body to break the hold over the poisoning working through him, he pitched forward in one last attempt to fell a final soldier, and collapsed.
Cloud’s eyes drooped closed to the sounds of fading gunfire and sword meeting both metal and flesh.
“… what?”
His breaths were harsh against his own ears as he leaned heavily against Buster Sword. The cooling rain was a blessing to both him, and the cooling fires of what remained of the Shinra Army.
Ghost and ashes.
But, Zack’s eyes were not focused on them. Instead, he was focused on the lone body clothed in that dark blue uniform. Said body was surrounded by a plethora of soldiers – and the husked remnants of what used to be a Sweeper – and two helicopters near that.
The rain did nothing to wash away to blackened ground that marked a frighteningly powerful Thundaga spell.
He limped forward, the pain barely manageable even when he used Buster Sword as a crutch. But, for the sake of whom he did not see tucked away at the boulder, he plowed on. He had to see – he had to confirm.
He reached the unmoving body, laying face-down on the ground. Shakily, Zack knelt and reached out to turn the body over.
“Spike…”
It certainly was Cloud.
The faint up-down motion of Cloud’s chest gave way that he was alive. Relief swept through Zack. That was shortly arrested as his eyes focused on the bracer on Cloud’s left forearm.
There were several materia there – at least two… no three magic types, a red summon, and a purple one. He didn’t know where they came from; they had no materia during their escape from Shinra Mansion and never picked any up on their journey to here.
Zack’s eyes strayed ever so slightly to his left. The sword was similarly built like Buster Sword, except with some differences in how the back of the blade was formed. He definitely did not recall seeing, finding, or even bringing with either of them a spare sword – much less two materia slotted on the guard.
Yet, even as spent as he was, if he had time to sit here and ponder about what the hell he had just seen happen, he had time to get both of them to safety. He hooked his own sword to his back hook first, before taking up the strange Buster-like Sword.
It was heavier than he anticipated.
With some trouble, he managed to get that secured as well, though it was precarious. Undeterred, Zack then reached down and carefully hefted up Cloud, draping his friend’s arm across his shoulders.
Cloud made an indiscernible noise, but his eyes remained closed even if he was somewhat upright.
“It’s all right, Spike,” Zack said, reassuringly. “We won, and we’re going to make it. We’re almost there.”
~*~*~*~