Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

Rock scoured smooth by time piled towards the sky, dry and brittle grass piling on the canyon floor where water had once flowed. Above, a narrow ribbon of blue divided the sandstone into opposing faces.

And laying on his back, staring into the sky, Saotome Ranma slowly stirred.

“Okay, oof. That don’t feel too good.” He grumbled, taking stock of his condition; currently, he was wearing his girls body, and the signals it was sending him, while not exceptionally alarming, meant he was some kind of injured, probably a lot of minor bruises from the way things ached.

Despite himself he couldn’t help but feel affronted by it; he was mighty proud of how his girl form looked and, at least temporarily, that beauty was going to be marred by a bunch of ugly splotches.

“Right, okay…” The redhead began, glancing around before pausing to check out his injuries. A few nasty bruises, as expected, plus a bunch of minor bumps and scrapes, now starting to scab over. His clothes had fared substantially worse, the white of his keikogi dimmed by a layer of dirt and sand, the cloth ripped and shredded in places, and torn completely away in others.

It would still serve adequately to preserve his limited sense of modesty, if not terribly well, but the damage left his arms and more or less an entire leg exposed. “Geez, what the hell happened to my gi?”

He hadn’t worn it in a while, but he’d busted it out after the latest stunt his old man had pulled, annoyingly pulling him away from cramming for his entrance exams. Well, Ranma only sort of resented that; sitting around studying was not what he considered an enjoyable use of his time. But now the traditional outfit, expensive and thus hard to replace, had been more or less ruined.

“Well, maybe it’ll be kinda cool lookin’, at least.” He mused to himself as he rose to his feet, thinking about how the damaged keikogi might fit on his girl forms body, and hoping it would look okay. He was about to move off before he noticed something in the dust.

“Ah geez, don’t wanna forget this.” He muttered to himself as he bent down, picking up the large, opalescent stone, roughly diamond shaped and attached to a broken string; it was a simple but heartfelt gift from his mom for his last birthday, the woman saying she’d had it for as long as she could remember.

He quickly retied the string and wrapped it around his wrist, the thing too short now to act as a necklace. Since he was doing alright, the next part was figuring out just where the hell he was. The short answer, a canyon, was not very helpful, so he tightened the belt on his training uniform and started walking, checking the canyon walls for stable footholds to climb up.

Before long, however, he noticed the sound of something scrabbling over the rock behind him, trying and not quite succeeding at moving stealthily. An animal; most likely a predator, seeking an easy meal.

Well, that wasn’t going to happen.

He figured the walls nearby were good enough, so he bent his legs and gave a quick hop, angling for a foothold, when a large black something shot out of the underbrush, fangs bared, angling right for her. “Yow!”

The critter was much faster than she expected, and she barely managed to twist out of the way of it’s snarling bite, kicking off the critter at an angle and landing lightly at the base of the large rock she’d been jumping for. Before she could even finish standing, a second and third rushed in at her from the sides, one lunging for her throat, the other trying to snap it’s jaws around her leg.

Now that she was expecting it, the speed was much less of a shock, but even so the awkward position meant she was only barely able to grab the creature before it could latch on to her neck; twisting, she hurled it over her shoulder into the rock behind her, the spin spoiling her other attackers lunge, the beast succeeding only in biting off a bit of flesh from her calf.

“Hey! Back off!” She shouted, kicking it in the face and sending it rocketing off with a pained yelp; it bounced twice, and painfully rose to its feet. She didn’t have time to celebrate driving the two back, however. The third remained. Behind!

Ranma leaned hard to the side, the space she’d left momentarily filling again with the first of the three critters that had come at her. She slammed an elbow into the mass of it’s body, sending it tumbling and giving her, for the first time since the attack began, some time to think.

Thanks to some particularly hair-brained training her old man had put her through, Ranma knew wolves very well, at least in terms of their appearance and physical capabilities.

These were not wolves. They were too fast and too aggressive, and there was… something strange about how they moved. There were similarities under their coal black fur, but their muzzles were weren’t quite the same, the fangs thicker and far too long, the proportions of their bodies ever so slightly off. And wolves did not have thick leonine manes mantling their bodies.

Ranma had wandered the world for over a decade, and in that time she and her father had tangled with a lot of different animals. So she was confident that she’d never seen something like this before.

Growling, the wolf-things rose and circled, trying to get into her blind spots as she readied herself for their next move; fighting wild animals was tricky, especially unarmed, but she’d done it before. She’d rather just leave, but attempting to flee would just open herself to attack by these bizarrely aggressive mutts.

“Well, not the first time I’ve had to put down a mad dog, so come on!”

The critters were not long in obliging her, coming in as a group this time in some instinctual effort to overwhelm her. The first went high, bounding in a descending arc that promised to bring her straight to the ground, the other two going for her legs. Against any normal prey, this kind of combo attack would be more than enough to seal the deal, stifling their victims movement as they wolf-things strangled the life out of them.

Against Ranma they went 1 for 3, the redhead darting forward under the leaping wolf-whatever and driving her foot violently upward in a vertical splits. The creature howled as her strike drove it into the sky and then out of sight. She bounced, shifting rapidly left, then right as the other two came at her, snarling and clawing, undeterred by how she’d taken out the first.

She hurled the closest aside, the creature banging against the rock; the other came in fast, looking to bowl her over. Ranma dropped low and drove a knee into the underside of the creatures jaw; a hard elbow followed a moment after, putting it down for the count.

She bounded back to her feet, but the other had recovered faster than she’d expected and it lunged in, biting fiercely into the shredded keikogi and her ankle beneath.

Stifling a shout of pain, she raised her free foot and stomped the thing down, ending it’s attempt to bring her over with a savage crack and a whimper. “Dammit.”

She didn’t like having to kill, even critters trying to make a meal out of her, but their refusal to back down in the face of harm had left her with few options.

“Crap, I hope they weren’t rabid.” She muttered as she examined her ankle, now bearing the bright marks of a sharp set of teeth and oozing blood. Tearing off a relatively clean part of her clothes, she wrapped the injury and stood, testing if the foot would hold her weight for a few moments, before he decided that damage wasn’t too bad.

“Okay, time to get outta here before more of those things show up.”

It took a bit longer than it should have with his injured leg, but he managed to bounce up the tall cliffs safely and arrived, finally at the top. Stretched around him in all directions rose broken hills baking under a clear blue sky.

“Damn.”

Aside from pops starting a brief, ridiculous and rapidly aborted attempt at exposure training while they’d been passing near the Gobi, Ranma had no experience surviving in the desert. And his girl form hadn’t even existed at the time to have experienced the nonsense the old man had come up with, and so would surely be that much worse at it.

Without water, even a master of the martial arts like himself could only last so long.

Which left him with only one real option.

It took far longer to find any sign of civilization than he’d hoped, and he’d had to find a higher vantage point to manage it, but cutting across the flatter parts of the desert was clearly a road.

Trudging along the side of the highway, Ranma cursed the heat as he steadily made his way to the closer of the two destinations he’d seen on the signage, some place called Midgar; he’d never heard of it before, but the signs had been written in kana, which suggested Japan.

The terrain suggested almost anywhere else.

He’d been walking for over an hour at this point, and his ankle, which had been okay earlier, was now starting to ache fiercely. Despite his discipline as a martial artist it had developed into a rather noticeable limp, which was slowing him down considerably.

He’d seen only a couple cars in that time, weirdly anachronistic vehicles which didn’t look like anything he was familiar with; by and large they’d ignored him. The one that hadn’t had swerved at him aggressively and he’d been forced to jump out of its way; the driver had peeled off without bothering to stop, leaving rubber burnt onto the side of the road.

And he’d kept walking. And walking. And then, for good measure, walking some more.

The sun was getting high in the sky and there was little sign he’d gotten closer to his destination.

But from behind he heard the growl of an engine coming down the road, and he held out his thumb like he’d seen Americans do it in the movies as he turned to watch the vehicle, some kind of truck come down the road. The driver had clearly seen him, as they were slowing down; from inside a bearded man, pale faced and with ginger red hair, gave an acknowledging wave as he passed by and pulled onto the siding just ahead.

He guessed the guy had a habit of helping people out; there were a couple people sitting in the bed already.

“Huh, yer a long way from Wutai. Where ya headed?” He asked, leaning out the window. As if he had any choices.

“Midgar, I guess.” The little redhead answered, and the driver thumbed towards the bed, a man with spiked dark hair, pale blue eyes and a cross shaped scar on his cheek already rising to help him up.

“Climb on, then.” He didn’t need to be told twice, scooting towards the back and letting himself be hauled up.

“Yo.” The dark haired stranger said, giving him a once over, his face shifting with a faint expression of… recognition? Then the man shook his head, seeming to dismiss it as he got a better look at him. “Geez, what the hell happened to you?”

“Eh, fell down a ravine and got ambushed by some critters.” It was, Ranma figured, close enough to the truth.

“Ouch.”

The two sat down, and the boy-turned-girl hissed out a sigh of relief as the pressure was finally removed from her foot. Across from her, the dark haired man settled in; beside him sat a blonde man, staring blankly into the distance. Sitting on it’s side, between the two, was a sword bigger than she was, single edged and all sharp angles.

“Pretty dangerous wandering around the desert without materia, but seeing as you’re still alive I guess you must be pretty tough.” The more aware of the two people occupying the back of the truck said as the vehicle puttered back into motion. “Name’s Zack. This is Cloud.”

“Um… Ranma.” He said a moment later, having to raise his voice through the wind. “And it ain’t like I meant to be out in the desert! I’m uh… kinda lost?”

It was actually true; he had no idea where he was or how he’d got there, but he also had no idea how to explain how it happened to anyone.

Least of all himself.

“Damn. Did you just get turned around or… ?”

“Um…” Well, here it was. “I actually have no idea? I woke up at the bottom of a canyon covered in bruises, an’ the last thing I remember before that was being at a trainin’ hall.”

He expected him to scoff, but the man just looked him in the eyes for a few seconds and nodded. “Yeah, memory issues are rough. Right, buddy?”

The latter was said to the blonde, who remained inert, and Ranma had to suppress a distinctly uneasy feeling. Even as part of him bristled at the idea of being damaged somehow, he had to wonder how common something like that was for this guy to just… roll with it like that?

“Anyway, I’ve got a cure materia here, should help a bit. Hold on a few.” Zack said, pulling a glowing sphere out of a pouch and slotting it into a bracelet of some kind. But Ranma was hardly paying that any mind as she considered the way the man had spoken to his friend.

“Um, is he… ?” She trailed off, uncertain how to even phrase the question now that she had started to think about it, but fortunately her fellow hitch hiker was able to figure out her—his—question with just that. Or at least, thought he had.

“Yeah, it’s mako poisoning. He’s got a pretty bad case.” Zack paused in his preparations to give the blondes hair an affectionate tousle. “We’ve been through a lot together, though, so I’m not gonna just give up on him.”

Mako poisoning? What the hell was that? Trying to hide her confusion, the redhead looked aside, watching the desert slide past as the feeling that she was somewhere else had started to become impossible to ignore.

But where exactly was that?

“Okay, there we go.” Zack said, having completed his preparations while she was watching the landscape, causing her to glance back his way, only to find the man in a state of intense concentration; a moment later a green light flowed through the air and into her body, and the pain and soreness that had been with her since she woke up rapidly faded.

“That better?”

“Oh… yeah, um. Thanks?” Ranma said, blinking at… at… someone hitting her with useful and helpful magic? Or whatever that was? A quick check found that the mottled bruises had faded almost away; peeking under the makeshift bandage showed that the bite, while still healing, was no longer oozing with blood.

Zack was saying something, but her mind was awhirl and the meaning was lost; the bracelet the guy had shoved his magic rock into looked like it had been mass produced in a factory somewhere, stamped metal with some kind of socket and… and… there was no way this was Earth, was there?

Mass produced magic armlets, mystic stones that could actually heal people, giant swords, poison that stole your memories, weird looking cars like nothing else she’d seen, and hyper aggressive wolf-whatevers indicated that it probably wasn’t the case, at least.

“So, you’re from Wutai, right?” The dark haired swordsman asked amiably, pulling her out of her frantic thoughts as he seemed to consider her for a bit. “Do you remember why you’re this from home?”

“Er… “ Ranma blinked, not quite sure how to process the idea that she was from this Wutai place, wherever it was, but after a moment he shrugged. Wherever he was, he hadn’t changed, after all.

“Well, I’m a wandering martial artist, I guess. Just traveling around, learnin’ new techniques and tryin' to be the best I can be. As for home… ” She trailed off, not entirely certain what to say in the face of the rising certainty that she was… what? On a different planet, with no idea how she got there and no idea how to get home?

It was almost too ridiculous to contemplate, but she had no idea what else it could be, either.

Zack’s expression showed that he’d clearly noticed her hesitance, but he didn’t press her on it. “Sounds like quite an adventure; maybe you can show me your moves sometime?” The dark haired fighter grinned as he blatantly changed the subject.

Ranma shot him a grin, grateful for the chance to get off the uncomfortable line of thought. “Heh, we’ll see I guess. Might be a little tough to find someone who can keep up with me, though.”

“Oh? A little cocky are we? Well, now I really want to see you in action.”

“So, what about you? Zack, right?”

“Yeah, Zack Fair. And as I said before this is my buddy, Cloud Strife. Uh… he’d say hello but…” The man joggled his hand back and forth diffidently. “Well, some day. Soon, I hope.”

Ranma blinked as Zack looked at him with a raised eyebrow, before he slapped his forehead. “Oh, right. Uh, Saotome Ranma. Sorry bout this.”

“What are you apologizing for? Anyway, as you probably guessed I’m a SOLDIER. 1st class actually.” The man said, looking out over the desert as he spoke. Ranma could sense the importance of the term from how he spoke around it; it was lucky the man was looking elsewhere, sparing the swordsman his visible confusion. “Well, ex-SOLDIER now, so don’t worry.”

He shot the redhead a reassuring grin and seemed marginally put out as Ranma rolled his eyes. “Uh… as for Cloud… our… former employers experimented on him, on both of us, for years—what’s with that look? You’re from Wutai, you should know… “ The man sighed, trailing off. “I should have known better.”

Ranma blinked, watching a wave of regret cross the mans face, before he shook his head and continued. “I was able to hold myself together due to my SOLDIER training and implants, but Cloud, well he was just a regular grunt. The mako exposure was too much. We escaped almost a year ago; Shinra’s been dogging our trail ever since.”

“Uh… “ Ranma blinked, not ready for the weightiness of the story, not even really able to absorb it. Zack simply gave her a wan grin.

“Yeah, I know. Sorry, guess that was a little heavy.”

“So…” Ranma trailed off. “You’re like, what, professional lab rats? And… Shinra’s after you?” That at least was simple to understand, and he didn’t like the sound of it all, brows furrowing as he cracked his knuckles.

“Hey, hey. It’s our… my problem, and I’ll take care of it. You seem like a tough girl but you really don’t want to get caught up in this.”

“Ain’t that my decision?”

“Trust me,” Zack said. “leave it to the professional hero, kid.”

“Oh c’mon, I know I’m small but I ain’t that young!” The redhead groused, scowling. “I’ve been 19 since the start of September!”

“So what, like a couple months?”

“Er, yeah, about that?”

Zack leaned forward and flicked her forehead, “Kid.”

Ranma definitely did not pout. That would have been childish and played right into Zack’s hands. Rather, he carefully considered the other mans words while pondering the best way to show him he was totally wrong.

Zack leaned back, the ride falling into companionable silence as the little truck ambled it’s way down the kilometers of empty highway, until finally, something caught Ranma’s attention over the roof of the cab.

“Whoah.” Ranma uttered, scooting carefully past the razor edge of Zacks sword to stare at the… building? Gradually, she realized it was a mountainous skyscraper standing at the center of some kind of raised platform, the combined structure easily kilometers across and nearly half as high. “Uh, is that Midgar?”

“It’s quite a sight, isn’t it?” Zack asked, as he joined her in peering over the roof of the little truck.

“I guess so.” Ranma uttered, baffled by the very existence of it. “Damn, they really build ‘em big here, don’t they?”

Zack chuckled. “Yeah… yeah I guess so. Midgar’s the largest city in the world; it’s a good place for us to hide out, as long as we stick to the undercity.”

Us, Ranma noted from Zacks body language, did not include her. She was about to press him on it when something occurred to her. “Wait, undercity?”

“Oh! Yeah, I guess Shinra wouldn’t really put that in their PR would they?” Zack asked himself, rubbing his chin as if the thought had only just occurred to him. “Um… I guess it was the towns that all sprang up to build the tower and city plates? But the last time I was there they had mostly turned into a bunch of slums.”

The mans tone held a lot of uncertainty, and she realized that he simply didn’t know, at all, what the actual history of the city was or how it got there in the first place. “Kinda get the impression me an’ this place won’t exactly get along.”

“Maybe.”

Ranma snorted, carefully sitting back down and crossing her arms stubbornly, but before she could complain a thought suddenly leapt to the front of her mind. Why would Shinra be putting out PR about this place?

Unable to deny the reality of her situation any longer, she desperately felt her ignorance about this other world. Just what the hell was Shinra? A bunch of mad scientists? A country? But despite having no way of knowing, one important thing stood out to her. “Zack, this place is pretty important to those Shinra guys, right?”

“Yeah, I guess you could say that; it’s the center of their operations. Technically Midgar has a civilian government but it’s just a pretense. Shinra runs everything.”

The redhead felt a headache coming on; she wasn’t one to avoid zany schemes but this seemed dumb even by her standards. “And your plan is to hide there?”

“Yeah, it’s the last thing they’d expect!” The dark haired swordsman said with a grin. “How did I hear it again? ‘In the beasts shadow…’ no, that’s not it.”

After a few moments of mumbling to himself, Zack snapped his own fingers. “Oh, now I remember! ’The great beast fails to check it’s own shadow.’”

“… the hell’s that supposed to mean?”

“Don’t worry your pretty little head about it.” Zack laughed, unable to totally hide his tension. “Someone from Wutai won’t exactly be welcome, but just keep your head down, and they won’t even bother looking for you, that’s all.”

Ranma shuffled to the back of the truck bed, disturbed by the continuing assumption that she was from this ‘Wutai’ place; the implication of some racial animus making things harder for her made it even more unwelcome.

But there was something more. As she settled back in, Ranma stared at the self described ex-soldier, a decidedly sinking feeling in her gut. There was something about that phrasing that seemed… ominous. ”What the hell am I missing… ?”

There didn’t seem to be anything more to say as the truck drove on. Midgar gradually grew on the horizon, occasionally hiding behind the rolling crags. Zack occasionally made small talk when he wasn’t worrying over his insensate friend, but Ranma really didn’t know how to answer him, so he didn’t.

Eventually, the highway started a consistent, slow rightward turn, and the little lorry found a rest stop and pulled off the road.

“’Fraid this is as far as I can take ya.” The driver admitted, sheepishly. “I’d get asked some uncomfortable questions if I showed up with you kids in the back of my truck.”

“Nah, it’s fine. Thanks for the ride, man.” Zack said, as he clambered out of the truck bed. Ranma had already hopped out, and was stretching out the kinks after giving his ankle a test to see how it was doing.

Zack retrieved the ridiculous sword, slinging it across his back with the kind of ease that suggested a Ryouga-like level of strength, and between the two of them they managed to get the comatose blonde out of the truck without issue. The driver gave a cheerful wave, and with a rumble the thing got back up to speed.

“Seeya old timer! Take care!”

Soon the truck rolled out of sight, and then it was just the three of them. “So what now?”

“I think this is where we should part ways, Ranma.” Zack answered with a shrug. “Why don’t you take that low road, and I take the high road, and we’ll see who gets to Midgar first?”

The redhead snorted, crossing his arms and giving the swordsman a disbelieving look. “Right, and this has nothin’ to do with you two being on the lam.”

“Really, we’ll be fine. And trust me, you really don’t want to get wrapped up in this.” Zack said, starting to trudge off, helping his friend walk beside him. He started up the trail, giving an absent minded wave over his shoulder.

Ranma watched him go for a moment before shaking his head. As if.

Pretending to take the other route, he waited ‘til the others had drifted out of sight, then bounded stealthily up the side of the hill. Ranma had been trained in all manner of esoteric and useful skills, and was confident he wouldn’t be seen.

Anything Goes, after all, was still a school of thieves.

“Shaker Actual to all Shaker callsigns, STF reports recon sighting Fairground approaching our perimeter. How copy?”

“Shaker 1 copy.”

“Shaker 2 solid copy.”

“Shaker 3 copies.”

One by one the squads reported in to the HQ Section, and the Captain’s lips opened in a shark like grin as he considered the pending promotion this would earn him. The unit commendations for the company certainly wouldn’t hurt, either. “Stand by for traffic, over.”

There was another round of units acknowledging as he threw together a plan in his head; it needed to be simple, straightforward, and most of all it needed to give their target no chance to respond. Exactly where the guy had been holed up for the past 5 years was above his paygrade, but scuttlebutt had it that he’d been getting pumped full of experimental chemicals by that scumbag Hojo.

He didn’t bother feeling sorry; it was better than a traitor like him deserved.

“Alright kids, Fairground’s line of approach will have him hitting our perimeter at point Diver, and we’re going to prepare a little surprise for the bastard. Shaker 1, set up your platoon on Line Augur; Shaker 3, you’re doing the same at Line Echo. I want enfilading fire ready on my signal. 2-2 proceed to Chalk 3 and hold position; you’re playing backstop in case our guest gets wise. 2-1, 2-3, you’re in reserve at Point Gary. Break.”

“Keep in mind that Fairground is a former SOLDIER, one of their very best; he may have been out of action for years, but do not, repeat, do not let him get close to you. Keep your distance at all costs. How copy?”

Hardly paying the round of replies much mind, he shifted his attention to the recon report, putting together a mental time table. “Contact in 15 minutes. I want everyone ready in 10; report when in position. Out.”

Over the next several minutes his squads checked in, until only one remained. The Captain glanced at the mission clock as it passed the 11 minute marker. “2-2, are you in position? Over.”

He gave it 30 seconds, then repeated, tersely. “2-2 what’s your status? Over.”

When the squad still failed to respond, he bit back a curse and turned to his adjutant. “Have STF check 2-2’s cams, unit non-responsive. Could be monster activity.”

It was unfortunate, but sometimes shit happened. The man saluted and the Captain grumbled, feeling oddly vulnerable in the little command tent, but he didn’t have long to worry about it. “Shaker 1 to Shaker Actual, we have visual on Fairground. He uh… seems to be carrying someone. Over.”

“Ah, yeah. That’d be Deadweight. Intel suggests he’s been soaked in so much mako it’s a wonder he even remembers how to breathe; no one’ll mind if he catches a bullet, but don’t waste ammo just to take him out. Over.”

“Roger that.”

“Hold your fire and report when he’s in good position to engage. Use your best judgment. Over.”

“Understood Actual. Out.” Shaker 1 closed the line sharply. A feeling of pride swelled in his chest; his men were the best regular troops Shinra had, and under his command they’d take this guy out in a way that seemed effortless.

The Captain allowed his grin to settle into something a bit less feral. He was just starting to imagine the accolades he was bound to garner from putting such a dangerous enemy down, setting him on a fast track to a battalion level command, when the radio squawked awkwardly back to life. “Scratch that! We’ve been made! Fairground’s put the guy down and drawn arms! Over!”

Damn! Of course something had to go wrong! “Open fire! Don’t let him close distance! Over!”

In moments the quiet was shattered by the rapid popping of distant firearms, and for a few moments he let himself believe that everything would still go according to plan. But then the radio buzzed in panic. “3 to Shaker Actual! Target has made contact with Shaker 1! Over!”

In the background, amidst the mess of gunfire he could barely make out someone shouting, “Holy shit! He’s fast!”

Fuck! “Shaker 1, report your status! Over!” He gave it 5 seconds before growling into the mic again. “Shaker 1, report!”

“This is 1-3, Shaker 1 is down and Fairground’s tearing 1-1 apart! We don’t have a line of fire and need immediate support! Over!” Barely resisting the urge the slam the mic against the table, he thought furiously. There was a still a chance to salvage the situation, and save these idiots from their own incompetence while he was at it.

“Shaker 3 fire and advance! 2-1, 2-3 get in there! We need to put the pressure on! Break!” Thinking furiously, he immediately decided on his next commands as the various units acknowledged his orders. 1-1 was a lost cause, but he didn’t much care what happened to them now, 1-2 and 1-3 though… “1-3, fall back to uh… Line Foghorn, you should have a firing position there. 1-2, push in and support 1-1! Keep the bastard pinned down and we can still win this! Out!”

The flurry of replies barely registered as his pulse pounded in his ears. They could still turn this around, he knew it, even if the situation had gotten unexpectedly hairy.

Gunfire echoed over this hills, rising and falling in bursts as Shaker 3 made their move, and he almost let himself breathe a sigh of relief. But it wasn’t over yet.

In the confusion, he’d failed to notice that 3-2 hadn’t replied.

“3-1 to 3-2, what’s the hold up?! Over!”

Huh? The Captains mind swam in confusion for a critical moment as he struggled to absorb the information.

“3-1 to 3-2, advance! Dammit Vic! Get a move on!” Shaker 3 bellowed over the radio sounding increasingly frustrated. Almost as an afterthought, the man added a heavily belated, “Over!”

What? What the hell was going on? “Shaker Actual to 3-2, what’s your status? Over.”

Nothing; his hands felt cold and clammy, his mouth suddenly dry as he ran through the possibilities. One squad failing to respond was alarming, but 2-2 had been a backup and finding out what happened to them had been relatively low priority; 3-2 failing to respond like this in the middle of a firefight, though… “Shit! Shaker Actual to all Shaker callsigns we have another enemy active in the AO! Keep your heads on a swivel! Out!”

Fuck fuck fuck fuck! Given the unexpected silence of both squads it could only be Wutai, but how would Fairground have made contact with the bastards?

“3-1, roger tha—“ The Lieutenant’s voice suddenly cut off with a hard thump and the sound of his helmet skidding loudly over the rocky ground; muffled cries in the background sounded out as his men scrambled and went down.

“3-1 respond! Respond! Shit! Any 3-1 troopers still up sound off! Over!” Noise from the firefight echoed painfully over the fallen officers still open line and he growled, but none of the soldiers responded. “Shaker Actual, all units switch to channel 4! Out!”

Not waiting for his men to comply, he switched his radio frequency in frustration, the blaring noise going silent for a few blessed moments. How the hell had everything gotten out of control so quickly?

It took longer than it should have for his fire teams to switch over, and the news, when they did, was not good. “2-3 to Shaker Actual, come in! Shaker 1 is combat ineffective, repeat, combat ineffective! Target is in contact with 2-1! Over!”

“What is Shaker 3’s status? Over!” He shouted into the radio, barely keeping himself from screaming in frustration.

“3-1 and 3-2 are down! 3-3 is bugging out! Over!”

“God dammit!” This time he didn’t hold back, smashing the mic against the table several times. The plastic casing came apart under the abuse, leaving him holding the shattered remnants in his gloved hand; nearly hyperventilating he shot to his feet, ignoring 2-3’s frantic calls for orders. The radio was too broken now to give any.

It took a minute for his head to clear enough to remember that he was in command.

“We… we… fall back, we’re getting out of here.” There was no complaint among the troopers in the command tent. Pausing only to grab their code books, the men filed out in a hurry.

But it was already too late; they’d hardly noticed, in their rush, that the crack of not so distant gunfire had gone silent. And stepping over the ridge, battered but defiant, was Zack Fair.

Chapter Text

“Well, someone’s been busy.” Zack mused as his hiked up the ragged path emptying out into the cluttered little hollow he’d selected as a hideout. Rather, formerly cluttered; though far from what anyone would call pleasant, the piles of junk had been stacked neatly out of the way, clearing up some actual space out front.

Shrugging he continued on; while he’d prefer to keep the rubble as it was, voids like this in the sea of humanity that filled the slums, where the ground was just too poisoned or there were too many monsters for normal people to tolerate, still attracted squatters. The Turks had better leads to follow; only the most desperate stayed this far out for long.

“Hey Ranma, you in there?” He called, pulling aside the tarp that had been set up as “door” to the pipe they were sheltering in.

“Out back.” Came the redheads answering call, and Zack circled to the side, seeing that a crude wall of corrugated steel had been set up in a nook just behind. “By the way, thanks for just dumpin’ Cloud on me and leaving like that, I really appreciate it.”

Zack winced, looking away in embarrassment despite not seeing the girl. “Ah, sorry bout that. I did kinda need to pick up some money though.”

“Yeah, yeah.” Ranma called back over the fence. “I’m sure you totally were lookin’ out for me by having me watch over your comatose war buddy for two days while you got to go have your awesome mercenary adventures or whatever.”

The ex-SOLDIER paused as he noticed the redheads Gi, even more thoroughly tattered and now stained with rust and oil, draped over the corrugated plate, plumes of steam wafting into the morning sky. “Uh… so, what are you doing back there.”

“Taking a bath. Dunno about you, but there’s only so much a this grime I can take.” The redhead answered, still clearly annoyed. “You better not be thinking about sneakin’ a peek, Zack.”

“Of course not.” Zack grumbled, before something occurred to him. “Wait… what are you taking a bath in?”

“Eh? Just a metal barrel.” Zack frowned as he considered Ranma’s answer.

“That could be a little dangerous; who knows what’s in those things.”

“What are ya, my mom? Don’t worry, the thing was empty. Those Shinra jerks just had it sitting around at a warehouse, lyin’ empty, so I stole it; thing doesn’t even have a chemical smell.”

“Oh, I guess—wait, you stole it?”

“Er… yeah? I mean, given they tried to have ya killed I figured you wouldn’t have a problem.”

“Well, when you put it that way…” He rolled his eyes. “But no, I’m just… you weren’t seen were you?”

“Of course not! What, you think I’m some kinda klutz?” Okay, admittedly the girl was pretty damn stealthy, but she was… he shook himself out of it; this was just gonna give him a headache if he let himself think about it any longer.

“Fine, fine. Uh…” He paused glancing at the soiled gi. “You don’t have anything else to wear, do you?”

“Ugh, don’t remind me,” the redhead groused. “I’m gonna have to steal some clothes or somethin’.”

“Nah, don’t worry about it; I figured I owed you something for the trouble, so uh… here!” There was a crinkling sound as he adjusted his grip on the package he’d been carrying and tossed it over the fence; it’s clean arc through the air was shortly interrupted, a bare hand shooting up to snag it easily.

“Huh, you got me clothes? This better not be somethin’ perverted.”

“No, no, of course not!” Zack snapped out, vigorously shaking his head. He’d shopped for girls before and, well, Aerith would let him have it if he did something like that. “Hopefully I got the size right.”

Water sloshed as the redhead stood up in her improvised tub, becoming visible to the top of her shoulders. She glanced his way with a cautious expression, eyes looking a bit red. “Well, thanks I guess.”

“Where’s Cloud?”

“Huh?” Ranma blinked at the sudden change of topic. “Uh, he’s in the tube. Doin’ about the same as when you left.”

Well, he hadn’t been expecting much different. “I’ll leave you to it.”

“Yeah, gimme a bit.”

Zack turned back, bending down as he entered the low tunnel of their temporary shelter. “Cloud?”

From the back, behind a badly abused wooden divider the redhead had grabbed from somewhere, came a familiar groan; the dark haired fighter sighed, now that he had a chance to let his eyes adjust to the darkness inside it was hard to miss his long suffering comrades shock of blonde hair. The old SOLDIER fatigues he’d dressed his friend in were neatly folded on a box beside him, accompanied by a number of ragged but clean hand towels that Ranma must have pilfered from somewhere.

Really, that girl was a menace, but at least she was a good hearted one.

Cloud himself was wrapped in a beat up comforter, looking about as cozy as someone suffering from acute Mako poisoning laying down inside a discarded concrete sewer pipe could. Suppressing a grimace, Zack nodded in greeting as he sidled up beside him. Really, all he could do at this point was hope for the best. “How ya doing, buddy?”

He wasn’t expecting anything, not really. Typically, Cloud would stare blankly into space; sometimes his eyes would wander to random points, focusing on nothing. His condition hadn’t really improved at all in the year they’d been on the run.

So he was rather surprised when the blonde turned his head, and for the first time since their escape, looked him in the eyes.

“Cloud? You in there buddy?”

The other man just mumbled incoherently, his gaze beginning to wander, but for a moment, just for a moment, Zack almost thought he’d heard his mute companion say something.

What was it? It sounded almost like ‘Reunion,’ but reunion with what? Maybe he’d just been imagining things, and the mush of syllables had—

“So, he doin’ okay?” He was shaken out of his musing as the tarp was pulled aside by a certain short redhead.

“He’s… well, better actually.” Zack answered, glancing over his shoulder. Ranma blinked, clearly surprised, then looked away with a nod.

“Oh… uh, well if you say so I guess. Anyway, can we talk?”

“About what?”

“The clothes you got me.”

“Uh… that bad huh?”

“Not… not exactly, but… I mean, who exactly do you think I am?” The redhead groused, straightening up and crossing her arms as Zack shuffled back out of the pipe.

“A fashionable and attractive young lady.” Zack answered in the primmest tone he could manage while climbing out of a concrete tube. “Besides, it should help you stand out less.”

Ranma gave him an eloquent look of disbelief, saying nothing as she gestured broadly at the black mini-dress she was wearing, form fitting, pleated and with a low neckline, and then gripped the oversized, brilliantly red pleather jacket he’d gotten her by the lapels and gave it a demonstrative shake, jangling the various metal bits attached to it.

“Seriously. Dressed like that you just look like some young punk.”

“Again, who do you think I am? I’m not… ” Air hissed out from between her teeth as she gave him a cross look. “Fine, I guess. But I’m not wearing the shoes; they’re too damn big.”

“Really? Damn, that was the smallest pair I could find. Was hoping to find something that matched better too, but…”

“Seriously? Dammit, why do I gotta be such a shrimp?” Ranma slumped as she breathed out her frustration, looking over at the loudly yellow sneakers that she wasn’t wearing where they waited next to the bathing area. “Okay, fine; I’ll have to find some on my own then.”

“That might not be the best—“ Zack began, but his partner in crime wasn’t having it.

“Not listenin’!” Ranma interrupted, bouncing over to kick on the sneaks. “Seriously, I got stuck waiting around here watching over this guy for two days, now it’s your turn; I won’t even take as long, promise.”

“Ranma, hey!” Zack shouted, but the redhead was already out of the camp. “Well, shit.”

The timing could have worked out worse, he guessed. At least Zack hadn’t shown back up while he was still crying over finding out he was locked; explaining that might have gotten a little awkward.

Especially since, once the initial shock had passed, he hadn’t actually been able to really sort out the bizarre mix of emotions he’d felt about it happening again.

He’d gotten stuck as a girl often enough over the past few years that it almost felt, in a way, routine, even though this was only the second time he’d actually experienced a hard lock. In a strange way it was almost a relief; while he wasn’t planning on remaining in this world, it at least spared him having to deal with awkward questions and weird, judgmental looks whenever he switched sexes for… however long he ended up stuck here.

And he supposed that would have to do; being trapped as a girl would be a pain, of course. It always was, with how the way people treated him would make him feel all weird about being a man, but it had happened before and he’d handled it fine then, coming out the other side of the experience just as manly as before.

This would just be more of the same. Really. He just had to bury any of those weird feelings whenever they came up, and everything would go back to the way it was.

Of course, trying to take his mind off that meant, almost inevitably, thinking about his traveling companions instead. Cloud was easy, at least. It wasn’t like he actually had a personality at the moment, with whatever had happened to him.

Zack was a lot harder for him to figure out. Not because he thought the guy was hiding anything from him; Ranma was pretty sure that anyone who was willing to drag their half dead companion around for a year to try and get them to safety wasn’t going to be a bad person, exactly. But that understanding was definitely complicated by how he’d handled the Shinra ambush.

On some level he knew that the Art could be used to kill; part of his training had involved the old man drilling into him that he should be ready to not merely put his life on the line, but also, in the most dire circumstances, to know that he might have to kill his opponent. Especially, even only, to protect the weak.

Not that Pops had ever really put that into practice himself, being more inclined to run whenever things got too tough; Ranma had only had to go that far once, though he tried not to think about the events at Ho’o Peak if he could help it. The extremes he'd been forced to in that fight were not something he cared to repeat.

Zack, however good he was with a sword, was not a martial artist. The man had described himself as a former soldier, though given how he’d compared himself to his buddy, probably one of the elite. Was Cloud like one of the goons in the blue uniforms and white helmets who’d stood out so much against the red sand and dead grass, then?

Probably, Ranma thought.

If he hadn’t managed to knock so many of them out by surprise, the redhead suspected that the two men would have been killed in the fighting. And while Zack didn’t hold to the martial artists creed, he had been fighting for the same purpose; but doing so had involved killing a whole lot of guys.

Granted, they were all armed with guns and clearly there to make sure their targets never left that broken hill, but he felt decidedly uncomfortable about the readiness his companion had displayed in returning the sentiment. He know that, while individually weak, together they'd been a deadly threat so he couldn’t exactly disagree with it, but…

Well, it was too awkward to consider, especially given how much he needed someone to act as a guide right now, and the redhead forcefully shifted his attention to more immediate concerns.

“Ugh, these shoes suck.” Ranma grumbled as he walked down a backstreet into the relative center of the Sector 5 community. Well, the relative center for the slums; apparently there was an entire city on the plate above but from what Zack had said his lack of identification would be a problem. He was tempted to push his luck regardless, but at the moment he had other plans.

First off, getting rid of these ugly ass Nikes. Okay, apparently they were made by “Shinra Athletics Supplies” but they didn’t fit her at all. Him at all. Also they were ugly as sin. Whoever had decided on this particular shade of sickly yellow for a shoe color was clearly a danger to the future of mankind.

There were a couple things he needed to do first, though. For starters, Ranma had absolutely no idea where Zack had even gotten these forsaken things in the first place, and he seriously doubted that some random street hawker would accept them, no matter how near to mint they were.

There was probably good reason, beyond just being in an unusual size, that these things were still in almost pristine condition despite the desperate conditions of the people living here. No one wanted the things, especially not her.

And since she couldn’t expect to just trade in Zack’s Abominable Shoes, that meant she needed—he needed—some light fingers first. Ranma was rather reluctant to rob just anyone though; it was, in the end, a little too reminiscent of his old man.

Especially when the folks around here were so poor to begin with.

Surprisingly, though, it didn’t take long to find a suitable target.

The man was tall, his short cropped dark hair slicked back tightly against his skull; the suit he wore was neatly pressed, middle black, contrasted against a crisp white shirt and a red tie. His hands were clenched angrily into fists, swinging in aggravation as he stalked furiously towards whatever unknown destination he was headed.

“Out of my way!” An old lady stumbled aside as that pair of fists opened into strong hands and forced her unexpectedly from where she was standing. She released a startled cry, barely keeping herself from going over.

“Now see here, young man… !“ The old woman moved with difficulty to glare at her passing assailant. Ignoring the old woman’s complaint, the fellow pressed on, plowing through the crowd. Ranma blinked for a moment, surprised at the mans aggressive posture, before deciding to follow behind; it didn’t take too long to catch up.

The redhead supposed it was natural that his attention was drawn to this stuffy, self-important looking jerk. Even if the guy wasn’t shoving people around, Ranma suspected he’d try and set himself above the people around him. Besides, his fancy suit spoke of someone with an at least respectable amount of cash.

Abruptly, the crowd thickened as they proceeded into an intersection, his target crashing through the mass of people like a bulldozer. He didn’t know why the jerk was in such a hurry, but it definitely made things easier for him. The man in the suit bumped into a little old man, sending him sprawling, and in that same instant Ranma’s hand snaked in, relieving the man deftly of his wallet.

Really, he was doing him a favor, reminding him that it didn’t pay to shove little old people around like this; you never knew when one was a hundred year old martial arts master, or something equally dangerous.

“What a jerk.” He muttered, the billfold vanishing into his jacket as he reached down to try and help the fallen codger to his feet.

Grumbling, the old man let redhead pull him back up. “Bah, young people these days.”

Ranma shrugged, more or less used to the grumbling of older folks from the years he’d spent in their general proximity; the old man gave him a once over and snorted. “From Wutai, huh? Better not cause any trouble, y’hear me? Oh, my bloody hip.”

“Er, wasn’t planning on it.” Ranma said, blinking; That wasn’t the response he’d been expecting at all. And why did people immediately peg her as being Wutaian, anyway?

“Good.” The old man grumbled out, taking a moment to shake out the kinks before slapping a hand on his shoulder. “That was a pretty smooth lift, kid. Woulda beat ya to it if that punk hadn’t knocked me over, but nice job. Just don’t let me catch ya doin’ it again, okay?”

“Uh, huh?” Ranma blinked. The old guy’d seen her snag that dudes wallet?

The old man stared at her obvious surprise for a moment before shaking his head. “Kids these days, fast hands but no goddamn brains. What’s the world comin’ to?” Puffing in irritation the old man gave her a stern look.

“Trust me, you got the moves, but that kinda ballsy approach’ll just get ya caught… besides, a pretty young thing like you’d do better for herself working as a Honey girl, especially with a figure like tha—ow!”

The codgers rambling was suddenly cut off as an old lady appeared out of the crowd, grabbed him by his ear and, without a word, pulled him out of sight like he were a disobedient child. Pausing to make sure she still had the wallet, Ranma shook her head with a sigh. She wasn’t quite sure what a ‘Honey girl’ was, but it wasn’t hard to get the gist. “Honestly. The hell is with these codgers bein’ horny old goats?”

Ignoring the chuckles of the older women clustered on the side of the street, Ranma quickly moved on; it was time time to solve his footwear problem. Fortunately there was a little shop just off the corner, which seemed to be a good enough place to start.

“Yo.” Ranma began, waving at the clerk, a bored looking brunette flipping through an ancient looking fashion magazine. “You got shoes?”

“Here? Nah.” The girl answered, giving him vague once over before looking down. “Why, there a problem with—oh yikes!”

“They don’t even fit right.” Ranma agreed, looking at the offending footwear himself.

“Ugh, fine. Like, we don’t have shoes here, but there’s this old guy that runs a shoe shop, up near the station.” The girl pointed in the general direction. “He’s a little weird, though. You might have some trouble with him.”

“Um, trouble? What kind?” Ranma trailed off, as part of him began to wonder just how much of a problem his presumed race was going to be.

“Old lech trouble; he’s got a thing for feet.”

“Ew.”

“Yeah, you’re tellin’ me. Love your look aside from the shoes though; good luck, cutie!” The girl scribbled something on a piece of paper, slipping across the counter, and Ranma picked it up, presuming it would be directions. It was not.

Or at least, not directions to the old mans workshop. The redhead blurted out an embarrassed hiccup, feeling her cheeks suddenly flush. “I uh… erm, catch you later!”

Ranma vanished into the crowd, cheeks burning, catching the hint of a giggle from the girl behind her, thoughts racing. ”What the hell was that?”

Like, it wasn’t that Ranma didn’t know that girls who liked other girls existed, hell, she was one—or rather, her—his—girl body was one, but—! Argh, this was something she really didn’t need right now! It was going to be hard enough to remind herself that she was really a guy without people making it feel so nice to be a girl! She hadn’t even been stuck in this other world a week!

Huffing, she mustered her—his determination and, definitely not pouting at all, proceeded in the rough direction the clerk had provided.

Despite himself, he couldn’t help but wonder at his own response to the flirtatious message he’d gotten; he didn’t want to think about this, or rather he wasn’t supposed to think about this. Back home it had been easy. And she couldn’t figure out why; sure all of his friends and even a bunch of people who he didn’t know at all knew he was really a guy, no matter what body he was in, and to everyone here she was just a cute girl.

But why would that make such a difference? She just couldn’t figure it out. But knowing that one day she’d go back to Nerima, once she figured whatever dumb thing had caused this, meant that trying to figure it out was simply too dangerous; there were some things she didn’t know about herself. Things that she just couldn’t know.

Trying to to even think about what this meant filled her with a nameless anxiety over what her old man would do if she thought about this too much, especially if the answer she came back with wasn’t 2 + 2 = boy. And she was starting to realize that the situation she was in made it almost impossible to avoid, especially now that she was out in public.

Fortunately, before she could get drawn down further into her own thoughts, Ranma had arrived at her destination. “Um, hello?”

Given how much of Sector 5 was a mess of corrugated metal, the shop appeared almost normal, if a bit sparse; a mix of seating laid out almost haphazardly, a mirror in a corner, racks of shoes; in the back, behind a counter sat an small old man looking up from whatever he was working on.

“Hm?” The man uttered, giving her a once over, lingering on her footwear with a look of distaste.

“Yeah, um… like they don’t even—”

“I can see that, yes. Well, come in then, don’t just stand there.” The old fart gestured her in, and with a sigh the redhead decided to risk it; he did need the shoes after all. Hopefully the old man wouldn’t recommend something too girly; whether he was a girl or not, he was a martial artist. He needed something practical.

Which, fortunately, is what he ended up getting. Okay, admittedly the short boots were chunky as all hell, but they were sturdy and comfortable enough. Normally Ranma preferred something with a thinner sole, but even he had to admit that the amount of rusty crap all over the place made that maybe a little hazardous.

Luckily the owner hadn’t been too weird, aside from commenting on how magnificent his arches were.

So with that diversion out of the way it was time for him to see if he couldn’t get better informed about this world. And outside of just bugging someone with dumb questions for hours, he figured her best bet for that was finding a library.

Nerd shit.

Unfortunately actually doing that was more difficult than he expected; most people down here did not have time for Nerd Shit like libraries. And having to ask directions had left him even more exposed to the disorienting experience of a bunch of strangers all regarding him with wariness, a kind of pervasive, mild disapproval of his very being.

Still, eventually he got pointed in the right direction. "Over in Sector 4. Used to be a university there, y'know.” The old man had said. “All gone now, but some folks have been runnin’ a library in one of the buildings. Big old brick buildings; they were a sight back in the day let me tell ya. Look for the one with the blue roof."

From there, finding it had been easy enough; virtually all the rest of the buildings had either been torn down or collapsed, leaving the library more or less the only intact building in the area that wasn’t made out of whatever scrap the locals had deemed usable, a decidedly cube like structure of red brick that had clearly seen better days. The glass doors had been boarded over with plywood, but despite their rickety appearance, they opened silently into a much more inviting space than she’d expected.

Rows of shelves filled a space that must once have been closed off, with bare I beams demarcating where the walls used to be. Here and there, a few people sat in old chairs, refurbished into some semblance of usefulness. Sitting behind a beat up looking desk was, presumably, one of the librarians, a slender girl with cobalt hair who reminded her, ever so slightly, of Akane, wearing a cozy if rather beat up looking sweater and nose deep in a book. “Um… hi?”

“Oh, hello there. Ah! Are you also from Wutai? It’s been a long time since I last met a fellow ‘W.’” The girl greeted her brightly, far more pleasantly than how a lot of the other people she'd met in passing today had.

Ranma sighed, and shook her head. “Nah, and I wish I knew why people kept saying that. I’ve never even been to Wutai!”

The librarian giggled apologetically. “Ah, I’m sorry then. I think it mostly comes down to the shape of your eyes and maybe your jawline, a bit.”

The redhead groaned in irritation. “Greeeeeaaaaat. Uh… I mean… sorry.”

“No, no, it’s fine. It can be a bit much to deal with at times, but things haven’t been too bad recently. I must say though, I’m amazed with how good your dye job is, I’d almost swear that’s your natural color!”

Ranma blinked, then blushed, turning her head to the side. “Uh… actually, it is my natural color.”

“Oh! Wow, that’s… “ The librarian gasped as she looked closer, then faded off and shook her head. “Um, sorry. In any case, how may I help you?”

“Yeah, um… “ Ranma trailed off, not quite sure how to explain; she was pretty sure saying ‘I’m from another planet and kinda need a primer on this one’ would, at the very least, get her some odd looks. “Uh, well, kinda feel like I don’t know enough, y’know? ‘Bout the world, I mean, so I was kinda…”

Ranma trailed off, face red as she considered how stupid she must look, but the librarian simply nodded and smiled. “Oh yes, of course! I suppose you would you be interested in an entry level general history then?”

“Uh yeah, that. Er… also, do you got anythin’ about Wutai?” Ranma paused, considering. “And if you have maps or somethin’ like that, that’d be pretty helpful.”

The lady nodded, smiling brightly as she pointed Ranma at the appropriate sections, apologizing for how out of date their atlases were even as she recommended an older history on her supposed home country. “Unfortunately newer histories on Wutai have been far too tainted by the war; I’m sad to say this is the most recent one we have from before then.”

Well that alone explained some things. In short order, the books were gathered, and Ranma was led to a table.

“I’m afraid we’re not a borrowing library, but we’ll be open into the evening, so you should have at least some time to do your reading. If you need any help, please feel free to ask.” The librarian explained, before leaving to resume watching the front desk.

And with that, Ranma was left to it.

It was starting to get late, and Zack was beginning to get concerned. Just a bit. Really, it was his own fault, he figured, deciding to watch over the stray he’d picked up like that. Even if it was only a temporary gig, Ranma had a way of growing on someone; in a lot of ways she reminded him of some alley cats he’d met before, tough, resourceful and friendly enough if you approached her the right way.

The problem was that he wasn’t sure if she’d been made during that ambush with Shinra; with how she’d hit that platoon from behind it was at least possible that she hadn’t gotten spotted by one of them. But the plethora of helmet mounted cameras the company liked to issue to its troops meant that he doubted that she’d actually pulled it off, even if none of the guys she’d hit had a chance to turn around while they were still conscious.

And while Ranma might have been a tough, resourceful stray, Shinra had a lot of very big, very strong, and very well trained attack dogs. “Should’ve warned her about the Turks at least… ”

Especially as he’d seen a couple of them lurking about Sector 5, clearly looking for someone. If she ran into them, without knowing to be on guard, things could get pretty bad in a hurry. Hell, that’d probably be the case even if she were forewarned.

Well it was no use grumbling about it; the redhead hadn’t even given him time to give her a warning. And even though Cloud was kind of up and moving now, the blonde was in no condition to defend himself, which made justifying looking for the little gremlin difficult.

At least Ranma could actually fight if she had to.

The blonde, gazing hazily out into the distance, sat next to open end of the pipe, shaking his head slowly. He’d been doing that for a while now, and Zack had to wonder what he was going through. Cloud’s Mako poisoning had been unusually severe, to the point where people usually didn’t recover from it. “Cloud?”

For several long moments, the blonde showed no sign of response, but then he looked up, meeting the ex-SOLDIERs gaze with his own mako blue eyes, recognition sparking slowly in his expression. “… Zack?”

“Yeah… yeah, it’s me.” He answered, kneeling down beside his friend; even before that bastard Hojo had gotten his hands on them, they’d gone through a lot together. He’d halfway expected he’d have to bury his comrade, but now he could breath a sigh of relief. “How’re you holding up?”

“I… “ Cloud faded off for several moments, eyes losing focus worryingly, before he seemed to come back together. “I’m… fine? I think.”

But even that much seemed to take a lot out of him. Sighing heavily the former SOLDIER patted him on the shoulder. “Good. I’ll keep an eye out, so don’t worry. Just rest up, okay?”

There was a long pause before Cloud nodded; Zack returned to his feet, looking around the clearing as he pondered what to do next. Certainly they couldn’t stay here much longer; if Shinra had decided to really put their backs into searching the sector, even somewhere this secluded wouldn’t hide them for very long.

Besides, this was hardly any way to live.

The question, then, was where to go? Part of him still wanted to crash with Aerith and her mom, he missed her after all. But with the Turks actively looking for him and Cloud he reluctantly had to admit it was too dangerous. He couldn’t afford to be that reckless with her safety.

He leaned up against the pipe, settling in to think.

Time passed in companionable silence as Zack considered his options, trying not to worry too much as the shadows grew long and deepened into twilight. His buddy sat, looking around the camp, occasionally falling back into that head shaking behavior as he seemed to wrestle more and more of himself back into place.

Rather unexpectedly, Cloud broke the silence first. “So, who is she?”

“Huh?” Zack blinked, startled out of his thoughts, looking over to his companion, who was now rising to his feet. The blonde gave himself a shake and looked his way, looking substantially more alert and aware than he’d expected.

“That girl, from earlier. Is she that girlfriend you mentioned, uh… Aris?”

“Aerith? Oh, no. Her name’s Ranma. Saotome Ranma.”

“… you’re worried about her.”

“Well, yeah. She kinda helped us out of a jam with Shinra.” The look on Clouds face told the dark haired warrior that his friend suspected he was underselling just how big the jam was, and just how much danger the little redhead had probably put herself in by doing it.

But after a few moments the other man nodded. “They after her?”

“I don’t know.” Zack shrugged, frowning. “I’m kind of surprised you remember her, given how out of it you seemed.”

“I… well, she seemed… important, somehow.” Cloud hemmed, probably not understanding it himself.

“I don’t know. Maybe.”

“So… ?” The blonde prompted, and Zack shrugged considering what little she’d revealed.

“We ran into her while were hitching a ride from Kalm. She’s a wandering martial artist, apparently. Don’t know much else about her, besides the fact that she’s trouble.” The former SOLDIER ran through the facts as he knew them, then paused, unsure if he should—

“Who’s trouble?” Chirped Ranma, somehow sitting on top of the pipe without either him or Cloud having noticed her arrival.

“Gah! How long have you been there?!” Zack demanded, jumping as he halted the reflexive attempt to draw his sword.

“Only like a minute.” The redhead grinned mischievously. “I see this lump’s up an movin’ now too.”

Cloud merely grunted in response.

“How’s he doin’?”

“Honestly better than I’d expected. Much better.” Zack answered, feeling his heart rate start to get back under control. How the hell had she… ? His shock rapidly fading, he decided to put a pin in it and get back to it later.

“Anyway, find what you were looking for out there?”

Ranma frowned a little and sighed. “I guess. Spent most of the day at the library, but I ran outta time before I could really learn what I wanted.”

“I… wait you didn’t go up to the Plate did you?” Zack asked, wondering how the little menace would have pulled that off without a valid id, or at least a passable fake.

“Nah, turns out there’s one in Sector 4.”

“Oh, so you… wait, really?” That was kind of unexpected. Not quite sure where to go from there, he asked, hesitantly. “Uh, you like reading?”

“Not exactly; there was just somethin’ I needed to know, that’s all.”

“Sounds like that’s still the case, though.” Zack mused, and the redhead sighed heavily, more or less confirming it.

“Yeah, yeah. Laugh it up.” She grumbled, sliding off the pipe and brushing the dust off the back of her dress before shoving her hands into her jacket pockets, giving off a decidedly punk-like vibe of dissatisfaction.

Before more banter could erupt, Cloud cleared his throat and spoke haltingly. “So, what now?”

Zack released a ‘Hm?” as he and the redheaded gremlin turned to regard his companion. The blonde simply regarded him flatly for a moment, gaze wandering for just a moment, before he gathered himsef and folded his arms. “You’ve been thinking for a while.”

“Oh, yeah. I guess. About where to go from here, mostly.” Zack admitted.

“And?” Ranma asked, tone a bit wary as she cocked her head to the side.

“I was thinking, maybe we could set up shop in Sector 7.”

“Why Sector 7? An’ who’s ‘we’ here, exactly?”

He wasn’t terribly surprised when the tiny redhead immediately had questions. Cloud glanced at her, but Zack coughed into his fist, drawing the blondes drifting attention back his way.

“Ideally, ’we’ would just be me and Cloud, but you really shouldn’t stick around here either, so I definitely think you should come as well.” The redheads expression was rather nonplussed, but she didn’t immediately object, so Zack continued. “Shinra’s looking for us, and as far as they’re concerned ‘us’ probably includes you, too.”

“Those chumps? C’mon, they never even saw me.”

“Maybe, but I wouldn’t count on it. As for Sector 7, it’s one of the larger districts in the undercity, and from what I’ve heard they’ve got a pretty high demand for mercenary work. We can get lost in the crowd, and I can get started building my reputation.”

Ranma humphed, turning her head to the side, but he had the impression he’d more or less convinced her. “Fine, whatever.”

“Well, no point in delaying it. Lets head out.” Zack said, adjusting his sword as he rose to his feet.

Ranma sighed, but when he and Cloud stepped out into the gathering night, she still followed.

Chapter Text

Zack had undersold how crowded Sector 7 was.

The streets were thick with people, a constant hum filling the air as the mass of poor filtered through to whatever work they could find, pausing in spots to drown their worries in drink or to talk with someone they recognized.

And here he realized that Zack was, in fact, correct about his new duds letting him blend in.

In Sector 5 his appearance had still been a bit odd, but here, amidst the throng, that was much less of a problem; he was far from the only flashily dressed kid walking around, electing to wear whatever wealth they’d been able to scrounge rather than let it be siphoned off by debt or lost to crisis.

That the little redhead hadn’t bought the outfit he was wearing himself was a little beside the point when it came to the actual effect; Ranma still wasn’t sure it was actually his style, but at least it was better than what he’d had before.

Of course, what he was wearing had some serious downsides; it got damn cold under the plates, even with the “sun lights” glaring down from above, and the short skirt was unsurprisingly drafty. The pleats were loose enough and short enough not to impede his movement, but he was pretty sure Akane would disapprove of him doing any high kicks in the outfit.

But by far the biggest issue he had with the ensemble was how everyone saw her. And, worryingly, the way she kinda liked that.

And sure, it wasn’t as if she liked everything there was about getting treated as just another girl; there had been more than a few things that had ticked her off, reminded her that there was a reason to fight against these urges and remain him. But ignoring all that other crap around being a woman, to be seen as a girl, understood as girl, free of all the pressures and consequences of her life in Nerima, felt… good.

And it was honestly getting kind of scary.

So she had done the one thing she could think of to try and handle the problem; ignore it and hope it would go away. Which is why he’d taken to wandering around the Sector 7 streets, trying to find something to do with his time which definitely did not involve anything even remotely like introspection.

It perhaps struck him as kind of odd that the thing he was doing at the moment to keep distracted was shopping for clothes. Not that he could afford anything.

Or at least, anything he’d actually want to wear.

“Geez.” The redhead muttered, hanging the bike shorts he’d been checking out back on their rack, regretfully looking at their 500 gil price tag. “Wish I had more gil left over from getting these damn boots.”

“Couldn’t you have asked Zack for some?” Cloud drawled from where he stood, shuffling awkwardly in his fatigues.

“Nah. I don’t wanna owe that guy money.” The redhead answered, checking a pair of fishnet stockings idly, before deciding that they were way too cheaply made and tossing them back in their bin.

“I don’t think he’d have a problem with it.” The blonde continued a bit awkwardly, seeming rather out of sorts in the crowd. Ranma shook his head, sending his braid waving in irritation.

“C’mon, seriously. It ain’t like I’m his girlfriend, and I don’t wanna be that, either.”

Cloud hummed, looking downward as he fled into his own thoughts again. It was good that the kid was walking around, but the guy had taken to following Zack around like a puppy. Except when the would be mercenary ran off to try and find a job, which was often, in which case the person he followed was Ranma.

He was getting a little annoyed with it.

“Well, this is a wash.” The redhead declared, deciding that he may as well try somewhere else. Unfortunately, the amount of loaded suckers wandering around the slums was, unsurprisingly, not very high, which left him wandering around with barely over 100 gil in his pockets. “Hey Cloud, let’s get goin’.”

“Huh?” The blonde jerked, suddenly back in the world, blinked a few times and then. “Ah, right.”

At least being followed around by Cloud kept other guys from trying to hit on him, though the blonde himself hadn’t displayed much interest in anyone, least of all Ranma. Which kinda maybe annoyed him a bit, but whatever. The guy was still recovering from whatever the hell mako poisoning entailed.

Wasn’t his fault he couldn’t recognize how hot his girl side was.

The two wandered around, Ranma lamenting how unexpectedly boring being trapped on an alien planet was proving to be, when a voice broke into to his thoughts quite unexpectedly. “Hey, how about you? We’re always looking for new volunteers for the Sector 7 Watch.”

Ranma found the speaker, a pale man with a goatee in a vest, jeans and leather cap, waving them down from a wooden platform on the side of the road. It occurred to him after half a second that he hadn’t been talking to her at all.

No his attention was squarely on Cloud.

“Who, me?” The blonde asked, seeming rather put off by the sudden question.

“You’re the strong, silent type, right? Show us what you can do, protect your girl, and the townsfolk at the same time.”

Cloud looked to the side, rubbing the back of his neck as he processed the unexpected attention, giving off a distinctly uncomfortable vibe. And of course, she was being ignored on favor of tall, blonde and still kinda out of it, which wouldn’t do at all.

“Listen, pal,” Ranma grated out, scowling as she crossed her arms. “I don’t need no ones protection. And I’m just keepin’ an eye on this guy. I ain’t his girlfriend or whatever ya think.”

“She’s… tough.” Cloud confirmed, looking rather less like the strong silent type and more like he wanted to spontaneously stop existing.

Beside the speaker was a tall black woman with close cropped hair and green eyes, holding a stubby machine gun. She was wearing a jumpsuit with it’s sleeves tied around her waist and a gray, if rather oil-stained, crop top. Ranma wasn’t too familiar with firearms, beyond the general notion of staying away from the end that the bullets came out of, but the lady seemed comfortable with the weapon, holding it with a confident ease. She was also making a show of rolling her eyes.

“Don’t give Wymer too hard a time now. That’s my job.” She chuckled, giving her partner a teasing smile.

“Ah, come on, Ayla…” The man, Wymer apparently, grumbled as he scratched the back of his head, having the good grace to look embarrassed; the redhead tapped her fingers against her crossed arms, and the man sighed. “Listen, I’m sorry about that, but the Watch really could use the additional help. Especially keeping the monster population down, it’s been pretty bad lately.”

“We’ve even got some reports of drakes nesting in some of the old factories around here, can you believe it?” Ayla added, giving her head a shake. “Leaving those things empty was just asking for trouble.”

The capped man nodded, his expression a bit grim; Ranma had a feeling that maybe the guy was just a bit desperate. Finally he looked back up, mostly still at Cloud. “So, how ‘bout it?”

Hardly letting that deter her, Ranma gave a sharp grin, ready to show this guy what she could do. Besides dealing with monsters was one of the duties of a martial artist. “Leave it ta me.”

Cloud shrugged. “… if she’s going, then so will I.”

Looking at Ranma, Wymer hummed uncertainly, before shrugging. “Well, if you’re willing to take the risk, I suppose. The both of you look like you could use some equipment, so you should probably stop by the armory; we have it set up right over the weapons shop.”

Ranma sighed, but followed along behind Alya as she led the way. Well, maybe he could pick up one of those bangle things; Zack had given him that cure materia and taught him the basics of using it, but he had nothing to put the thing in. “You gotta forgive Wymer; he saw that old uniform and probably figured your friend was former military.”

“… I am.” Cloud confirmed a moment later. “Spent a lot of time attached to a SOLDIER command.”

“Huh, you’ve gotta be pretty good then.”

He looked to the side, blushing, before he gave his head a shake. “… never felt that way.”

“How ‘bout you?” The black woman prodded.

Ranma shrugged. “Not much t’ say; I’m a wandering martial artist. Been trained in all kindsa techniques by my old man and whatever masters he could convince to give me lessons.”

“Huh.” Ayla muttered, giving the redhead a slightly dubious look, as if his history was really all that unusual. But then she shrugged. “Well, let’s see what the two of you can do, I guess. Technically we’re supposed to go over protocols and all that boring shit first, but we are in kind of a bind so that’ll be later.”

“Anyway, welcome to the armory.”

The two had been led up a set of external stairs and into a large, square room, with a wire fence separating the thing in two; in the back crates were piled high, a man with dark brown hair, wearing a tight shirt and a shoulder holster going over their contents. He looked up, giving a wave as he lowered the sheaf of paper he’d been looking at.

“Ayla,” he greeted with easy familiarity. “I see you’ve got a couple new faces with you.”

“Yep; Ranma, Cloud, this is Biggs. He mostly takes care of the armory for us, so you’ll be sorting your equipment through him, unless you get your own.”

“Yo.” The redhead greeted; Cloud simply nodded his acknowledgment.

“Well, I’m almost done doing inventory anyway.” The man said said, sitting down on a crate as he set down the forms he’d been working on. “I’m afraid the gear we’ve got on hand is pretty basic; you’ll have to bug Johann downstairs if you want anything better.”

Cloud hummed. “Let me see what you have.”

“Alright then, gimme a sec to pop open the crates.” Biggs said to the blonde, before glancing to the redhead, who shrugged.

“Eh, I mostly fight unarmed anyway, so it ain’t a problem.”

The dark haired man nodded. “Gotcha. Well, you should still have something, if only so you can use materia in case something goes wrong. I think I should have something in here… ”

Ranma shrugged, and joined Ayla in waiting by the entrance. Biggs and Cloud picked through the equipment, and the redhead fidgeted, bored as the two quietly went over the merits of whatever gear they were considering.

There were a couple crates outside the cage, on top of which sat a half open cigar box filled with wafers of stiff cloth; he pulled one out and discovered it was a simply designed circular patch, showing a thin, dragon like creature stitched in white coiled around the base of a tree. In blue, a “7” occupied the blank space to the left of the dragon, and curving across the top was the text “Town Watch.”

“The heck is this?”

“Huh? Oh, a couple years ago a bunch of vets from the Wutai war joined the Watch; most of them ain’t in it anymore, so don’t worry about that.” The jumpsuited gunfighter said, nabbing the thing from Ranma’s hands. “One of them had the bright idea of ‘boosting unit cohesion’ by getting us some parts of a uniform, but no one wanted the things.”

There was a metallic scraping noise, momentarily attracting their attention away from their discussion, as Cloud seated the plain straight sword he’d selected in a belt loop; on the same side, dangling low on his hip was a large pistol, a simpler version of the one Biggs was armed with.

The dark haired man, returning alongside the now armed blonde, took that moment to add, “Legally, Shinra considers the Town Watch to be a gang, but they tolerate us because we take the pressure off them to do something about the monster problem. If they thought we were actually getting organized, they’d consider us a threat to their authority.”

“So, yeah. Been sitting there gathering dust the entire time since.” Ayla finished her thought with a shrug, handing the patch back to the redhead, who absently pocketed it.

“You can keep it if you like, but I wouldn’t advise wearing the thing. Here, catch,” Biggs said, tossing the redhead a curve of bronze tied up in a pair of sturdy looking leather bracers. “It’s not much, but these should let you use materia, if you’ve got any.”

“Eh, only got cure.” Ranma admitted, tying the bracers in place and fitting the bangle over them.

“Well, hard to overstate the utility of it.” Biggs said, humming, before he seemed to notice something.

“What about that?” The man asked, pointing at the pendant, which had dangled out from under the surplus gear he’d just equipped.

“Huh?” Ranma blurted, looking down to her wrist. “Oh, right. Nah, it’s just a pretty stone. S’pposed t’be a necklace but the string broke.”

Pulling it loose the redhead held it out in his palm, allowing the others to get a closer look it’s smooth, faceted surface. “See? Not even glowin’.”

“Well, I suppose…” The man hummed as Ranma hid the pendant in a pocket. “I’ll see if I can’t find a chain for it while you’re out. Good luck.”

The factory had been abandoned for years, but the walls still stood tall; in places, the slats of corrugated steel that formed the roofs had fallen in as the complex slowly succumbed to the forces of time and decay.

Though abandoned by humanity, in their fallow state the buildings had become shelter for all manner of dangerous creatures. Even from here they could hear the calls of a drake, high pitched and fluting, from somewhere inside.

Understandably, it seemed that the watch made a habit of regularly sweeping the abandoned facility to keep the place from getting too heavily infested.

It felt strange to be moving again, especially here, their body tense in unfamiliar ways. The blonde fighter had seen combat before, but for some reason this time the anxious anticipation felt different.

Could it be from the mako?

There was a current of excitement at the possibility; but far more present was a wave of anxiety and uncertainty. Whatever else had happened to them, they just hadn’t had the right stuff to make it as a SOLDIER. Even more than that, they didn’t have the training, even if their body actually did have the strength and speed now.

Which was, Cloud admitted to themself, a pretty big if.

Even so, they had somehow managed to convince themselves to try using a sword again; even though their skills with the blade hadn’t been up to the standards demanded by the unit, it had been the part of them that had gotten closest to passing muster.

The blonde kept expecting their companions to turn, realizing the fraud of their being, and kick them out of the patrol. But instead, they kept marching, as if nothing were wrong.

“What a dump, eh?” Ayla said, as she pulled open the gate the Watch had set in place to try and keep would be salvagers from wandering in. “Shinra pulled out all the equipment years ago; guess they wanted to it all up top instead.”

“Huh. Seems kinda dumb to me.” Ranma commented, glancing idly around the lot, giving off the kind of affected nonchalance they’d sometimes seen out of people who’d been in a lot of fighting.

Zack had spoken highly of her abilities. Hopefully it wasn’t all just an act.

“Not my first patrol through here, so follow me. We’ll circle round and shake out all the critters; shouldn’t take too long.” The jumpsuited watch member said, and away they went.

It didn’t take long till they found something; dog sized insects with four legs skittering around just outside the entrance of one of the buildings.

“Gorgers. Ranma, mind taking point?”

“Yeah, sure; leave the horrible bug things to me.” The redhead replied with a bit of distaste. She gave a wave, then darted forward with incredible speed. Ayla whistled in appreciation, before pegging one of the little monsters with a hail of bullets.

“Just keep ‘em busy, we’ll pick ‘em off!”

“I’ll do more than that!” The redhead called back, her leg arcing around in a lightning quick axe kick that pounded one of the things into the pavement. From behind one the things bounded at her exposed back.

Two shots put it down before Cloud realized that they had even fired. Pistol still sighted on the corpse the blonde put another shot into to make sure it was down for good, and promptly shifted their aim to a different creature.

“Mind your fire, you almost hit our partner!” Ayla called as she riddled another monster with lead. Cloud nodded, pegging another one of the horrible critters at it skittered out of a hole.

“I’ll try not to.” They acknowledged.

At the same time, Ranma shot back. “He wasn’t even close!”

The redhead didn’t seem particularly concerned about the gorgers, and at the moment was punting one into the rafters. “Ha! These things ain’t even half as tough as the critters that tried to eat me in the desert!”

Seemingly taking offense at the comment, one of the bugs leapt at the redhead, only for her to slip out of it’s path with contemptuous ease and send it rocketing across the warehouse with a single, powerful punch.

“Yeah, guess we’re almost done here.” Ayla stated as she and Cloud put bullets into the last of the remaining gorgers, the insects scuttling in furious confusion for a moment before going down. “Not bad.”

Dusting herself off, Ranma gave a thumbs up, which turned into her gesturing towards the building. “We goin’ in there next?”

“Yep. Honestly expected the bugs to be inside, so there’s probably something strange going on here.”

There really wasn’t much more to be said, and the three moved cautiously into the rusting interior. The redhead gripped her nose for a moment, releasing a disgusted noise as their eyes adjusted to the relative darkness. “Ugh, it reeks.”

“Oh yeah; definitely a drake nesting in here.” Ayla noted, carefully scanning the rafters. “Doesn’t seem to be here right now, though.”

“Yeah.” The smaller woman agreed, looking around. “Geez, they really stripped this place bare, didn’t they?”

Cloud simply nodded. The machinery of production that had once occupied the building had left obvious markers of where it had once stood, but aside from scattered trash and debris, the place was utterly vacant. With the nesting monster absent, the trio soon were back out in the open, checking the grounds on their way to the next structure.

“It’s quiet.” The blonde noted, the open area quiet and still. The taller of their two companions nodded, but despite her relaxed stance, Cloud could tell that the redhead was feeling ill at ease. “Ranma?”

“Eh? What’s up?”

“There something out there?”

The redhead nodded, looking out towards the perimeter of the lot. “Yeah, more o’ those bugs skitterin’ around out there in the piles.”

“Huh. So, your senses pretty sharp then?”

“Eh, I guess. Feels like this place isn’t doin’ me any favors, though; ‘specially with that sulfur crap everywhere. My sense of smell is totally shot!”

“Sulfur? Oh, the rotten egg scent. Yeah. Sucks, but you’ll get used to to it.” The green-eyed lady said, ignoring Ranma’s snort and she glanced over the scrap and rock herself. “Well, even if they are out there, there’s no sense borrowing trouble; let’s clear the next building.”

Even before they’d gotten inside, it was clear there was something inside, signaleed by an angry, fluting call that descended into rapid chittering and a loud thumping noise, and the skittering noise of Gorgers’ moving rapidly over the asphalt. “Well, there’s our drake.”

Entering cautiously, they found the tiny draconoid on the far side of the structure, in the midst of slamming a weakly struggling insect into the ground, before releasing it’s victim and taking to the air only just ahead of the dead things perpetually hungry fellows.

“They seem pretty distracted,” the redhead mused quietly. “I bet we could get the drop on ‘em, easy.”

“Yep.”

And apparently, that was all the planning that was needed. Moments later a flying redhead hurtled at the distracted drake, leg extended in a powerful jump kick. Startling, the creature managed to barely jerk it’s head out of the way, only for Ranma to club the thing with a glancing fist on her way past, sending the thing fluttering unsteadily.

Warbling in alarm, it tried to put distance between it itself and the girl, even as the the redhead flipped off the back wall and set down, feet first, on one of the insects below. Before any of the monsters could react to the sudden addition to their scrum, gunfire lanced in, stitching across the insects before they could scatter.

The drake was slightly faster than Ayla’s aim, and Ranma leapt aside as it swooped in, as much to put distance between herself and the woman’s fire as it was to evade her attacker. It set down well past the redhead, and Cloud put a shot through it’s wings, drawing an irate shriek from the thing as it bounced off the floor, seeking height.

“It’s casting!” The blonde called out, but Ranma didn’t bother evading, leaping up after the miniature dragon instead. A trio of kicks flew out, battering the creature, but in the next moment a whorl of wind magic clipped the offending redhead and blew her even higher, the girl releasing a yelp as she banged into the roof.

Still, it cleared the line of fire, and Cloud pounded shots into the creature. The drake was made of sterner stuff than the bugs, though, and managed to shrug off the fire enough to remain airborne, if unsteady.

But the blondes attention had already been captured by the riotous scuttling coming from behind them.

Ranma had noticed as well, shouting out a warning even as she fell back to the ground. “I’ll take care o’ this guy! You two get the bugs!”

“Bugs?” Ayla blinked, having not even noticed the noise. Or rather, not noticed until now. From behind, over a dozen of the giant arthropods charged over the open ground. She jumped deeper into the factory, trying to put distance between herself and the oncoming swarm. “Oh, damn!”

Cloud, despite themself, was already in motion, pistol barking in their hand as they emptied the magazine. There was a cry from behind, but with the blood pounding in their ears the words were lost to the noise.

The sword flashed out, and then they were into the messy work of fighting off the vicious critters. The blonde drove the sword through half remembered strokes, chopping one of the creatures to bits with a disturbingly casual force. Another followed, driven hard into the dirt. Clearly having the attention of the things now, they swept the sword in a vicious horizontal stroke, driving a third of the creatures back in a tumble, trailing ichor in it’s wake.

Cloud continued the turn, throwing aside an attempt to jump on them, and pulled up their pistol.

Somehow, in the confusion of the melee, they’d managed to reload, and a quick shot put the offending gorger down for the count.

There was no time to think, even if their head hadn’t been too full of noise to manage it. Further shots came out in matched pairs, and now some of the insects were going down without the gun or sword in their hands doing the work.

More remained. Cloud advanced in a spin, blade crossing in arcs before them as they drove one, then another of the critters to the side in bits. A third managed its timing right, and latched on, sending the blonde staggering as they struggled to keep it’s teeth from finding purchase.

The things lamprey like mouth rasped as it sought skin, but before it could really a connect a boot smashed the thing right off them, a vaguely familiar redhead arriving beside them, saying something and… there. Finally. Again.

Words.

“—said, get it to together Cloud!” The redheads voice was quiet, but insistent.

It took a moment to remember how to respond, before they managed it in a huff. “Yeah. Yeah. I’m fine.”

Fortunately, by this point the original rush of bugs had been winnowed down to three, the things skittering back and forth in confused aggression, and Cloud had soon reduced that two. “What about the drake.”

“Took it out while you guys were busy here!”

Finishing the remaining two was the work of only a few seconds, and Cloud sheathed their sword, finding their breath unexpectedly even.

“Damn, that was hairier than I expected.” Ayla complained, replacing her magazine. “But hell, you two impressed me. You sure you’re not a SOLDIER?”

“I’m not. I just… picked up some tricks, here and there.” The blonde insisted. But they hadn’t, of course. They had no idea what any of that was, or where any of it had come from; it had simply happened, as if someone else had been in control of their hands.

From the look on her face, the jumpsuit clad watch member was clearly not convinced. But it wasn’t enough to stop their sweep, either way.

The next fight went easier, and the noise did not return.

“So, how’d it go?” Biggs asked Ayla as the three returned to the armory. Ranma still barely knew the man but so far he’d reminded her more of a gun-toting Doc Tofu than the sort of dashing rogue his appearance suggested.

“Uh, they’re good. Damn good.”

Cloud simply avoided looking at anyone, while Ranma tried to avoid preening too obviously. Still it felt good to have her hard work acknowledged, even if the critters in the factory complex had all been smallfries.

Besides, if the beasties had been allowed to wander around, they definitely could have hurt someone with how aggressive the things were.

While she had been trying to avoid looking too smug about showing the Town Watch how good she was—he was—Ayla had continued her report. “Cloud, he’s a good shot, good judgment, but honestly I get the feeling he’s better with that sword than the gun. Either way, damn good at it.”

The redhead nodded, getting that same impression himself; the blonde, once he’d overcome his hesitance had managed some pretty impressive if highly amateurish swordplay, but some time getting drilled on using the thing would definitely help the kid. He guessed they’d probably have to ask Zack to figure out the best training methods.

As good as he was, the sword wasn’t one of Ranma’s particular specialties; he knew how to use one, of course, but the Saotome school specialized in versatility. And the most versatile, reliable weapons one had was their fists.

No one could take those from him.

“As for her,” Ayla continued, pointing at Ranma. “she’s a damn terror if she gets up close; cockiest bitch I’ve ever seen, but she’s earned it. I’d love to see her and Lockheart go at it, it’d be a hell of a fight.”

His ears perked up at the mention of this Lockheart guy, suddenly interested by the implication that there was another martial artist in the area. Someone to test his skills against was just the thing to keep things interesting ‘til he managed to find a lead and get back home. “Well, I’m always down for a good spar.”

Ayla grinned, looking like she was expecting to win a bet soon, while Biggs simply chuckled ruefully and shook his head. “I’ll let Wymer know when I see him next; as for you three, this job had a bounty attached to it by a couple of the local businesses, so you’ll be getting a bit of pay for it. Split up three ways though that’d be…”

The man walked into the back as he talked, and returned shortly with a small stack of gil. “1,200 each. Welcome to the watch.”

“Uh… thanks. Maybe now I can get some decent shorts or somethin’.” Ranma blinked, counting out the money before slipping it away.

“Oh yeah, girl. You definitely want something more than just that dress with you’re doin all those high kicks.” Ayla laughed, walking out of the armory with a jaunty wave. Ranma just humphed, trying to ignore the teasing; Cloud in the meantime had turned bright red and was pointedly not looking in her direction.

“Geez.”

Biggs shook his head, and started to turn away when he stopped and looked back to her. “Oh, right. Managed to find this in the pile, figured you’d want it for that pendant of yours.”

In the mans open hand sat a delicate, if slightly tarnished, chain. “Oh, hey, thanks.”

In a moment Ranma had replaced the busted string, the chain neatly slotting through the setting holding the rock, and soon it was back around her neck where it belonged. “Later.”

There was a round of waves, and soon the two were back outside and heading back in the general direction of the market. “So, got anything you’d like to pick up, Cloud?”

The blonde hummed, and shook his head. “Not really. Maybe a jacket?”

“Well, it does get mighty chilly down here.” The redhead hummed, considering the selection he’d looked over earlier; there was one coat in particular—

The muffled sound of raised voices drew his attention to the building they were passing, and Ranma glanced up at it; a large wooden sign straddled the awning, proclaiming it to be the Seventh Heaven Bar, and through the windows she could see a familiar shock of black hair.

“Hey, is that Zack?”

Cloud looked through the window himself and nodded. The black haired ex soldier seemed to be having some trouble with whoever he was talking with. “Yeah. Should we see what’s going on?”

“Eh, why not?” The redhead answered with a shrug, walking up the steps and pulling open the double doors, his ward just behind. Immediately, the were greeted by a gravelly voice, shouting. The source was a large black man wearing a vest, jeans, and a pair of wrap around shades with a minigun in place of a hand.

Even without that addition, he would have cut an imposing figure. Especially with his dander up, as it was now.

“How can I trust you are what you say you are, that you ain’t just another Stamp workin’ for Shinra, pretendin’ be on the side of the Planet?” He demanded, Zack trying to remain conciliatory but getting obviously frustrated. “You say you’re a SOLDIER, well that means you gotta prove you can be trusted! And I don’t hear no one speakin’ up for you.”

Seated facing away from the door was a woman with long black haired and pale skin in a tank top, tall boots, and black skorts, clearly tense from how she was holding herself.

“Ex-SOLDIER. Listen, I—” The mercenary ground out, rolling his neck in a frustrated circle; in the midst of this he’d caught the two of them entering out of the corner of his eye, and his expression immediately brightened. “Oh, you two!”

The comment caused the black man to shift his attention their way, the woman glancing quickly over her shoulder and then back at her probable boss.

“Huh? Didn’t we lock the door?” The black man asked himself; Ranma just shrugged.

“Uh, didn’t seem locked to me?” This caused a round of grumbling, before the man fixed her and the blonde with a serious gaze. The woman was rising to her feet, turning to face them with a frown.

“Listen, we’re closed. I’m afraid I’m going to have to ask—“ The black man stopped her with a surprisingly gentle hand on her shoulder, and she looked at him curiously, hardly having had a chance to look at the two.

“So, you a friend of this guys?”

Ranma shrugged. “More like an acquaintance.”

“We’re buddies.” Cloud answered as he crossed his arms, almost managing to sound cool.

“What’s up, Zack?” Ranma asked, glancing around the small group huddled around the table. “You seem to be havin’ some trouble?”

“Trouble?” The large man started, cutting off whatever Zack might have said about the situation. “The man himself is trouble! Why I—“

“Barrett, calm down, I don’t think she’s… Cloud?” The woman standing between them had barely had the chance to examine them earlier, but now as she looked back to them her attention stuck, almost inexorably, on the blonde who’d been following her around all day.

For a moment Cloud’s expression betrayed confusion, but almost immediately that shifted to a stunned recognition. “Wait… Tifa?”

“Cloud!” She rushed in, giving the blonde a hug. He blushed and avoided looking at her. “Where have you been?”

“I…” The man faltered, not sure what to say. Finally, after getting awkwardly hugged for several seconds, he finally found his voice. “Tifa, it’s been five years. Give me a bit.”

The lady released the blonde stepping back with a confused expression on her face. “Five years? But…”

Zack snapped his fingers, eyes widening in realization. “Oh, now I remember where I saw you before! You were our guide at Nibelheim, weren’t you? You have a pretty different vibe without that ranch hat and vest.”

“What? Oh! You were that SOLDIER who was with…?”

“Yeah.” Zack said, regret tinging his voice. “I’m sorry. Maybe if I’d been stronger I could have stopped him.”

Him? Ranma frowned, wondering who exactly they were talking about; she was moments from asking what had happened when Cloud growled out, in uncharacteristic anger, “Sephiroth.”

Ranma turned, seeing the blondes face had drawn into a fierce scowl, blue eyes flashing at some memory. He was in his head again, clearly reliving something from his past.

Tifa looked back at the blonde, blinking, before suddenly her eyes widened. “… wait! You were there?!”

Cloud started, torn out of his recollection, then turned his head to the side, flushing. “I… y-yeah.”

The brunette sat back down, clearly stunned for some reason, shaking her head. Barrett looked at the woman, then glanced at the redheads way; Ranma shrugged, having no more idea than he did. Before either of them could say anything, Tifa spoke. “I don’t understand, there weren’t any other SOLDIERs there, were there?”

“There weren’t,” Zack confirmed.

Tifa just looked at the dark haired swordsman for a second before looking back Clouds way. The blonde radiated shame, looking dourly into the wooden floor. “I… I… never made it into SOLDIER.”

The admission clearly pained him.

“What? But your eyes!” Huh, what about his eyes? I mean, sure, he and Zack had a similar shade of blue, but it wasn’t like blue eyes were that unusual, right?

“That came after.” The dark haired soldier said, anger tightening his voice. “Shinra grabbed everyone who survived; they used us as human experiments for years, all to test that bastard Hojo’s pet theory!”

There was a long silence, before Zack looked back at Tifa, blinking as something seemed to occur to him. “Actually, thinking on it, how did you manage to avoid getting captured?”

“… my master, Zangan, found me and managed to carry me to safety.” She sounded stunned, likely considering just how closely she’d come to a horrible fate. Her gaze drifted Clouds way and the man frowned.

“I… I don’t really remember any of it. Mako poisoning. I barely remember facing Sephiroth in the reactor.” Around the room, expressions had turned dour, Barrett’s in particular turning particularly fierce.

“Bastards don’t got loyalty to anyone but themselves!” He slammed his fist into the table and jumped to his feet, stalking around. “I… provided any of this is true, right?”

The mans gaze had pointedly turned away from the two former Shinra enforcers and settled on the little redhead, and Ranma coughed. “I mean, I don’t really know any of that, I only met these two knuckleheads a week ago. But Cloud was in a coma when I ran into ‘em; he only woke up a few days ago. Uh, and, Shinra tried to have ‘em whacked just outside the city. Whole buncha troops tried to ambush ‘em.”

“You should have stayed out of it.” Zack noted, sounding a little too tired to properly resume the ongoing argument they’d been having over her getting involved.

“And if I did that, both of you’d be dead, right?” She countered, doing her best to sound chipper despite the heaviness of the vibe. “Besides, it’s a martial artists duty to defend the weak.”

Zack snorted, and looked like he was trying to decide whether or not he should say more, when Barret started for the door, pausing to lay a massive hand on her shoulder. “Hey, uh…”

“Oh, uh! Ranma. Sorry, shoulda mentioned it earlier.”

“It’s cool. Let’s just… leave these three to work things out, yeah?”

“Er…”

“Yeah, we do have a lot to catch up on.” Zack said, giving a wave. “I’ll meet up later; don’t do anything too risky.”

Ranma rolled her eyes, and followed the big man out, closing the door behind them. Quiet voices echoed out from inside, and the two outsiders to the little conversation shared an uncomfortable look.

“Hooo, awkward reunion to get caught in the middle of, huh?” The gun-armed man muttered, shaking his head as he ambled over to sit at one of the tables set up on the porch.

Ranma laughed, the sound coming out rather more stressed than she cared to acknowledge. “Ahehe uh… yeah. Kinda glad to not be in there.”

“Think I’ll just uh… wait here. Relax a bit after all that excitement. How bout you?”

“Eh, I got something I wanna check on. Tell ‘em I’ll be back later.” She sighed, forcing down the weird anxiety the entire thing had caused her—him. Geez. The large man nodded, before kicking back in his chair with an audible sigh.

Ranma hummed, considering his next move. He still wanted to get those shorts after all but… well, priorities. The redhead pulled out a slip of paper from his jacket, giving the list of references a quick check. Research wasn’t really his forte, but the months spent trying to get ready for university had expanded his skillset in ways most people who knew him wouldn’t have expected.

If he wanted to get home, he’d have to put those skills to the test. The redhead cast his gaze upward, and nodded. “Lessee, that librarian said that bookstore she liked was on Plate 8; guess I better get climbin’.”

Chapter Text

Not long into its construction, Shinra Electric Power Co. had realized that the exposed trusses supporting the Sector 0 Plate and the titanic mass of the companies corporate headquarters were a potential path upwards for people hoping to bypass the checkpoints of the train system.

Considering that a major attraction of the Plate system to the Shinra execs who’d commissioned Midgar was this ability to tightly monitor their labour force, it was unsurprising that they took a strong stance on protecting against the possibility. Armed patrols became a constant presence around the base of the structure in order to dissuade casual interest and subdue more serious attempts.

In the unlikely event of someone bypassing the ground troops, they had developed a number of airborne units that could be used to intercept climbers, their helitrooper corps and various automated drone weapons. But these forces were considered secondary, only to be called out in the exceedingly rare instance of someone actually scaling the structure. Since Sector 0 had first been built, it had only happened twice.

Neither of those attempts had ended with the climber safely reaching either land or plate; such trespassers were to be killed on sight.

The main means of notifying these interceptors of a problem that needed their attention was a comprehensive sensor network installed into the base of the platform, designed to automatically alert Shinra Public Security in the event of an ascent. For the sake of security theater, the network covered an area far beyond what anyone would consider reasonable, spanning a full 5 meters from the ground to its maximum vertical height.

Ranma bypassed it effortlessly. Indeed, without ever knowing it was there.

From there it had simply been a matter of running up the angled beams and a little bit of jumping, childsplay for someone with his skill set. It had been slightly trickier getting to the edge of the Sector 0 plate, given the lack of solid ground, but this too hadn’t proven a significant obstacle.

There had been way too many handholds for him to fail.

“Okay,” the little redhead muttered to himself as he stood balanced on top of one of the struts jutting out past the end of the plate, glancing between the imposing retaining walls running the length of the topside districts. “That one should be Sector 7, so… 8?”

Well, he’d figure it out either way. Trusting in his sense of direction, Ranma skirted around the edge of the central plate til he could make the transfer, all the while marveling at the sheer inanity that was Midgar.

It was as if the city planners had been driven more by a desire to hammer in the most absurdly hamfisted symbolism than by anything practical. It was kind of a surprising thought for him to have, but eh. He had been hitting the books lately, even before coming here.

Hopefully what he’d managed to learn about using footnotes and hunting down references would prove useful in figuring out how he got here, and from there, how to get home.

He didn’t really have any other ideas.

Even if it didn’t work, at the very least it might help him cover up how little he knew about this place. And while he wouldn’t admit it, even to himself, a desire not to look stupid in front of his peers was definitely one of the things driving him right now.

Soon the redheaded girl was bounding his way over a surprisingly built-up mixed use residential area, three and four story brownstone buildings divided neatly into city blocks. Streams of pedestrians made their way around, the occasional car ambling down the streets of what by any measure was a fairly typical example of urban sprawl.

Just one that happened to be suspended 300 meters in the air.

Ranma wandered around for a bit, trying to find a train station; he figured it was probably a better place to ask directions than just hassling some guy on the street, after all. Fortunately, finding a terminal didn’t take too long, and he bounced down to an empty side street next to the building.

The folks around here probably weren’t used to the phenomenon of roof-hopping martial artists after all, and he didn’t want to surprise them by just landing in the middle of the street.

From there it was just a short walk to the square in front of the building, people bustling to and fro; it was pretty well into the afternoon at this point, but even so the number of people just wandering around was pretty high.

“Well, guess I better get to it.”

As it turned out, actually getting directions proved far harder than he’d expected. The people up here seemed far less inclined to talk to some punk from the undercity, especially one with his apparently distinctive features. Hell, far less inclined to talk in general, moving with purpose and not bothering to stop.

Still, the general aura of rudeness aside, being a cute redhead had a certain power that Ranma had long since learned to harness, and before long he was moving in the right direction. The shop wasn’t exactly close to the station, but the directions were good and a long-ish walk put him outside the entrance.

“Rare & Used Books” read the sign, which meant that this was probably the right place, at least. The door opened with a creak, jangling a bell in it’s wake.

“Hello there!” Rang out a kindly, if rather aged sounding voice from the back. “Do stop by the counter if you need any help!”

Looking around, Ranma was pretty sure he would. The inside of the shop was almost preposterously cramped, the interior clearly according more reverence to books than people. Even for his girl side, there was only just enough floor space to fit between the stacks; despite being tiny in terms of height, there were parts of her that were in no way small. And while normally that was very much to her—his—liking, it was damned inconvenient right now.

“Ugh, damn shortstack body.” He grumbled, trying to fit through without getting stuck on any of the books. It would probably annoy the owner if he accidentally knocked over a shelf or something while getting to the counter.

Still, despite some discomfort he managed it, only having to force his way through a couple particularly narrow points, and before long the person minding the shop came into view, a willowy older woman with graying hair peering over the counter. “My, but you’re a little thing. Can I help you?”

Pulling himself free of the shelves, Ranma took a moment to brush off his jacket, nodding. “Yeah, uh… someone recommended this place t’ me; I’ve kinda got a list of things I wanna pick up and was hopin’ you’d have some of ‘em.”

“Oh? Well, let me have a look then.” The woman said, and Ranma passed her the slip of lined paper. After a moment, the shopkeep hummed, her expression amused. “Well, I’ve seen worse handwriting… but my, this is an unusual selection for someone in your situation; who did you say recommended my store to you again?”

“I’ve been workin’ on it.” Ranma said, a little defensively; her handwriting wasn’t that bad. “And uh, I didn’t. Sorry. She’s one o’ the people running a library in Sector 4. Ami, I think?”

“Oh!” The womans expression brightened immediately. “It’s been some time since we last met. Hows the dear girl doing?”

“Pretty good I guess,” The redhead said with a shrug. “We only met the one time—“

Both looked up towards the entrance as the bell gave a soft jingle, but Ranma was quickly back to the discussion. “Uh, anyway, was tryin’ to learn more about the world, and these were some of the books she suggested, since I wasn’t able to get through…”

“Hmm…” The woman trailed off, considering the list she’d been handed. “About how much do you know about these subjects?”

“Er… honestly, not a lot. I guess I uh… don’t even really know enough to know how much I don’t know?” That was how one of his exam proctors had said it to him once, but that had been a while ago. It felt strange to be back in that position again, but the woman’s gaze had taken on an appraising quality, something like approval taking residence in her expression.

“Oh ho! My you are a rare one, aren’t you? These may be—oh, hello Rude.” The woman suddenly said with cautious amiability.

It took Ranma a second to realize that ‘Rude’ was the name of the tall, powerfully built man scooting out from between the stacks. Aside from a sharply maintained goatee, he’d shaven all the hair off his head; wearing an off-white henley and a pair of tan khakis, he dressed as if he were just some retail worker taking his lunch break. But there were subtle clues in his stance that told him the man was a martial artist as well, and one of considerable power.

“Anna.” He said. “Hope I’m not interrupting something.”

“Oh no, don’t worry. I was just helping this poor dear find some books.” The shopkeep answered with a smile, before humming as she returned to examining the list. “Now where were we… ah yes. Ami’s recommendations might be a bit difficult for someone just starting off, so if I might suggest… ?”

“Uh, sure?” After a few minutes, and asking Ranma what his budget was, Anna had added her suggestions to the list, paring it down to fewer and simpler books.

“You’ll want to come back to these ones later, but these will provide you the foundation you need to understand them when you do. Fortunately we should have most of them in stock. Now, where were they… ?” With that, the willowy shopkeep was off, vanishing between the stacks.

“Huh, she must like you already if she’s making recommendations.” Rude commented, hands in his pockets. “So, uh, miss… ?”

“Oh, uh. Just call me Ranma.” The redhead answered.

“Mind if I ask why you’re reading these?”

“Huh?”

“You don’t exactly strike me as the academic type, so… ?”

“It’s… I mean… listen, it’s kinda hard to explain, and… wait, why am I even explaining this t’ you anyway!? You think you’re a cop or something? Geez.”

The man opened his mouth to reply, but apparently had lost the script, standing frozen for several seconds as he tried to get back on track. “Uh… I… ”

“Now don’t give the girl too hard a time, Rude. There doesn’t have to be a reason to learn.” Anna said, shuffling out from between a completely different set of shelves, now with a few quite sizable books in hand. “The knowledge you gain from these may not be immediately useful to you, but to know for the sake of knowing is… well, something I find quite admirable, myself.”

Despite herself, Ranma found herself blushing at the praise. “Oh, uh… th-thanks. Um… well, I ain’t too sure when I’ll be finished with these, but I’ll try to be back?”

“Do take your time, dear; an education is not something to be rushed.”

She left the shop several hundred gil poorer, and with the thick books packed neatly into a sturdy paper bag. Though she technically had the rest of the afternoon free, the little redhead didn’t feel like sticking around on the plate; something about it just felt more unwelcoming than the ghettos down below, no matter how clean the streets up here were.

Besides, having seen the prices on his way over, he didn’t have enough gil left over to buy lunch up here anyway. The food up here would have to blow the stuff down below out of the water to justify the price; he had no idea what black milly was, and he honestly didn’t want to know, as long as it kept being delicious.

He was about halfway to the station when he heard a voice calling at him from behind. “You there! In the red jacket, halt!”

“Huh?” Behind him, three men in the blue and white battle dress of Shinra marched up. Armed. Ranma had absolutely no idea why the company had soldiers wandering around bugging civilians instead of regular police but… well, it was a messed up world.

Not sure what he’d done to warrant their attention but not wanting it to necessarily turn things into a fight, the redhead came to a halt, pointing at himself and not bothering to hide his confusion over being singled out.

Hell! He wasn’t even the only person from the slums on the street right now! What was these guys problem?

“Don’t play innocent, slumrat! What’s in the bag?” The lead man demanded harshly, sneering from under the trinocular goggles covering his face as he bulled up, his men angling to surround him.

“Books.” Ranma answered, keeping his voice calm despite the rude tone of the officer.

“A likely story; now spill, what have you stolen?!”

“Nothing. Listen pal, just ‘cuz I live in the undercity don’t mean I can’t read.” Granted, he’d only lived in the undercity for a little over a week now, but at the moment he was definitely feeling rather a lot more solidarity with the people down there than these jackasses.

“No backtalk, scum! I don’t know what you’re up to, but we won’t let you cause trouble up here! Now stop lying, or we’ll take you in.” The leader growled out, his body language making it clear that the intended outcome was a jailed redhead, no matter how he responded. “Tell me what you’re plotting and maybe we’ll go easy on you.”

Yeah, like that was likely; it was increasingly obvious these guys were just out to throw around their authority, and finding some poor person to lord it over must’ve seemed just the ticket. Unfortunately for these goons, today that person was an increasingly irritated Saotome Ranma.

“Seriously, I’m just—“

“Shut up! Enough excuses. Show me what’s inside the bag, we’re putting a stop to whatever havoc you’re planning, right now.”

Ranma rolled his eyes at the accusation, pulling out one of the books from the paper bag. “Yeah sure, because I’m totally gonna cause havoc by buying, uh… ’Materia and Myth: An Introduction to the Stories We Tell About Magic’ by Mark Berik, PhD and Cecilia Carry, orrrrr ‘Before Midgar’ by Carlos Morello with a forward by Eric Slade.”

“… ! You little!” The patrol officer grated out, sounding rather put out by her mastery of snark. This, apparently, was all the troopers standing around trying to be intimidating needed to get physical.

The closest hefted his SMG, reversing it over his shoulder, and tried to thrust the butt of the thing into Ranma’s face. Lazily shifting his head to the side, he allowed the strike to pass by harmlessly, followed by just as casually avoiding the guy bodily hurtling himself into the space he’d been occupying.

As that spot was now decidedly sans redhead the ultimate effect of this was the guy tripping over his own feet and landing flat on his face.

“Geez, you alright, pal?” Ranma asked, unhurriedly putting the books away. This did not seem to calm the incensed authority figures down at all for some reason.

“Hands where I can see ‘em! Drop your weapon!”

“Uh, I’m unarmed?” The redhead pointed out, tossing the strap over a shoulder. “Seriously, what’s your guys problem? The klutz just tripped is all.”

“Shut up! Hands! Now!” Ranma yawned, folding his hands casually behind his head, hardly concerned by the trio of corporate thugs trying to cow him into submission. What a drag.

From an external perspective he imagined the body language was all wrong; the armed men tense and jittery, the person they were menacing calm and clearly in charge of the situation. Not that reading the room seemed to be part of whatever curriculum these jackasses went through.

“Ya sure ya wanna be swinging that thing around like that? We aren’t the only people on this street, ya know.”

Indeed, all around were other pedestrians, who had been quietly trying to stay out of the way of the confrontation; with it clear that things were likely to turn violent soon, the quiet part had since been abandoned, though more than a few people were standing around holding up these flat, rectangle shaped things for some reason, staring into them as the held they things up between them and Ranma.

Weird.

“I. Said. Silence!”

Rolling his eyes, the redhead visibly kept quiet. “Good; let’s see you keep up that superior attitude once we’ve got you at the Annex! I’m gonna enjoy this…”

The trooper that had tried to club him in the face had climbed back to his feet while all this had been happening, and had tromped up behind her; really how obvious could you be? The man’s equipment rattled and clanked, and then the butt of the gun hurtled through the space her head had been occupying a fraction of a second ago.

Before any of the troopers even realized what was happening, she’d thrown the guy trying to club her flat on his back and knocked him out like a light, SMG skittering over the sidewalk. Ranma was already moving, right in the officers face as his jaw dropped. “Wh-”

Grabbing him by his harness, she spun him vertically on his axis a couple times and promptly deposited him, upside down, in a trash can.

The third was still staring in disbelief at this unexpected reversal of reality as she kicked him in the face, sending him spinning like a top into unconsciousness. She jogged off in general unconcern, giving the pigs a jaunty wave as she went. “Well, it’s been real. Ja ne.”

Though he was confident the jerks would be out for a while, no doubt they’d be after him soon; this wasn’t the first time he’d been harassed on the street by a cop—him and Pops had lived rough for years and police tended to frown upon that kind of thing, to say nothing of the old mans more larcenous habits—but this was the first time the cops had been openly part of the military.

It was also the first time it had actually come to blows. Ranma wasn’t sure if he could have done something to avoid it, but he wasn’t going to let himself get clubbed, however ineffectually, by some corporate thugs hopped up on their own authority either.

Ranma was starting to think that he might make it all the way to the station, when things went decidedly sideways. His first indicator of this was the two troopers up ahead of him slowing, clearly listening to something through their helmets and…

“Dammit! I’m an idiot, of course they’d have radios!”

“You there! Stop!” Of course the guy yelling this was way too slow, and the redhead had darted into the alley he’d been passing before the man had even finished the order. “Hey!”

Running down the narrow side street, he heard the men shouting for reinforcements as they dashed after him. The alley made a sharp turn ahead and Ranma was already angling towards it, ready to put on his real spee—her thoughts immediately scattered as one of her pursuers opened fire, a rapid burst of shots chasing her around the corner.

They hadn’t even given her another warning; despite how stunned she felt by the readiness with which these guys had tried to shoot her over a fight they started, and the fact that they’d opened fire in a place where people lived, she didn’t let herself stop. Immediately deciding that remaining on street level was a bad idea, she bounced off the wall and was over the lip of one of the brownstones before the troopers had a chance to round the corner.

They ran straight past, probably expecting her to be on the street ahead, and she didn’t stick around for them to realize their mistake. Deciding that even if they figured out she had gotten onto the roofs, they’d expect her to try and head for the station. Ranma was already heading for the edge.

300 meters was a bit much, even for her, but she’d taken worse falls.

She’d made it only a short distance when she heard an annoying, high pitched whining noise; the source turned out to be a pair of robots, both consisting of a single pod, suspended in the air by a quartet of small jets. “Oh, you gotta be kidding me!”

One of the things shrieked to a halt, and started emitting an alarmingly bright, electric blue glow; the other jetted right at her, flipping around as it rapidly drew close and pointed it’s thrusters right at her face before reigniting it’s jets. Or tried to point them at her face, rather.

As she evaded the attack, so clearly intended to be lethal, and kicked the the robots undercarriage through the top of it’s chassis, Ranma had an epiphany.

She did not like Shinra Electric Power Company. She did not like them at all.

The other robot was still charging up to do whatever when she slammed it like a volley ball down a convenient alley, sending it ricocheting off the walls. It smashed into an open garbage bin and exploded. The redhead wasted no time in moving, bounding across the rooftops.

She had made it barely over a block by the time the next wave showed up, this time five of the things coming in in an attempt to swarm her. Four of them charged in fast, trying to catch her with tasers and jabbing their flaming thruster arrays at her. She smashed the first to pieces with a flurry of Tenshin enhanced punches, but the remaining three jetted back, trying to divide her attention.

The fifth hovered ominously, sparking intensely as it charged up. ”Of course they gotta have a damn charge attack! Come on!”

She wouldn’t have the chance to stop it this time, the other three flew in, trying to run interference; grabbing one of the stupid things as it came, she spun it overhead, using it’s own momentum to bash itself and another into flaming mechanical bits. She didn’t have much time to worry about the damage that might cause though, the final one spinning at her like a buzzsaw, all aflame, forcing her back to avoid getting burned.

From the sky lanced down an incandescent beam of energy; Ranma barely avoided getting pegged by it, and instead the shot nailed the other robot, blowing it to pieces. Ranma skidded away from the explosion with a curse. That had been a lot closer than she cared to admit, but she wasn’t going to look a gift horse in the mouth.

“Okay, enough of this crap!” The redhead growled out, cupping her hands by her side and glaring at the offending machine as she concentrated her will. A moment later a lance of burning, confident chi speared into the sky, blasting the machine to bits before it could move again.

For a moment, as she held her out thrust hands up, there was not quite silence, giving the redhead a moment to ponder just how ridiculously overblown this pursuit was. And it clearly wasn’t over yet.

At the very least the sound of large trucks screeching to a halt nearby couldn’t be a good sign, and if she focused she could hear the buzz of even more of those damn robots.

If she stayed here, eventually they’d overwhelm her. She was almost to the edge of the roof, planning on dipping into the alleys, when the roof access burst open and a squad of troopers spilled out, promptly opening fire. She rolled over the lip, bullets zipping past her legs, but fortunately none of the shots hit.

Ranma didn’t exactly know how well she’d take a bullet, but given the circumstances she wasn’t about to stick around and find out.

Momentarily she was speeding through the alleys again, below the rooftops but well above the ground. It slowed her down a lot more than she’d like, but apparently it was enough to confuse them, which made sneaking past the guys easier. She supposed they hadn’t figured out that hopping between roofs was something she did more out of convenience than necessity.

Eventually, the sound of her pursuers soon faded, but given how reckless Shinra’s enforcers apparently were, the redhead wasn’t exactly going to chance being spotted again.

“Honestly, what the hell is these guys problem?” She—he—muttered to himself as he scooted under a water tower; from here it would be a quick jump to the top of the retaining wall, and from there a straight shot back down to the slums.

Though, now that he had nearly escaped, plan “fall 300 meters and hope he didn’t break something” was looking a bit less attractive; those guys would be looking up here with no idea where he’d gone, so he could slow down a little.

Moments later he slipped over the side, allowing himself to drag bodily on the metal wall; he wasn’t entirely sure if there was anything to hold onto on the bottom of the thing, and a bit of time to actually look would surely prove helpful. Fortunately there was an exposed truss near the edge, and soon he was moving swiftly, hand over hand, back towards Sector 0.

As he made his escape, he almost thought he heard a helicopter, but decided it was probably his imagination.

“Buncha jerks.” Well, at least now he knew where the shop was. He’d avoid the streets next time.

Chapter Text

The Turks, given their importance to corporate operations, based their operations out of two entire sublevels of the colossal tower, plus sections of the floors directly above and below.

Much of that space was devoted to a substantial archive of classified material: dossiers, intelligence reports, and break downs of past activity; the kinds and quantity of paperwork produced in bulk by what was effectively a national intelligence agency, no matter how corporate its trappings.

The majority of the space remaining was devoted to the small army of analysts and clerks whose job it was to make sense of the data they were tasked with, transforming what was ultimately a tiny quantity of it into actionable intel.

Finally there was a relatively small, but important, section set aside for the corps of field agents, who both provided the data and used the intel in turn.

It was to this last group that Rude belonged, currently in the midst of examining the raw data that yesterday had unexpectedly dropped in their collective laps. Currently, the agency was rather short on field agents—rather short on personnel generally—and as such both he and Reno were assisting in the analysis.

“Whoooohahahaha! Right in the trashcan!” Reno cackled from across the briefing room table, clearly enjoying the footage. “Oh, this chick’s got style!”

Rude straightened his sunglasses, not pausing in his examination of the footage; between the two of them they were probably going to be going over the various recordings for quite some time. He’d recognized their Unknown almost immediately—the girl had a highly distinctive appearance—and had managed to acquire some useful information.

And meeting her in a relaxed setting had provided him a chance to try and get a read on her behavior. Highly valuable in and of itself. Young, likely confident with what she knew well, a bit anxious and uncertain with what she didn’t, potentially insecure over her intelligence.

And apparently rather rebellious, if pressed.

“Well, it’s been real.” Went the recording. “Ja ne.”

Finally, he paused the playback and took a moment to consider the situation.

It was, in his opinion, unfortunate that the Turks didn’t have control over Public Securities attached intelligence units; naturally they’d disseminated what little they’d had from their botched ambush of Zack among their own troops well before it had gotten to the actual specialists.

The second encounter had gone so spectacularly badly that the details had ended up in the hands of the Turks almost immediately.

Predictably, on running into the Subject, Public Security had cocked it up. Had, from what the patrol officer had been saying, likely cocked it up even before that, the man clearly having no idea why he’d been tasked with arresting her, only that he should.

It wasn’t particularly hard to imagine how it had come to this; Zack, being a renegade SOLDIER, warranted attention from the highest levels.

But in this case, the highest level was General Heidegger, and the man had no patience for the intricacies of proper intelligence work; it was easy to imagine the man dismissing the report in frustration and the resulting lack of direction muddling its way down the chain of command.

”Why are you bothering me with this? Arrest her already.” Rude’s imagination suggested as fairly probable, given their past interactions, few as they were.

It seemed very likely that jumping the gun like this had blown their chance for a sting operation. At least the company had clamped down on the story, practically by reflex, and all the footage had been confiscated before it could get out to the general public.

Still, even this unforced error could provide a well of useful intelligence; what they’d gotten from the failed ambush had left them with only just enough to determine her appearance. With this, they had far more to work with.

The girls… Ranma’s habits, style, and approach would be codified as much as possible from what they had available. The footage they’d looked over so far had been somewhat worrisome, but wasn’t anything they couldn’t handle.

“She’s fast.” Rude warned, scrubbing the video, one of the better civilian recordings of the event, back to it’s beginning and adjusting down the playback speed.

“Yeah, well so am I. Faster than this little punk.” Reno shot back, chuckling.

“Probably be an interesting match up.” Rude mused, thinking over his first impressions of the redheads fighting style.

They hadn’t yet gotten to the second and third contact events just yet, but even from this it was evident that the girls style was fairly unusual, a combination of extreme speed and excellent grappling technique; her mastery was high enough for her to even get playful with it. That second throw, done so damn whimsically, spoke of a deceptive amount of strength as well, particularly for someone with so small a frame.

All three troopers had walked away from the encounter with relatively minor injuries, unless one counted the pride of the NCO in charge of the group, which would likely never recover. That matched the way she’d spoiled the ambush as well; she wasn’t interested in killing, and had fled rather than escalate things to that point.

Well, that was probably a bit overly optimistic of an appraisal—she’d likely realized that things were getting too hot for her to stick around and chosen to make her escape instead of a last stand. Still, he had a feeling that it had factored into her decision.

He was called out of his thoughts as the door clacked open and Director Tseng entered the meeting room. “Sir.”

The black haired man nodded, crossing the distance to the head of the table, and sat himself behind the console without a word. For several moments, the only sound was the clacking of the mans keyboard, before the Director finally spoke. “So, what are your first impressions?”

“She’s not the fastest I’ve seen, but she’s fast.” Reno spoke up first, brushing back his red hair. “Throws, disabling strikes, a pretty nasty high kick. She was surprised to be picked out of the crowd, so I think she must have thought she’d gotten away clean the first time. Also, girls got some amazing snark.”

Tseng turned his attention Rude’s way, and he nodded. “It matches my observations. She’s very elusive as well; the way she dodged that first attack was done so smoothly she almost made it look like it was simply an accident, and despite the second takedown coming from behind, she avoided it cleanly.”

“I see.” The other man said simply. “You spoke with her, correct?”

“Briefly, but yes.”

“Tell me about it.”

“I encountered her unexpectedly at a used bookstore I like. From what she was discussing with Anna—”

“The owner?”

Rude nodded. “Yes. She seemed somewhat anxious about how much she knew; apparently she’d gotten a recommendation for her shop from someone in the slums. ‘Ami,’ no last name given.”

Reno kicked back in his chair, the redhaired man feigning boredom as Tseng considered this, then leaned forwards. “Non-fiction, then?”

“Yes. Entry level textbooks, mostly history and mythology related. She ended up walking out with a few of the better pop history books that get recommended as introductions to the subjects instead. Anna’s suggestions.” Rude said, scribbling down the list, as well as the books the girl had left with. But then he paused, thinking, before looking back to Tseng.

“There was one thing I found pretty strange, however. These aren’t university level texts, not even 101 stuff, but the way she notated the books she was trying to find… it’s like she knew the basics of academic practice, at least, but had a bare-minimum education. Very odd.”

The Director said nothing, clearly intending for him to elaborate. “More than just title and author, but also publisher and publication date. In a couple instances publication number as well.”

“Curious. Could she have learned it from this ‘Ami,’ perhaps?”

“It’s certainly possible, but I can’t imagine she’d have a reason to know it in the first place, given the level of education she seems to have. I did consider that it might be this friends notation, but I did catch her writing on the list, and the handwriting matched.

“As for our Unknown, I was able to pick up a few things. Her name’s Ranma, apparently. Wasn’t able to get her last name. I think she’s genuinely embarrassed about how little she knows; she got defensive when I asked why she wanted the books.”

“Poor baby.” Reno said, voice thick with false sympathy. “So, what, she’s just an idiot, then?”

Rude paused, thinking. “No. No I don’t think so. It’s hard to judge from such a short meeting, but she struck me as decently intelligent. She immediately sized me up as a fighter, so she’s at least quite perceptive.”

“So simply a typical level of education for someone living in the undercity?” Tseng hummed.

He nodded. “I believe so. She’s definitely been down there long enough to pick up the usual layer of grime, at least. Poor as well, she had only about 1400 gil, but she was willing to budget all of it for these books for some reason. Perhaps taking advantage of a sudden windfall, I can’t say.”

The Director was silent for several seconds, as the black haired man processed his observations. Finally, he spoke. “I do agree that it is odd, but at the moment I do not believe this is a useful avenue of investigation. For the moment, proceed to the next set of recordings.”

The agents nodded, and were soon reviewing the tapes from the first set of Slug-Rays.

“Ha! Oh man, she spiked it!”

As it turned out, joining the watch had some advantages beyond access to a bunch of low-grade military surplus and the occasional bounty. The group demanded a high level of commitment, and the non-existent budget meant that volunteers were not afforded a salary.

In order to maintain the militia, it had proven necessary to ensure it’s members had certain basic amenities. And while the various small business owners and landlords groused over the expense, trying to get Public Security to keep the monster population in check, or perform anything resembling police work, was agreed to be borderline impossible in the slums.

In short, being on the watch came with room and board. Despite this, the Sector 7 Watch was continually short on staff, as most new members rapidly cycled out when the danger of regular monster hunting proved more than they were willing to put up with, particularly given the lack of regular pay.

Ranma, at least for the moment, was simply happy to have a place to himself. Even if that place was an empty room whose only real concessions to his presence was a thin, bare mattress on top of a simple bed frame, a sink in the corner across from the entrance, and an extremely cramped water closet. He’d lived in worse conditions.

Hell, he’d lived in worse conditions for the past week. At least he hadn’t needed to tidy up beyond a bit of dusting.

For now, what little he owned was stuffed into a couple bags by the foot of the bed; it wasn’t much, consisting of three barely touched books, still in their paper bag, plus a spiral notebook and a couple pencils, and two other bags sorting his small collection of underwear into ‘clean’ and ‘dirty.’

Aside from that, all he owned was the clothes on his back. Not that he was wearing them at the moment.

Even back when he’d been living on the road with Pops he’d had more; a sturdy rucksack, a tent, blankets, sleeping bag, warm clothes, emergency supplies and tools, and even some manga to keep him entertained.

Ideally, he’d be home before the general lack of stuff he had became a problem.

Unfortunately, he doubted that was going to happen. Initially he’d hoped that whoever or whatever was responsible would show up, challenge him to an interdimensional martial arts table tennis competition or whatever, and then show him politely home after he’d won the resulting fight.

At this point, he was pretty sure that that kind of easy solution wasn’t going to present itself.

Which probably meant that, if he couldn’t figure out what happened on his own… the girl shook his head, not allowing himself to finish the thought. He’d get back home; he had to.

Firming his expression, he pulled out one of the books, a very basic history text he’d selected more to make sure he at least had some context for the world than out of any actual interest, the notebook, and fell back on the bed, not bothering to get dressed. The blinds were drawn, and so his nudity wasn’t likely to be a problem.

It was time to get to work.

Yep, time to buckle down and study. Any time now. Open up this book and…

Ugh. She just couldn’t bring herself to do it. The reality was she was exhausted after the last week. She hadn’t given herself the chance to stop and enjoy more than the bare minimum of rest. Better to be doing something, anything, rather than lie around and give herself space to think.

She had a plan, all there had been was to act on it, right?

Ranma was not one to get discouraged, but it had happened before. When she had first been cursed it had stunned him for more than a minute, before he’d descended into a rage; he’d fallen into despair when it had seemed as if he’d lost his strength; and then there was the grief he’d felt, that crippling sense of loss and confusion, when he had thought that he’d lost Akane forever after the fight against Saffron.

She hadn’t had time, when this all began, to worry about what this meant for her, and by the time she had that time she’d already decided on a plan of action, something she could actually do. There had to be a solution, he had to believe that in order to keep moving. If there was, he had no doubt that he would find it.

Pursuing a goal had let him keep one step ahead ahead of his uncertainties and fears; in doubt lurked the question she could not even bring herself to ask.

”What if I never see them again?”

She missed them. She missed them. It hadn’t even been that long, not really, but despite that their absence burned at her, an agonizing sense of dislocation that pooled painfully in her chest. Tears beaded her eyes and slid down her cheeks, the gravity of her isolation threatening to pull her down.

“I… I wanna go home…” Ranma whimpered into the empty room. Sniffling, she tried to avoid thinking too hard about the people she missed, the places she’d known.

Mostly, she tried not to think about Akane, or her Mom. Close behind were Ukyo and Shan Pu; the relationship she had with them, individually and as a whole, was an irresolvable mess, but she wanted it back. Desperately.

To be wanted, to be needed, was a truly precious thing; it hadn’t quite occurred to her until now, totally removed from her proper context, how much she’d needed them as well.

They were the most precious people in the world to her. The realization left her feeling a bit guilty over being so self-absorbed on top of everything else, which was only making her feel worse.

If she let it, she knew this heartache would trap her in a pit she’d never escape from. She had to turn it into something useful instead, to remind herself of their importance to her and turn that into determination. To fight. To learn. To return home, victorious, whatever that actually looked like.

She rolled over, hiding her face in the crook of an elbow, sniffling and coughing, as her distress gradually subsided into quiet weeping. She hoped it was okay. Hoped that, as long as she didn’t make a habit of it, she could engage in a bit of this unmanly indulgence, where no one could see.

Just the once. And then never again.

“This is one of the big places we need to check regularly. Anywhere people have to store their trash before the incinerator guys can get to it, really.” Wedge said, gesturing broadly at the large trash bins scattered about the lot, the young man having volunteered for helping Cloud learn their way around. “We’ll need to give them all a kick to make sure that there aren’t any Wererats hiding inside.”

The blonde nodded, and soon they were passing between the bins, their guide and fellow Watch member chatting amiably all the while. Before long, they’d scattered or slain a handful of the aggressive, oversized rodents. All in all a short, if rather unpleasant, task. “That seems to be the last of them.”

“Yeah, easy peasy. Right bro?” Wedge said cheerfully, as he led the way to their the next stop on their patrol.

“Bro?” Cloud muttered to themself, unsure what actually was bothering them about the casual declaration of friendship. They shook their head and followed behind; whatever the problem, they were still figuring out their way around.

In it’s efforts to keep the peace and cull monsters, the Watch had a number of duties it required all of it’s members to engage in. Actively hunting the mutated creatures in the outskirts was one of these, but it was one that was mainly taken on by the best fighters in the organization.

Far more often, even for the few really skilled fighters the group had, were mundane tasks like standing guard over areas that were known to be monster infested, or what they were doing now.

Cloud wasn’t entirely certain how useful patrolling the slums actually was, but the people seemed to appreciate it, even if the blonde had no idea why. At least someone like Ayla was actually good at what they did, to say nothing of the other apparent Ace of the group.

Ranma was simply incredible; it was hardly a wonder that people expected her to become part of the small corps of elite fighters who actually made the entire thing work.

More confusing was how people seemed to expect that of them, as well. Cloud still felt like they were a fake, especially now that they were getting trained by Zack, whenever he had the time. Their skills simply couldn’t compare to the SOLDIERs prodigious talent and wealth of experience.

That this was, perhaps, not the fairest comparison to make didn’t really occur to them.

It was probably for the best that things were quiet; they weren’t sure at all how well they’d deal with an actual problem.

“Okay Cloud, this way!” At the very least, their partner for this patrol seemed almost unshakably positive, even if the blonde wasn’t entirely sure how to handle someone so open and friendly. Wedge led them down a narrow little tangle of streets, the man chatting as they went.

Before too long they’d passed through the crowded little neighborhood and emerged back into what passed for the main strip of the Sector 7 undercity. From there, it was just a straight shot back to the Armory, centrally located as it was.

They hadn’t made it very far before they spotted a small crowd gathered around one of the few functional televisions in the area. “News day?”

“Guess so, let’s check it out.” Wedge grinned, as the two sidled up behind the cluster of people, all listening to the in progress newscast.

“—Public Security released a statement this morning about the incident in Sector 8, two days ago. According to official sources, a group of Security Officers were attacked by a young woman who is believed to have been a gang member from the undercity.” The tinny speakers relayed, as the fuzzy image of news anchor went through the motions of reading the report. “Officers responded to the disturbance, and after attempting to flee the suspect was killed in a Security Forces related shooting in the vicinity of 18th and Beryl. The motive for the assault remains unknown.”

“Oh, that’s bad news.” Wedge muttered, for once his upbeat nature seeming subdued. “Whenever something like that happens Public Security loves to make life hard for the Watch. We’ll have to keep our heads down for a bit.”

Cloud frowned, watching the flickering set as the anchor produced noticeably little information about the supposed attacker. “Is it normal for them not to have any details?”

“Yeah, I guess so? At least half the people I know don’t have any kind of id at all, and anyone who goes topside with a fake id isn’t going to use their actual name.” The heavy-set watch member said with a shrug. “At least half the time I think they’re just making that gang crime stuff up as an excuse. A few people seem to think they like to use heavy weapons on people from the slums, though.”

Cloud hummed, turning to look towards their partner on this little excursion. “I guess it wouldn’t leave a lot to identify. Should we let Wymer know?”

“Yeah. Leave it to me, okay?” Wedge said with a nod. “He’s probably out recruiting again, anyway. Come on bro, let’s go.”

The mood was considerably more grim as they made their way back, but despite it all Wedge kept up the stream of good natured chatter. Cloud didn’t particularly engage, responding only occasionally, but it did at least seem to make the walk go quicker, and in short order they found themselves back in the armory.

Surprisingly, the person watching over the stockpile wasn’t Biggs; instead Ranma looked up from where she’d been reading with a wave. “Yo. What’s up Cloud? And uh… Wedge, right?”

“Got it in one!”

“Not much. We just finished our patrol.” Cloud answered, as the heavyset watch member gave a friendly nod and gave a thumbs up.

The redhead rolled her eyes, slipping the ‘7’ patch she was using as a makeshift bookmark in place. “Anyway, guess I’m stuck keepin’ an eye on things here ‘til Biggs gets back. Need me to do anything?”

“Not really.” Cloud answered. “Though, when Biggs gets back, or anyone else shows up, you should let them know that Public Security might start causing problems for the Watch soon.”

“Huh? Why the heck would they do that?” Ranma asked, blinking as she set down the notebook she’d been steadily jotting notes down in. “I mean, ‘snot like we’ve been doin’ anything, right?”

“Some girl got blown away by Public Security topside,” Wedge explained. “They’re blaming it on ‘gang activity,’ and whenever that happens…”

“Oh, right.” Ranma muttered, clearly putting two and two together; the answer, apparently, was a headache. “Biggs did mention those guys think we’re a gang.”

“Yeah.”

“Maybe I should get a bunch of tattoos and really sell the look?” She joked, before giving her head a shake and sighing, her expression becoming fierce. “Anyway, I can believe they’d do something like that; those bastards are pretty trigger happy.”

Cloud frowned, some part of them wanting to defend their once comrades in arms for doing their job, but reluctantly nodded; they knew from experience that Public Securities training emphasized the importance of firepower, as well as instilling a willingness, even an eagerness, to use it.

“By the way, how goes the reading?” Wedge asked, clearly trying to change the topic to something less heavy. The redhead favored him with a bemused look, and shrugged.

“Alright I guess; this ain’t the most challenging read. I should be done with it tonight.” She patted the history book next to her, bookmark settled comfortably at the tail end of the book. “Still, guess I’m learning somethin’ from it.”

“Hell yeah, bro!”

“Bro?” Ranma and Cloud both echoed, before looking at each other, the redhead blinking, the blonde feeling their cheeks flush ever so slightly.

“Uh, yeah?” The bandanna wearing man said, clearly confused by their confusion. After a couple moments of awkward silence he coughed, then waved, heading for the door. “Uh… anyway, I’m gonna go find Wymer and let him know. Catch you later!”

“Uh, yeah, seeya.” The redhead waved, before looking up at Cloud, who simply shrugged. Both of them barely knew the guy, after all. Finally the girl sighed, giving her head a shake. “Geez, does he just call everyone his ‘bro?’”

“I guess so.” The blonde said with a shrug, thinking back over his walk. “Maybe it’s just with people he wants to impress.”

“Huh.”

They stood there quietly for a bit, the blonde starting to feel increasingly awkward as the silence drew on; eventually they looked down, away from anything as they scratched the back of their neck. “I should probably get going too; I still have to catch up on my training.”

The redhead grinned, giving them a wave. “Right, go have fun wailin’ on Zack then. I gotta get back to hittin’ the books.”

“Later.”

“Yeah, ja ne.”

“I’m sorry things are so bare in here.”

“It’s not a problem.” Cloud said, crossing his arms as he leaned up against the wall of the tiny apartment. Four walls and a bed was just about all any place really promised in the slums, and sometimes not even that. At least Marle made sure her properties were properly plumbed as well; the room even had it’s own shower.

Tifa frowned as she watched her old friend try and close himself off. “It is a problem though, Cloud. All you’ve got is your old fatigues and those loaner weapons from the Watch; even if you don’t stick around, you’re going to need more than that to live.”

The blonde simply huffed, blushing ever so slightly, and she could only hope he was taking her words to heart.

Things hadn’t been this bad before. He’d never really been that open with his emotions, and it had only gotten worse after everyone had blamed him for what had happened on the mountain, but that shy, goofy kid still managed to shine through despite it all.

But now it was like all those emotions had been dammed up behind whatever Shinra had done to him; hints of him still spilled out here and there, providing some hope that the person she’d known was still in there. But the experience had definitely changed him, and not for the better. Zack had avoided getting into the details, but what little he had relayed spoke of something truly horrific.

And for all of that, somehow the two of them were apparently considered failed experiments. She shook her head.

“I’ll see about getting you set up with a water filter later. For now, why don’t we go for a walk and see if we can’t find some things.”

“I… yeah, okay.” Cloud sighed, straightening up and allowing her to lead him out of the apartment. His response was at least better than she was expecting, but still, she was worried about him; he’d lost five years, and Tifa had no idea what that would do to anyone.

She didn’t have too long to linger on it, though, the pair of them being intercepted by the landlady as they came downstairs. Marle was as spry as ever, her frizzy gray hair drawn tightly back against her head, giving off an air of fastidious tidiness rather seriously at odds the environment under the plate. The old woman was perhaps one of the few people in Sector 7 who could be in any sense considered ‘wealthy.’ “Ah, Tifa, there you are. And that young man, too. I was hoping I’d catch you sometime today.”

“Oh, Marle. Is something the matter?”

“Hardly. I’m just checking in on you, dear, and making sure your new neighbor isn’t causing you any problems.” Well, that wasn’t too surprising really; the lady was very protective of her female tenants, though Tifa had only heard vague and conflicting rumors about her past.

“Don’t worry, Cloud’s been… fine.”

Marle gave a small harrumph, before turning her attention to the blonde, running a critical eye over him. “Now, young man, Tifa’s vouched for your character, but from what I’ve seen you’ve got some growing up to do. I can tell you’re still all twisted up by whatever you saw during the war; damn fool thing running off to sign up with Public Security when you were as young as you must have been. Still, I’m willing to give you a lot of slack. Just don’t do anything to hurt her, you hear?”

Cloud shifted uncomfortably under the older woman’s appraisal, and Tifa had a few moments to internally grimace at the mild dressing down he was getting, but the blonde shook his head a moment later. “I, uh… I won’t. Don’t worry.”

The old woman hummed, seeming somewhat mollified, and Tifa took the opportunity to speak. “In any case, we’ve got a few things we need to pick up, he needs more than just the clothes on his back, really.”

“True enough. Alright, take care you two.”

And with that, they were free to wander. It didn’t take too long before they were out of the little cul de sac where the apartment building was located and making their way through the narrow streets and past occasional cluster of people.

“I’m sorry about Marle; she’s just… a little protective, is all.”

“Don’t worry, it’s fine.”

Tifa frowned, but didn’t reply. Her childhood friend had gone through a lot of abuse when he was younger; he’d never been the most outgoing person, admittedly, and he’d been pegged as ‘weird’ by most of the other kids. But it had gotten so much worse after her father, rather than accept that his daughter could have done something foolish entirely of her own accord, had decided that her nearly dying was Cloud’s fault.

In the time that followed he’d never managed to live it down.

It had probably played far more in to his decision to leave town than he’d ever admit. Him just accepting Marle’s dressing down like that, even it was fairly mild, brought back some bad memories.

At least she didn’t have long to think about it, though; their apartment building was fairly centrally located so it didn’t take long before they’d arrived at the market.

“You have about a thousand gil to work with, right?”

“More, actually.” Cloud said. “Ranma and I got a job done this morning, so… more like two thousand.”

“Oh, that’s good to hear. Gil can be hard to come by down here.” Tifa said, before mention of the little redhead, and the face she was currently looking over pairs of sturdy trousers, reminded her of the girls rather curious purchasing decisions. “Hmm… it’s kind of funny…”

“Hm, what is it?”

“Oh, I was just thinking about how much she must have spent on those books. She really doesn’t seem like the type at first glance, but she’s kind of a bookworm, isn’t she?”

“I guess so.” The blonde agreed, sounding a little amused by the observation, half paying attention to the hooded silver-gray coat he’d picked up. “Whenever she’s not doing anything else, it does seem like she’s reading something.”

Tifa nodded; she had only met Ranma few times so far, but outside of that first meeting in Seventh Heaven, the girl had either been reading when she saw her, or started reading when the chance had presented itself.

And this was noticeably odd. Not the girls literacy, even under the Plate most people knew how to read, but living in the slums tended to adjust ones priorities towards more immediate needs; books, whatever their subject, were a luxury. The fact that the redhead had gone out of her way to get not just one but three of the things before she’d even landed a place to live was… quite unusual.

“Well, she seems to be doing alright at least.” The brunette considered, holding up a shirt to her companions chest. Hmm, blue already worked pretty well with Cloud’s complexion, and it set off that silver coat he’d picked up pretty well. “Think these’ll work?”

“Yeah. Not sure about the fit, though.”

“A lot of the time you’ll have to settle for ‘close enough’ down here. Still, good enough for now?”

Cloud nodded, and soon they’d settled the bill and were on their way. There were a few other places she figured he’d need to see, particularly the building housing the laundromat and public showers—not that Cloud would need the latter—and there was still time in the day.

She was glad to be spending it helping an old friend get settled in.

It was hard to believe it was already a few days into December. Ranma had been stuck on this other world, Gaia, for over half a month at this point and had made… well, not no progress, but not a lot. At least he’d gained a basic understanding of the worlds history and probably wouldn’t come across as a complete idiot if it came down to it.

And in the process, the tiny redhead had managed, somewhat, to find additional leads when it came to this materia stuff; the book he’d gotten on the subject hadn’t listed any that could be responsible for him being here, but the gravity and summoning spells suggested that they were his best bet.

As for his other issues… well, she wasn’t any closer to figuring out why she was enjoying certain parts of this excursion as much as she was, beyond the fact it was definitely attached to her being thoroughly in girl-mode. She was, after all, a manly man, even if she was currently stuck sporting f-cups and a truly fantastic set of curves. Maybe it was just that she’d really needed to assistance of others to keep her masculinity propped up, which suggested the insidious quality of turning into a girl, and the danger it presented to even the manliest of men.

Trying to keep this in mind hadn’t particularly helped with keeping her femininity under control.

In fact, she had grown so frustrated with only having a single dress and some pairs of very plain underwear that she’d broken down and purchased a few outfits and a couple far lacier, far racier undies to augment his wardrobe. They were all dangerously feminine, and very much in line with the punk aesthetic she’d kinda accidentally adopted.

She’d also picked up some fishnet stockings that had actually managed to pass muster, and had scavenged some reasonably intact furniture to make the shoddy apartment she was living in marginally more livable. And, thanks to a string of bounties she, Cloud and Ayla had shared, she had the money she needed to continue her self-directed learning after blowing her earlier bounties on clothes and food.

The redhead decided this meant it was time to head back to Plate 8, before it got so late in the day that the shop closed. Given what happened last time, she’d decided that maybe a little discretion was in order.

Which is why she was wearing a somewhat different outfit, cutoff shorts, a close fitting and ever so-slightly cropped black t-shirt for a band she’d only heard like, once, and a substantially oversized hoodie that managed to both disguise her most notable features while still leaving her cute as all getout. Maintaining her cuteness was very important.

Almost as important as learning what materia would ‘unsummon’ her, or whatever. Something she wouldn’t find out sitting around here. “Well, guess I’d better get going.”

She knew she had to be very careful this time. It wasn’t like the actual trip was dangerous or anything, it just kinda took a little while to make the climb given the sheer ridiculousness of Midgar. The problem was Public “Security.” Individually, those guys weren’t really any kind of threat to her.

But the company had to have thousands of the jerks on their payroll and…

And she had wondered, when she first heard the news, if the girl that had been killed by Public Security had gotten caught in the storm of bullets she’d escaped, or if she were some other poor sap the company had taken their frustrations out on. Either way, it just meant she needed to be even more careful; those trigger happy jerks were too loose with their fire for it to be worth confronting them anywhere where someone else could potentially catch a bullet.

Ranma had had enough bad dreams over the past week about playing a role in some innocent bystanders death as it was; she wasn’t going to risk it happening again. For a moment she simply considered not going at all, but that would be giving up on returning home, on healing the ever growing ache deep inside her, on seeing the girls she loved.

Surrendering to her fate was something she simply couldn’t accept.

And so, she went.

Fortunately, for the sake of Ranma’s conscience, she had a particularly powerful advantage in pulling this off. The Musabetsu Kakuto Ryu had been adapted from the art of Ninjutsu for purposes that were best left unmentioned. Fortunately, for the sake of women and Nyannichuan curse havers everywhere, a certain shrunken old lech had finally died when he’d gotten ambushed and promptly exorcised by a horde of furious miko about a year and a half ago.

But that, of course, was not the end of the style.

Of the two descendant schools, the Tendou Ryu favored armed combat, and was the closer to a traditional school of Bujutsu, focused on the usage of traditional weapons; spears like the yari and naginata, katana, particularly the ōdachi, as well as training in the yumi, with more of a focus on the shorter hankyū style of bow. Unarmed combat remained important, but was somewhat secondary in focus.

The Saotome Ryu was somewhat murkier and far more eclectic; though Ranma was far from untrained in the use of weapons, Genma had focused primarily on unarmed combat, and it was, technically, a school of Kempo first and foremost. But her Old Man had also emphasized the ability to move quickly and unseen, far more than the Tendou Ryu, and to such an extent that it might almost be considered a set of Ninja arts.

Indeed, one could easily be forgiven for mistaking her for a Shinobi, or rather, given the form she was stuck in, a Kunoichi.

Certainly, the girl she passed by on her way up seemed to think so. It had happened like this, Ranma hopped up on to a girder, the other girl hopped down from above, and the two had barely avoided smacking into each other; this had been rather disruptive, and the two had had to spend a few seconds windmilling their arms and trying to keep each other from going over.

Finally, the immediate crisis passed they took a few moments to catch their breath, the pair turned their attention to the person they’d almost just run into.

“Hey, watch where you’re going!” Came a furious but whispered rebuke.

“Me?! You’re the one that almost ran into me!” Similarly mad, similarly whispered.

Which of the two said what was not particularly important, imagine it in either order and it works perfectly fine. Ranma crossed her arms and glared, the taller, skinnier girl, her appearance shrouded under a tattered gappa made to look kinda like a whatsit… one of those fairy bear things, put her hands on her hips and also glared.

“What’s the big idea? There aren’t any other operations today!”

“Operations?” The redhead asked, quirking up an eyebrow. “Listen, I don’t know who you think I am, but I ain’t caught up in anything like that.”

“Pull the other one, you’ve definitely got Ninja training.” The other girl said, clearly suspicious. “Don’t tell me you’ve gone rogue?”

That last was asked in a decidedly dangerous tone, but Ranma shook her head. “Seriously, I don’t know what yer talkin’ about. It’s just my family style, I ain’t any kind of Shinobi.”

“Riiiiight.” The other girl drawled out. “And your family style just so happens to include infiltration techniques?”

“It’d make sense if you met my Pops. He’s uh… well, I ain’t gonna sugar coat it, kind of a petty crook?”

“That knows Ninjustu?!” The other girl demanded, sounding far less appalled than Ranma was expecting. Actually, not even appalled at all, more like surprised, which she guessed wasn’t too shocking when it came down to it; the job of a Ninja more or less required that one have a somewhat flexible interpretation of respecting of other peoples property.

“Uh, sort of? It’s kinda hard to explain.”

“Uh huh.” The Kunoichi sounded unimpressed. It really was hard to explain though! Argh!

“Listen, I know what you’re thinking, but I’ve never even been to Wutai. My Old Man raised me on the road. Geez.” She didn’t bother hiding her irritation; the other girl cocked her head, looking her right in the eyes, and the sense of incipient violence faded from her.

Actually, Ranma was kinda getting the feeling that the girl was starting to piece things together in her mind, but whatever story she was putting together was gonna be totally wrong. Still, she might as well let her think whatever than try and fight her assumptions, whatever they ended up being. If she had to actually explain her past the girl would probably think she was crazy.

Fortunately, the Ninja girl seemed satisfied with whatever she had come up with, and held out her hand, gripping the redhead wrist firmly when she returned the gesture. “Name’s Yuffie.”

“Ranma.”

“So, if you don’t mind me asking, if you aren’t working for us, what are you doing up here?”

“Eh, it’s kinda personal? Got some stuff I’m tryin’ to figure out. Anyway, you’re a Ninja, right? Doncha kinda stand out wearin’ that?” Ranma asked, giving her fellow climber a once over.

“It hides my appearance better than that hoodie you’re wearing!” The taller girl girl snarked back, before she looked to the side and tented her index fingers in front of her. “B-besides, I like moogles.”

Eh? Oh, right, the bear fairy things. “Uh… okay?”

“Anyway, I shouldn’t have to remind you to keep your head down; Shinra’s up to something.”

Ranma nodded, and with that the other girl was off. Moments later, so was she.

Fortunately, the rest of the journey was uneventful, Ranma taking care to avoid the streets, and limiting her exposure on the rooftops on the off chance that more of those robot things were flying around. Soon, she was at her destination and, after making sure there weren’t any Public Security goons on the street, set down inside the alley she was sheltering in and walked the half a block or so to the book shop.

The bell rang her entry, and she gave a greeting as she lowered her hood. “Hey, Anna! Sorry I took so long.”

Unfortunately, for all the versatility and capability her art provided her, the Saotome Ryu had some serious limitations; in this particular case though, it was less a limitation of the art, and more a limitation of her knowledge. Certainly, while her family style was quite aware of the perils of a hunters blind, it was somewhat less effective at sussing out, say, a parabolic microphone and a digital camera hiding in the darkened window of a second story apartment.

Like the one that one of the Turks more promising junior agents, Elena, was adjusting the gain on. The girl who’d shown up was short, and though she was wearing an oversized hoodie it couldn’t completely hide the girls figure. Or for that matter, her terrible taste in music.

Seven Sector Stomp, seriously? Come on, those guys were complete poseurs. If she had to listen to punk rock, she should really start with sCrap Pile.

“Hmmm?” Came the owners voice, the older woman likely looking up from whatever she was doing. They had elected to only minimally wire the shop, a couple listening devices here and there. Most of the surveillance was set up here, directly across the street, in a second story apartment. “Oh, don’t worry dear. Ranma, was it?”

Bingo.

“It’s her.”

In another world, another time, what would happened next was this; Ranma and Anna would chat, and she would pick up a number of introductory books on materia, a history of the Wutai war, and a manga tankouban. As she left with her purchases, she would have bumped, quite literally, into Rude, dressed sharply in black suit and designer sunglasses. She would have felt a jab from where he’d ‘accidentally’ poked her with what seemed to be a pen, for which he would apologize.

And then, as she started to tell him it wasn’t a problem, the world would wobbly madly, colors blending before everything spun into blackness.

And, noticing her starting to lose her balance as her consciousness went under, he would stop what he was doing and catch her before she fell, seeming like a good Samaritan.

That illusion would only last until an unmarked black sedan drove around the corner and the unconscious redhead was loaded in the back seat, the Turk close behind. Target secured, the car would sedately drive away, turning quietly around the corner.

She would never be seen again.

But in this time, this world, the Turks were merely interested in watching, and listening. And now that they knew that she’d come back here once, they’d watch and listen, quietly, patiently, until finally, the order to make their move came in.

RELAY DRAGON : RELAY DRAGON

REPORTING AGENT 410457

UPPER LEVEL RECON COMPLETE : ACTIVITY HIGH IN ALL AREAS : A44, A52, A65, A86 VULNERABLE : ROUTE 4 POTENTIALLY COMPROMISED, PLEASE ADVISE

ADDITIONAL : ADDITIONAL

ENCOUNTERED POSSIBLE ROGUE AGENT OR LOST NIN DURING EXFILTRATION : SUBJECT DESCRIPTION AS FOLLOWS

RED HAIR, BLUE EYES, HEIGHT 150, WEIGHT 45, SKILL UNKNOWN-HIGH, ALIAS GIVEN RANMA : CLAIMS NON-WUTAI ORIGIN, RAISED ON ROAD BY “POPS” : DEFINITE NINJA TRAINING : SCHOOL UNDETERMINED

REPORTING AGENT 410457 STANDING BY

Chapter Text

It was getting into night as the door swung open, admitting a short redhead into Seventh Heaven as the bar settled into it’s evening routine; patrons in various stages of inebriation clustered around the bar and the tables, glassware clinking as the space filled with the warm scent of bar food. Fortunately, Barret had a no-tolerance policy for smoking indoors, so anyone with a cigarette was on the porch out front.

Ranma generally preferred not to hang around once it got to be this late, but Barret had asked her over for some reason and she’d decided to humor the big man.

But the burly mercenary, or whatever he was, was nowhere to be seen. The barkeep, however, was, and she gave her a wave as she entered. “Hey, Tifa. Barret wanted me for somethin’, he around?”

“I’m afraid you just missed him. It’s nothing complicated anyway, since you’re such a bookworm—”

“Hey!” There was a round of chuckles, as she protested the absurd image she’d accidentally built up. Honestly! It wasn’t as if she’d be reading all these boring things normally.

Tifa gave a gentle laugh, before continuing as if she hadn’t even been interrupted.

“—we figured it wouldn’t be a problem if you helped me watch over Marlene tonight.” From behind the other woman’s legs peered a tiny girl with black hair in a white dress.

“Uh, hey there squirt.” She greeted awkwardly. Children had given her no end of problems in the past, and if you were to ask her she’d insist she was bad with kids. Unfortunately, Marlene didn’t seem to agree.

“Hello!” The little girl greeted cheerfully, giving her a charming smile; a moment later she hid her face behind Tifa’s legs for a few seconds before peeking out again. “You’re cool.”

Babysitting? Really? “I… okay, geez. Guess you’ll be kinda busy with the bar anyway.”

“Marlene can take of herself pretty well, but I can’t keep an eye on her all the time while I’m working. I would really appreciate the help.”

“I mean…” Ranma began before looking down at the child’s smiling gaze, and breathed out a sigh. “Okay, sure. Let me put my stuff down somewhere. Heck, if you need me to pick up the slack, I’ve worked in a couple bars before.”

“Oh, that’d be appreciated. You can drop your things behind the bar, if you’d like.”

The redhead sighed, figuring it would probably be a pretty long night. At least she was already dressed for the job, unexpected as it was. “Yeah, thanks.”

Her jacket would probably get in the way, so she hung it on the wall behind the bar, set her bag down in the corner, and gave the hem of her shirt a tug to smooth out the wrinkles; she’d probably be a little too busy for the coming hours to really spend a lot of time studying.

Still, closing time would come sooner or later.

“Alright, let’s get to it.” And with that, she did.

Waitressing was old hat for her at this point, and she could more or less do the job on autopilot, save for the occasional rowdy customer. That didn’t mean things were simple, exactly, but she knew the job, whether it was in a bar or a “family restaurant.”

At least Seventh Heaven didn’t have one of those damn uniforms, even if, between her and Tifa, it was currently kind of running the same gimmick.

She’d come in just before the evening rush, and even with two of them, plus a surprisingly helpful 4 year old, things soon got remarkably hectic. Customers spilled into the bar, and before long every seat, and a fair amount of floor space, was occupied.

And remained occupied, as the people visiting bar gradually cycled out were rapidly replaced by new, fresh faced patrons looking to get absolutely blitzed.

It wasn’t like she was really expecting to get paid for volunteering like this, but she was getting tips for it, which she hadn’t been expecting.

Usually it was only Americans… but then, she wasn’t in Japan any more. Given how tight operations down here must have been, whoever worked in a place like this either owned the business or relied on the customers for their pay.
As if she needed more confirmation for how much life as a grounder sucked.

Of course, a lot of that was a familiar form of sucking, the job she’d taken on being more or less unchanged between worlds. She guessed the main difference was that folks back in Tokyo had more money to spend, and thus tended to get rather more severely drunk.

Not that Seventh Heaven was lacking in that respect, given the man who’d just waved her down, obviously wobbling even while seated.

“Caaann Iihhh—” His words cut off in a tremendous belch, and before he could pick his thoughts back up, she cut in.

“Hey, pal. I think you may have had a few too many.”

“Nuh… Iym fihn. To’ally fihne.” The man slurred out in response. “Ge-ge’ me ‘nother Bawghle ‘ead wouldja?”

Ranma was only half paying attention to the guys drinking buddy, but it was evident she’d caught his attention from how he’d started up, at more or less the same time. “Yerrr shoo prettyyyy, you shou-shhuuuld really le’ yer haaaaiir down.”

“Great, both of you have had too much, haven’t ya? Come on, up! Time to go home!”

“Ihhh’m goooood, dun’ worrhy ‘bou’ mee…”

“Sheeriously, yoouuuud be sho much prettierr if you le’ yerrrr hairr dowwwn; why donsha lemme…”

Ugh, of course they were going to be stubborn. Ranma cast a glance toward Tifa, and the bartender not so subtly signaled that she should get the two drunks out of the bar, post haste.

And as her attention was oh so briefly occupied, she felt a nearly painful tug on her hair, followed more by the sensation than the sound of a string snapping. Almost immediately her tightly bound braid began to unravel. “Hey!”

She rounded on the drunk responsible, the man’s smiling expression never wavering despite the glare she fixed him with. “What’s the big idea, pal?!”

“Sheee, ain’ tha’ be’err? Shoo prettyyyy.”

Scowling, Ranma snatched the broken dragons-whisker from the mans fingers, and held it delicately between her lips, eager to avoid damaging it further. Grabbing the pair by their shirt collars she ignored their confused protests, bodily hauled the men out the door and tossed them out onto the street.

“Ya ain’t welcome back ‘til you learn some manners!” She yelled down at the thoroughly soused men, then stalked back inside. This seemed to sober up a fair number of the less far gone customers, who seemed like they might be reconsidering the tiny redhead. From the back, Tifa gave an approving nod.

She stomped towards the bar as she examined the damaged memento; it wasn’t like she truly needed it any more, especially since she was stuck as a girl, but it meant a lot to her. Unfortunately, it had snapped almost right in the middle, and the gleaming silver strand had turned a decidedly dull gray, whatever magical properties it once had now faded.

Slipping behind the bar, she stuffed the broken whisker in her jacket pocket. “Dammit, those lousy jerks! You got something I can tie my hair with?”

“Sorry Ranma, I should have stepped in there.” Tifa said, passing her a white ribbon.

“Not your fault, you were pretty busy.” She grumbled, as she started to tie her hair back into a low ponytail, reconsidered the look, and retied it high on the back of her head. She took a moment to give fluff the hair out with a bit of a scowl as she considered the loss of the dragons-whisker. Unfortunately neither of them had much time to commiserate over the problem of rowdy drunks, and soon it was back to work.

The station guards hadn’t really had a chance to put up a fight. Especially with the SOLDIER—with Zack’s help, the men guarding the platform had been swept aside nearly without effort. They guys inside the station had had the chance to actually try and fight back, not that it had gone any better for them. That was the first time he’d really had a chance to see the guy put in work, and damn, could he ever.

He knew he couldn’t let himself trust the dark haired man, but despite himself, he liked the guy.

And that was dangerous. Barret knew he had to be ready to put bullets into the man in case he turned out to be playing them, and it would be all the harder if he didn’t want to.

Somehow, it seemed like they’d avoided raising the alarm so far, though he had no idea how. It wasn’t as if they were being quiet. Sure, the big man wasn’t opposed to stealth, but everyone involved knew that even if he’d had a team full of professionals they’d have blown their cover sooner or later.

They were taking other precautions, anyway. Even if the olive drab rain slicker made him look like he was wearing a damn tent.

”Listen,” Zack had said, back when he’d joined in on the planning. “the harder we make it for Shinra to identify us, the harder it will be for them to find and stop you. That especially goes for you and me…”

At least the bulky clothes they were all wearing cut the winter chill; during the day it was still hot, even at this time of year, but the night was dangerously cold, especially up this high.

It wasn’t like he wasn’t aware of the utility of hiding his features, but he’d wanted to make a Statement with this attack. That he, that they weren’t scared of the big bad megacorp; he’d been somewhat overruled.

And, as reluctant as he was to admit it, for good reason. He stood out like a sore thumb, and according to Zack he was on the run from Shinra already; as for his team, while Biggs and Wedge were unknowns, Jessie had a legally recognized corporate identity, and vulnerable family members right were the Turks could easily get their hands on them.

And while it wasn’t possible for them to go totally unseen, they could at least make what Shinra did see useless.

“Alright, that should be the inner perimeter.” Zack said, as the cell came to a stop. On the level below was a patrolling guard in front of a wire fence crowned with spirals of razor wire; beyond was a narrow passage between fenced off industrial equipment, leading directly to the giant cooling tower of Mako Reactor 1.

“Camera.” Biggs signed, pointing at the silent monitor, and Barret nodded.

“… CCTV cameras all over the place. There’s no way we can get all of them.” Biggs had stated, as they went over their limited reconnaissance. “But if we take out the close ones, we’ll make it that much harder for them to get an id.”

”Yeah. Good thinking. Aim here.” Zack, being familiar with the design, had indicated a spot on the photo. “The camera itself is protected by a bubble of ballistic glass, but the casing is just sheet metal; the mechanism and power supply are there, you’ll take it right out.”

Barret gave a hand signal, and the slender guerrilla, his shape hidden under a particularly formless coat, raised his custom Peacemaker, putting a pair of bullets into the security camera. Smoke spilled out of the machine, as the SOLDIER leapt down to deal with the surprised looking guard who’d been patrolling below. Though the man was clearly on guard, it was over before he even had a chance to respond, a single slash putting the man down for the count.

Most of them had kept their usual weapons, but Zack had changed to a far less unique blade than his buster sword, a shorter, narrower weapon, similarly patterned to the weapons wielded by 3rd class SOLDIERs, if substantially less ostentatious. It didn’t seem to be slowing him down much, and Barret gave a snort.

“Okay, get that fence down!” He ordered, as he and the others scrambled down the stairs; Jessie pulled a handheld blowtorch from inside the bulky, hooded sweatshirt she was wearing, lowered a welding mask, knelt down and promptly got to work. Wedge peered down the alley that the wire gate was blocking, while Biggs stood, pistol ready as he he scanned the alcove. “Quick now! Ain’t got time to stick around here.”

“I’ll keep an eye on things. They have to have noticed us by now.” Zack said, peering towards the back entrance they’d just slipped through.

“Yeah, surprised we got through clean as we did.” Barret agreed as he lifted his gun arm, now featuring an empty glove taped to the bottom. Being strapped like this, even more than his sheer size and musculature, would leave him easily identifiable if anyone got a good look.

Even just a little bit of confusion might make him harder to find.

Fortunately the fence didn’t present much of an obstacle, and Jessie had sawed an opening in it in only a minute; they’d be long gone by the time any patrols came through to check on the camera.

They plunged down the narrow alley beyond, weaving between the warehouses cluttered around the base of the reactor, and soon broke out into the area before the main entrance, a massive security door taking up the far side of an open courtyard. In front of it a cluster of troopers milled about in clear agitation, but they were not prepared to receive an attack.

By their sides, Shinra’s breed of mutated guard dogs growled in warning, tentacles whipping in agitation, but it was too late.

Barret barely had to give the signal to open fire.

It was probably incorrect to really call what followed a fight; the air came alive with the chatter of automatic weapons as Zack and Biggs darted to the side in order to flank. In the end, it wasn’t necessary. Their surprise was complete, and the best any of the troopers managed in response to the raking fire was to hit the deck, one of them managing a few panicked shots before being cut down.

Things didn’t go any better for their dogs, running into Zack like he was a brick wall. Biggs barely had to do anything.

With the guard force down, they rushed on through, taking the undefended bridge.

Ahead of them lay the Reactor entrance, and the chance to change the course of history for the better. “Wedge, you watch the side entrance; if anyone shows up, pop ‘em.”

It wouldn’t do for them to have to fight their way out on a time limit.

“You got it, boss!” The younger man, kid really, saluted cheekily, and the hooded man ran off to hold secure their exit. He’d prefer to have more folks up here to help guard things, but they’d had serious limits to the resources they could swing now that they were on the outs with HQ.

“Let’s move!”

It was a moments work to override the gate security protocols, and as the series of armored doors slowly retracted, he and his crew stalked forward. There would be one last security checkpoint before the main elevator, and he was eager to show them what they could do.

Had Barret known why the guard forces were so disorganized it would not have stopped him; that Shinra was allowing this attack to proceed would have amused him, and who was he to turn down so generous an offer? If the company wanted to be hit, he’d happily oblige.

If he’d known why they wanted him to succeed, however, things might have gone differently.

Hard soled leather clacked authoritatively against the marble as Heidegger exited the elevator, adjutant at his side. The strategic operations center was not nearly so lavish, but he didn’t mind; his office had its own perks, after all.
Holding up a tablet, the officer pacing him cleared his throat. “Sir, the terrorists have breached the perimeter.”

“Already? These rats move quickly.” Even if the Executive Office hadn’t decided to give them a hand they might have been able to force their way into the reactor on their own. Video from a distant camera relayed them cutting down the last of the external guard force and bypassing the security gate.

The bearded general grumbled in irritation; footage this distant would by and large not be terribly useful for propaganda purposes he mused, as tiny figures scattered and fell with clinical blandness. “Don’t you have anything closer?”

“I’m sorry sir, they’ve been systematically destroying cameras along their route.”

“Hmph, they’re good then.” He handed the tablet back as the two proceeded towards the office of Rupert Shinra, the President and CEO of his eponymously named company.

“Sir.” For a few moments the only sound was footsteps clicking on stone before the officer spoke up again. “General Heidegger do you… do you really think it’s the Wutaiians, sir?”

The burly senior officer bit back a sneer as he heard his adjutants hesitance. He was barely a man, really. He was an able administrative assistant, but if it came down to it he knew the youth would fail the same tests that he had succeeded. “Is something wrong, Lieutenant?”

“I—sir, no sir. I’m just—we won didn’t we? The war’s over.” The imbecile sounded genuinely confused.

Heidegger snorted. How damnably naive. The boy was barely suitable as a peacetime officer if that was the limit of his understanding. That this was how their propaganda after the war had managed to sell the ceasefire was irrelevant; an officer in his army should know better. “Victory? Yes, a great one at that. But tell me, Lieutenant, what did our triumph gain us?”

“I—I’m sorry sir?” He favored the kid with a condescending smile as the pair slowed.

“Certainly the Wutaiian dogs suffered defeat. We ruined their army, flattened their cities, and in the end even their government collapsed. But what do we have to show for our efforts? We gained no new territories, no new resources, no recompense for our war dead. Not even a favorable trade treaty.”

His adjutant shrunk back, realizing now that he was being chastised by his mercurial commander. The general stroked his beard and chuckled. “We extended our hand to our defeated opponent with magnanimity, and accepted their cease fire; but it seems to me, Lieutenant, that all we’ve really gained from our last war is a foe even more implacably devoted to our destruction. Do you understand?”

“Y-yes sir! Understood sir!” His subordinate stuttered, saluting with mechanical stiffness.

Of course, that wasn’t entirely accurate. By the end, only his army had managed to maintain the offensive, as other Shinra formations found themselves bogged down in ambushes and struggling with severed supply lines. Only he’d had the will to do what had to be done to carry on fighting, no matter what his enemies or his own men had thought of it.

Which was why Heidegger was now the Chief Security Officer, in charge of an entire division of the company. In a way, he supposed he owed the Wutaiians for his current position.

“Ten years of hard fighting,” Heidegger mused, signaling his adjutant to continue their walk. “and those dogs are still ready to do battle. I’d almost admire them if they were willing to have a proper stand up fight.”

Before long they arrived at the double doors leading to President Shinra’s luxurious office, and the quartet of guards standing watch before the doors saluted sharply at their approach. Heidegger sketched a salute of his own, nodded to his adjutant, and stepped through the double doors.

He strode down the luxurious red carpet up to the CEO’s starkly appointed desk, a holographic display following the progress of the intruders. The President barely paid him a glance, and that was well. “President. We have a preliminary report.”

Without a word, the other man gestured for him to continue. Heidegger nodded.

“Intelligence believes this may be a cell of the terrorist organization AVALANCHE. They are still working over the data, but given their point of ingress they must have managed to secure passage on one of the supply trains to the Reactor 01 industrial zone. I suspect that they must have had assistance in forging identification that would let them bypass the security scanners.”

That, whether it turned out to be the case or not, would mean additional purges; as useful as it was to his position, he’d have to be careful not to get caught up in them himself.

“Sensible.” Was the Presidents only response. “Any relation to my would be assassins in Port Junon?”

“We’re looking into it, sir.” In truth, Heidegger was confident that the man behind the attempt was none other than the CEO’s only son, Rufus, but it did not bear mentioning. After all, he was confident that, in any power struggle that emerged, his control of the military would ensure that he came out on top.

He was almost saddened by the necessity, but the little brat didn’t have what it took to secure the companies legacy once the old man passed on.

There was little love between himself and Rupert Shinra, but there was a degree of mutual respect between them. They were men of a kind, after all, and they understood what made the other tick almost as a matter of instinct. Both of them knew power well, knew what was required to take it, to hold it, and to use it.

And in this shared understanding, they possessed the same murderous idea of the value of other human beings. In their world, reality as they understood it, people were only worth what you could get out of them.

It was, by most measures, a quiet night, totally unremarkable. But the auburn haired woman knew better. Tonight was different; she could feel it in the air, in the concrete beneath her feet, in the flow of processed mako flooding through the city. However abused it might be, the lifestream still spoke.

It still knew.

She shivered, though not due to the chill. As cold as the upper plates could get at night, especially now that it was winter, she had plenty of tricks for keeping warm; besides, the waifish look she favored was pretty good for selling flowers.

Though selling flowers was not particularly on her mind at the moment.

Something was about to happen. Something big and… mostly how it was supposed to?

She had a feeling, something she couldn’t place, that the line of history as it was expected to proceed had somehow changed almost violently from the course set. The Planet could be damnably vague when it wanted to be, which, she had to admit with some irritation, was practically all of the time.

She’d receive hints, feelings, nudges in the direction that Gaia wanted her to go. Occasionally she’d receive actual visions, things that felt certain, but for the past few weeks the lifestream had been somehow… diffident, almost confused.
As if it somehow wasn’t quite certain what was supposed to happen next.

And, as nervous as it left her, Aerith Gainsborough couldn’t help but feel oddly hopeful.

Chapter Text

After only an hour or so Ranma had managed to get a handle on the particular rhythm that Seventh Heaven had, the pace of orders, the general rowdiness of the crowd, how the space and it’s usage directed her to and fro. Frustratingly, she and Tifa had had only enough time to exchange a few words that weren’t her relaying what drinks a table wanted or the brunette directing her to ‘politely remove’ a problem customer.

She’d had more of a chance to talk to Marlene, since the little girl was also out on the floor, doing her best to help out.

Unfortunately, the particularly hectic pace meant that she had absolutely no time to devote to her studies; she figured it would probably calm down in another hour or two, but by that time she wasn’t sure she’d have the energy to actually think about anything.

In a way it was almost pleasant; for a little while at least, she was allowed no space to worry about her situation, the people she’d left behind, the increasingly unlikely seeming task of finding a way home, or even just the day to day hazard of keeping food on the table. All these problems she couldn’t simply punch didn’t have the room to breathe if she kept busy.

Just take orders, deliver food and drinks, pat Marlene on the head and repeat. Easy.

She could live like this. It wouldn’t be a great life, but at least she wouldn’t be alone; already she was starting to form bonds of friendship, however tenuous, with a few people here. In time, those bonds would grow stronger, and she’d set down roots of her own.

Maybe that was all she could ask for. Maybe…

Maybe she should remind herself of all the other scrapes she’d gotten out of before! It was way too soon to give up, and it always would be. Being a barmaid or part of some pseudo-legal paramilitary wasn’t on her bucket list, and she sure as hell didn’t want to spend the rest of her life under the stinking pie-plate Shinra had stuffed everyone down here under!

One day she’d make it out of here.

This fierce promise to herself would probably have been accompanied by a dramatic look and a clenched fist if she wasn’t in the midst of carrying out a couple pizzas and a fistful of steins. As it was she had to school her features a bit as she delivered the order.

A moment later she was grumbling as she returned to the bar. “It usually this busy?”

“This is a bit hectic, but we’re getting into the holiday season.” Tifa admitted as she finished mixing up one of the house specialties. “Wish I had more time to chat but we’re kinda swamped.”

“Yeah, a break would be kinda nice.” The redhead agreed, spotting someone raising their tab. She gave Tifa a wave and was back to it.

Just a busy, empty evening with nothing special to it. She sorted the bill, politely shooed the customers out, and was in the process of wiping down the table when a pair of familiar faces walked through the front door. “Hey Cloud, Ayla! Wasn’t expectin’ to see you tonight.”

“Hey girl! Lookin’ fine, I see.” Ayla waved cheerfully, walking up towards the table with a broad smile.

“Ranma.” Cloud’s greeting was typically subdued, though he had had to raise his voice in order to be heard over the crowd.

“I see you finally got yourself some shorts, not that they cover all that much.”

“Yeah? Well, I got nice legs.”

The older woman chuckled heartily. “If you got ‘em, flaunt ‘em, right?”

“Of course!” Ranma grinned as she finished wiping down the table. “Just about sorted here. Why doncha get settled in and I’ll be back to take orders in a few?”

Giving a jaunty wave, she patrolled the bar, gathering up a smattering of empty glasses and other junk to clean or toss before she circled back around, finding her friends in quiet conversation. “Yo, sorry bout the delay.”

“Don’t worry about it.” Cloud said. “Kinda surprised to see you waiting tables, though.”

Ranma shrugged, not entirely sure what to say. It beat starving? Yeah, that’d go over well.

Ayla grinned broadly, glancing between the two, chin nestled comfortably in a palm. “Don’t tell me you’re worried Cloud. She can take care of herself. ‘Sides, I don’t blame her; the pays better after all.”

“It ain’t like that. Barret just asked me to keep an eye on Marlene, and I kinda talked myself into helping out around the bar.” Ranma explained, pulling out his notebook, and casually twirling a pencil around his fingers.

“You’re a good kid, Ranma.”

“I ain’t a kid Ayla. I’ve had to work odd jobs like this to get by before, anyway, so it ain’t a big deal; whaddya got in mind?” The two soon had their orders sorted and with a wave Ranma was off to the bar. “Sorry I can’t stick around.”

“It’s cool.” Ayla grinned, and with that, it was back to the grind.

No one was even looking for them.

They’d ditched the bulky disguises over the edge of the platform, and secured their weapons in a couple gym bags, leaving them mostly looking like… well, like a bunch of cheap help from the Slums. In the jumpsuit and ball cap he was wearing, no one would pay him much attention. And though he wasn’t sure how, he’d been assured that the camera situation on the streets had been taken care of.

AVALANCHE supposedly had a mole in Shinra’s corporate offices. If he were lucky, they had taken care of everything on their end.

“Hands in pockets, eyes forward.” He reminded himself, not letting himself look around too obviously; rubbernecking would make him stand out among the mostly blaisé pedestrians wandering around the late night streets.

There was just one problem, he mused as he drifted to a stop in front of a crosswalk.

“Hey there, hot stuff.” Jessie grinned from beside him, having gone instead for a slightly upscale undercity look, clad in tight fitting jeans, artfully ragged blouse, and a high cropped jacket. “Say, you have the time?”

Zack sighed, making a show of checking his watch. Technically they were supposed to split up, and they had, but there were only so many reasonably direct routes to the station from where they’d started, and his route and the slender technical expert’s had crossed. “Quarter after 11.”

She tapped her chin dramatically, waiting as the crosswalk slowly ticked down. “Well, I’ll have plenty of time to catch the next train; maybe you wouldn’t mind keeping me company while I wait?”

Unable to help himself he turned his head her way, giving her a poleaxed expression as he tried to parse the statement. “Huh?!”

Jessie’s grin was full of mischief, and she placed a hand playfully on her hip. “Well, it’s a cold night, y’know, and I could use a little help keeping warm.”

Behind her, a man shot him an envious glare, even as he was left blinking in confusion. What the hell was she doing?

“I-I’m sorry, what?!” He shook his head, deciding on a new tack. “Jessie, we’re just co-workers. Hitting me with that on the way home from work is… kinda forward.”

“Awww, don’t be a stranger! You’re so stiff all the time, I figured you could use the chance to unwind.” Stiff, really? Well, okay he was kinda trying to manage that vibe but… from behind someone chuckled, even as another pedestrian cleared their throat.

“Walk signal.”

“Huh? Oh, right.”

A hand clapped him on the shoulder, as a burly guy in a heavy jacket scooted around him. “Have fun, pupscout.”

“Hey!” Zack shook his head and hurried across the intersection, the redhead close beside, eyes twinkling mischievously. Goddess, did both of the girls he knew with red hair have to be such little gremlins?

At least Ranma hadn’t displayed any interest, he wasn’t quite sure how he’d handle that.

It was only another couple blocks before they reached the station; now if only she’d stop giggling and sending him hot looks. He wasn’t really sure how to handle someone coming onto him so obviously, and finally he sighed. “Jessie, you seem like a nice girl, but we barely know each other.”

“And I know a good way to fix that.” She countered, and his mouth fished open for a few seconds as she casually outmaneuvered him. “It’ll just take a bit of time, and I bet we’ll get real close.”

“Uh… that is…”

Someone leaned on their horn, and the two quieted for a moment while noise blared. Maybe the middle of the sidewalk wasn’t the best place for trying to hash out this misplaced romantic interest.

“So,” she continued, once the honking had ceased, “’that is…’ a great idea, right?”

Did she ever stop? He shook his head, only just starting to realize how damn thirsty Jessie Raspberry was.

He supposed the only thing for it was to be direct. “I’m sorry, I’m just not interested.”

“Oh, don’t be like that. You’ll never have fun if you’re not willing to take a chance on anything, you know.”

Zack stared for a moment as the slender redhead favored with a smoldering look. “Listen… I have a girlfriend.”

“Hmmm, really? Well, that just makes this all the more fun then, doesn’t it?” And then she stood up on her tiptoes and kissed him, right on the lips. She pressed forward, her lips soft, stealing his breath with gentle determination; he could feel his blood heating, his body responding to the little firebrand with a not-unpleasant flush.

Finally she pulled back with a little, plosive mwah, and gave him a saucy wink. “So, how do I stack up, handsome?”

It took a moment for his brain to get back on the rails, and even then he had no idea how to respond, no idea what he was even going to say. “Jessie, I—“

Unfortunately, neither of them would find the answer any time soon; there was a rippling crackle of explosions, and the two of them jumped, having nearly forgotten what they’d even been doing up here in the first place. From where they were standing, they had an excellent view as Mako Reactor Number One went up, hurling fire into the night sky.

It had started with a weird-not-weird feeling; in truth, the pulse of whatever the hell it was was so indistinct that he really hadn’t paid it any mind. Ranma had gotten hit with similar sensations all through her life and had just taken them as proof, as Pops had, that his instincts were just that strong, picking up distant threats and other powerful martial artists far beyond the range of most. Because what else could it be?

It wasn’t like Gaia was lacking in terms of strong fighters, with Shinra having an entire corps of elite swordsmen, so the redhead hadn’t had any reason to consider that it might be something else. Why would she? Even a few of the normal watch members had gotten into the vicinity of being her peers, despite their reliance on firearms.

So the pulse of… alarm? had washed over him and he’d immediately discarded it as being beneath concern; if it were a problem, she was sure someone would show up to let her know, probably violently.

Okay, maybe it set her on edge, a little, but it didn’t repeat, so Ranma had ignored it and gotten her cute butt back to work, slipping between tables and benches to cycle out empty glasses, bottles and plates with new drinks and food, settling tabs and snagging the occasional tip.

At least things had kind of started to slow down a bit as things moved later into the night.

“Alright, drinks are here.” Ranma stated, setting down orders in front of their various patrons; at least these guys were easy, having all ordered the same bland lager. Bleh. In short order she was plunking the glasses neatly in front of each patron, and was just setting down the last when…

What? A sudden, alarming sensation rolled over her, almost like she was feeling emotions from someone else, resolving itself into a jumble of panic and elation. She jolted up straight, and spun on her heels, almost transfixed at something beyond and above the northernmost corner of the bar.

What the hell had that been?

“Heyyy… sumfin’ th’ matter shweethert?” One of the drunks asked, and she idly batted the guys hand away before shaking her head.

“Oh uh…” Ranma looked around, seeing that Tifa was looking at her in concern, Ayla and Cloud having subtly shifted to innocuously ready positions. “It’s um… nothin’. Nothin’s wrong.”

The drunk snorted, and she took a step away from the table when suddenly there was a distant popping noise, like deep and bassy fireworks, rumbling in through the walls, followed just seconds later by a massive boom, felt more than heard. In only an instant she was outside the bar, casting about for the source of the disturbance; it did not take long to find it, her intuition telling her that the feeling she’d gotten just moments prior and the explosion were directly related.

Ayla was right behind. “That was an explosion!”

“Yeah, but what… was… kami. I think it’s Reactor One.” Ranma uttered, watching a fiery haze light oily smoke from above and between the eighth and first plates, partially obscuring where the colossal reactor housing joined with the main supports; streamers of flame and smoke poured down outside the city limits, and an isolated shard of debris skimmed between the sector 8 and sector 1 plates to explode somewhere in the trash pile.

“Holy shit.” Her fellow watchwoman echoed, a quieter whump rolling out from the distant pylon, additional debris raining down. Fortunately that seemed to be the worst of it, as the two watched the distant catastrophe unfold.

“What happened?” Someone asked from behind them.

Ayla simply shook her head, even as Ranma’s mind raced. She’d learned from her studies that Mako reactors did not directly produce power; rather, the reaction was in putting unprocessed Mako through a highly energetic process, something she didn’t really understand beyond the vague knowledge that it made the substance highly volatile. Afterwards, the ethereal liquid turned into a burnable fuel source, which was piped all over the city to power small, local power grids.

“I… I guess the processed Mako caught fire somehow? I’m amazed the damage isn’t worse.”

“Yeah… damn. We’re lucky that whatever happened didn’t get into the pipes.” The dark skinned ace said a moment later, and Ranma nodded, face grim. If that had happened, there was no telling how severe the damage would have been.

“Fuck me.” Said a voice in the crowd, “We gotta get outta here!”

“Hey, cool it!” Ranma shouted into the milling crowd. “I ain’t any happier than you being under this damn pizza, but if the thing was gonna come down it already would’ve!”

She was answered with grumbles, but when her comrade stepped forward the crowd stilled. “Ranma’s right. We start panicking and more people are gonna get hurt; nobody wants that. The watch’ll take care of things from here, get to your homes, and stay safe.”

While there was still a bit of grumbling, the crowd began to slowly disperse, especially after Cloud emerged from the bar and began directing people out of the building. The redhead sighed. “Geez. What a mess.”

Ayla simply nodded. And then, with a grin, glanced her way. “So, not from Wutai, eh?”

“Huh?” Ranma said, blinking, before she facepalmed. Wutai wasn’t really the same as Japan, but the similarities were enough that this wasn’t the first time she’d been caught out by it. “Ugh… listen people harass me enough as is, so…”

“Nah, don’t worry. It’s our little secret, I’m just razzin’ ya.”

“I mean… I’m serious when I say I’ve never been there, though.”

Ayla simply nodded in response, looking out into the distance, her expression almost wistful. “It was a beautiful country, before the war.”

Ranma swallowed, and for a while the three were quiet beyond the occasional need to sort out directions or snarls in the crowd. Finally the tide of folks had receded, and the redhead sighed in relief. “… so, were the patches your idea, or someone else’s?”

“Mine?” Ayla gasped in mock aggrievement. “Who do you take me for, a fool?”

“Well, you did say that most of the vets from the war had decided to get lost, but you’re still here, soooo…”

“The nerve, I tell you! The nerve!”

Off to the side, Cloud stood, letting a small grin play at the corners of his mouth. “Well, good to see you two are still on good terms.”

“Why wouldn’t we be?” Ranma shrugged; as far as she was concerned it was hard to be on bad terms with a person who hadn’t done anything to tick her off in the first place. The two were… well, maybe not that close but they got on well and had worked together more than a few times in the past couple weeks.

Besides, Cloud had also fought for Shinra, and it wasn’t exactly as if she and he were enemies or anything.

It was a little strange to have someone she teamed up with who wasn’t also trying to beat her up at least part of the time, but it was… nice? Kinda, anyway. She—he missed the pressure and drive to improve that his rivals had given him, but it wasn’t like Ryouga was about to pop out of nowhere, right?

He held his breath for a beat, anticipating that sudden challenge from his best frienemy out of nowhere, then released a disappointed sigh when said pig-headed rival failed to present himself on cue. “Somethin’ on your mind?”

“Eh… not really. Nothin’ important… it’s uh, kinda like there are people I keep expectin’ to see and they just…”

Ayla’s gaze had taken on a more somber tone, and she nodded. “Yeah. Yeah, I guess things would’ve changed a lot, after everything. Sorry if I brought up some bad memories.”

“Not exactly bad, just… y’know, complicated.”

The older woman nodded, seeming pensive all the same.

“Somehow though, it’s almost stranger to see the people you weren’t expecting to ever see again. Me and Tifa… I still don’t know what to make of it.” Cloud said, after a moment. Still leaning beside the door, the blonde frowned, almost seeming lost in thought. Well, the kid had a lot to think about, and it was pretty clear he still hadn’t made sense of the mess that was his own head yet.

“Don’t worry, Tifa’s a great gal. I know it’s easier said than done but you’ve gotta trust in her.” Cloud sighed, and the short haired woman patted his shoulder. “Anyway, you kids clearly got things on your minds, so I’m gonna head out, check and see if there’s any trouble. Something this big means people are gonna be antsy.”

“You need any help?” Ranma asked as Ayla walked past him.

“Nah, don’t worry about it. ‘Sides uh… people may not be the happiest to see you right now; you might want to keep a low profile for a couple days.”

He opened his mouth, closed it, then scowled, hissing out a sigh. “Yeah, I getcha. Dammit, I wish people… I mean, I woulda been… I was just a kid when it happened. I had nothin’ to do with the war.”

Ayla gave him a reassuring smile as she stepped out onto the wide swatch of packed dirt in front of the bar. Cloud gave him a strange look, having caught her muttered words, but didn’t press the redhead on it. “The ceasefire was only five years ago; it’s still pretty fresh in people’s memory.”

“Yeah, kinda hard not to be aware of that. I’m not—I was fourteen!”

“It’s… not so young that you couldn’t have participated. Things were pretty desperate in the last couple of years before the ceasefire, even for Shinra. The recruiters didn’t even check my age.”

“I’ve never even been to Wutai.” She repeated, tiredly, and the blonde nodded.

“Well… yeah. Yeah. But you’re still Wutaiian; for the people still traumatized by the war, that’s enough connection.” She grumbled under her breath, and the former Trooper placed a hand on her shoulder. “Come on, let’s head back inside.”

“Yeah. Alright.” The redhead sighed, and followed the man back into Seventh Heaven.

For as much as he’d worried that things would get hairy, they’d had a quiet ride back down into the slums. Shinra’s goons hadn’t even seemed to know anything was wrong until that giant metal tick sucking out the planet’s lifeblood had gone up. And that had left them so confused that they hadn’t even bothered him once, and he was far and away the most ‘suspicious’ looking of his little cell.

No thanks to Shinra. Barret thunked his once again minigun capped stump into a corrugated wall. “Damn thing really popped off, didn’t it?”

“Yeah,” Zack agreed, watching the distant spectacle of firefighting copters spraying the pylon down. “Doesn’t feel quite… right to me, but there’s always the chance that something might go wrong.”

Barret nodded. Wedge had already peeled off to check on his cats, and from how Jessie was fidgeting he figured she was probably going to take off soon; she was always good at hiding things, but she clearly wasn’t happy with how powerful the blast had been.

He couldn’t rightly blame her for that; he’d tried to cut the girl blaming herself for it off when they’d met on the train, but apparently it hadn’t stuck.

Finally, he stretched, looking back at his longtime companions. “Listen, I want y’all to go get some rest. It’s been a long day. I gotta check on Marlene and the Bar.”

“We still up for the day after tomorrow?” Biggs asked after a moment, as their small band stepped back onto the strip.

“’Course we are. It’s a big day, y’know.”

The smaller man grinned, then thrust his fist out. “AVALANCHE.”

Barret grinned back and returned the gesture, the two fist bumping in subdued triumph. “AVALANCHE. Catch you later, Biggs.”

“Take care of yourself. Wouldn’t want you to miss the party.”

The big man gave Biggs a wave as he trotted off, before turning to the slender girl who’d accompanied them. Jessie fidgeted, sending glances towards the now mostly extinguished reactor pylon, and he sighed, gently laying a hand on her shoulder.

“Jessie, you alright?”

“Y-yeah. It’s just… you know, post mission jitters.” She said, pointedly looking away from him. “I’ll… I’ll be fine, okay?”

“I know you’re tough, Jess, but a lot of stuff happened tonight. Ain’t no shame in feelin’ a little overwhelmed.” He said, pulling away his shades and pocketing them. “If you need to talk, hell, need anything, you know where to find me.”

She paused for a bit, then nodded, some of the tension flowing out as she finally met his eyes. “Yeah… yeah, I might take you up on that. Tomorrow okay?”

“Sure thing.”

And with that it was just him and Zack; he gave the SOLDIER a sidelong glance, but the man just shrugged, watching the distant spectacle intently. “It’s a maxim that things don’t go as smoothly as we’d like in a combat operation. But even so, everyone got home safely; given how dangerous the job was, I think that’s hard to call anything but a success, especially since we accomplished our primary objective.”

The dark haired fighter hummed, then gave his head a shake, looking away from the distant reactor. “Even if the effect on target was… stronger than expected.”

“Yeah, can’t argue with that.” Barret grumbled. “You headin’ home?”

“Not yet; I’d like to check in on how Ranma’s doing.” The other man answered after a moment. “She’d be at the bar, right?”

“Probably.” He shrugged, hoping that that would be the case; he wouldn’t be around to watch after his baby girl, and if the redhead wasn’t reliable on that front… well, he wouldn’t be happy. “You sure seem worried over that kid though, not that I can blame ya. She’s damn cute, and she saved your fool ass.”

Zack huffed, and shook his head. “It’s not like that at all. She’s more like the annoying kid sister that I never had and… I don’t know, maybe it’s nothing. She just resembles someone important.”

“Friend a yours?”

“Not exactly; she’s someone I… know by reputation. I kinda doubt we’ll ever have the chance to meet, but if Ranma’s actually related to her I figure I at least ought to keep her kid out of trouble.” The black haired warrior frowned, rubbing his chin. “And it’s more than just for her sake; if she were to get caught, it could be… very bad.”

Barret frowned, giving the other man a disbelieving glance. “Wait, you think she might be the kid of some Wutaiian bigwig? The hell’d she be doin’ in Midgar?”

“More like a war hero; she’d have a lot of symbolic value to either side.” Zack said. “As for why, I have no idea. She complained that she’d gotten lost when we first met, but I think she might be suffering from… certain memory issues. She didn’t know how she’d gotten to the desert.”

“Eh?”

“Think about how blue her eyes are.”

The big man grimaced; though the redheads eyes were not nearly pale enough to be Mako blue, they were definitely well on the lighter side. “Hell, that’d definitely be a problem. You… brought it up with her yet?”

“Getting that girl to listen to a thing I say is a hell of a challenge. She’s a damn gremlin.” Zack groused, crossing his arms as he shook his head. “I’m not even sure where to begin, anyway.”

“Can’t imagine that’d be an easy conversation.” Barret shook his head. “No wonder you wanted us to keep her outta this; wouldn’t want Shinra to get their hands on her either.”

Unconsciously he picked up the pace, mind racing; even if it were the best case scenario, and Ranma was just some innocent girl, Shinra wouldn’t simply admit to their mistake and return her to the streets with a pat on her head. She’d simply disappear without a trace; odds were that no one she knew would ever even know what happened to her.

Worst case, they’d make a nasty show out of the trial and execution that followed.

Fortunately for his blood pressure, the streets were quiet, with the handful of Troopers present sticking nervously to their guard stations and outposts. And it wasn’t long before Seventh Heaven slipped into sight, warm, homey light spilling out of the bars windows.

But the veranda was empty, and the bar was quiet; he supposed it wasn’t a surprise given how much things had popped off. All the customers had probably headed home already, scared off by the commotion.

Good thing he wasn’t in it for the money.

The two trod up the broad stairs and through the front door, opening onto a quiet scene; seated at one of the tall tables, Cloud and Tifa chatted quietly while Ranma pored over a couple of thick tomes, periodically writing something in a spiral notebook. Marlene sat next to her, and the redhead’s aura of tired patience indicated she’d spent a lot of time answering the questions he knew his daughter must have had.

Aside from the small group, no one else was around; the four looked up, most of them sending waves. Except for his little angel, who hopped down and ran right up to give him a big hug.

“Daddy!”

“Marlene!” He returned it in spades, holding the girl close to him. Finally, he released her, tousling her hair. “You been a good girl for daddy?”

“Uh huh.” Taking her in the crook of his arm, he rose back to his feet, his girl giggling.

“Thanks for lookin’ after my girl.”

“Yeah no—“ Ranma interrupted herself with a massive yawn. “No problem.”

“Past your bedtime?” The big man teased, and the tiny redhead rolled her eyes.

“I’m fine, this ain’t a problem for me.” She grumbled, crossing her arms for a moment before she suddenly stiffened, and glanced towards the corner of the room. Before he could ponder this odd behavior, there was a dull, popping noise, and Barret released an “ah.” The reactor explosion.

“Just a little on edge I’m guessin’.”

“Something like that.” She agreed, stretching for a bit and rubbing at her eyes. “Marlene’s been fulla questions; not sure why she’s interested in this boring stuff though.”

“Well, for one thing, you seem to tell it well.” Tifa added with a grin, and the redhead stuck out her tongue.

“Whatcha studyin’ anyway?” Barret rumbled, stepping up beside her and checking the opened books, pages full of tightly spaced text. ”Well, that’s enough to make someone’s head spin.”

The little redhead hummed, tapping the thicker book right in front of her. “Well, right now I’m doin’ a readin’ of a bunch of Wutaiian myths. The other book is more or less an encyclopedia of materia that I’m checking against whenever there’s one the text mentions but don’t explain properly.”

“I uh… huh.” Barret Wallace was many things; a father, a leader of men, a resistance fighter against a brutal, oppressive corporate state. But he was not exactly what one would call a scholar. “That’s… that’s neat I guess? Why’s the big book not bother ‘splainin’ though?”

“Eh, it’s not really about what materia do what. Hell, some of the stories it goes over don’t even mention materia at all, it’s just materia tend to play a big role in a lot of old stories.”

Ah, yeah. He supposed that made sense.

“She’s looking for something.” Cloud stated evenly, and Ranma nodded with a wry grin.

“That hard to figure out, huh?” The little redhead chuckled, and the blonde simply returned a small smile in answer.

“A materia?” Zack asked, flipping through the encyclopedia, and Barret was surprised at the sheer thickness of the volume; damn but there were a ton of these things out there, and he hadn’t even heard of most of them.

“Yeah.” The redhead said. “Somethin’ I need to be able to reconnect with my family.”

“I’m guessing you haven’t found it yet, though.” The black haired warrior noted, and the little woman sighed. “Don’t worry, you’re one of the smartest people I know. I’m sure you’ll manage it.”

“Wha—me? I ain’t… I ain’t smart at all.” She muttered, blushing as she focused back on the page. After a long moment the redhead tapped her finger against the page and hummed before underlining the text, and scribbling a quick note down. “Mind if I have that back?”

“Huh? Oh yeah, sure.”

As the redhead flipped through the book, Barret glanced at the notebook, and the girls latest entry in it, the handwriting rough but clearly discernible. ”Minami no Hana Sensō Monogatori, Lady Hakurei leads defense on opposite sides of her kingdom on same day using a magic wind called Zephyr – pp. 172-174, Great Myths of Wutai, A. Warrington”

From his side, Tifa cleared her throat. “Barret, mind if we talk a bit?”

“Sure, what’s up?” From the way his partner in crime glanced towards the redhead, he could tell it was about the smaller girl, and he stepped back to allow the two to have some privacy. But before he could put down Marlene and speak the redhead released a shout.

“That… that’s it! That’s gotta be it!” Ranma blurted, standing on the struts of her chair as she stared into the page; what followed was a flurry of note-taking, slapping down napkins in place of bookmarks, flipping back and forth in both texts, and marking out sections and passages for later review. Despite himself, he ambled back up, curious as to see what could spark such an excited reaction.

“What’s up?”

“Huh? Oh, uh…” She flipped through the pages in the encyclopedia until she arrived at the point that had evidently gotten her so excited, pointing out a relatively short entry that had been heavily underlined. “This, this is it.”

Teles:

A legendary materia of Wutaiian origin; one known example. Mentions of this device appear rarely in myth, most notably in Record of the Southern Flower War, The Ancient’s Wandering Gem, and Gift of the Lost Spirits. Though solid historical evidence is rare, it has been confirmed to have existed by numerous independent sources, and early footage of this materia being used are known to be present in Wutai’s national archives. In the modern era it rapidly became obscured as its abilities proved exceptionally useful to the fledgling Wutaiian State, and is believed to have played a supporting role in the country’s focus on intelligence work.

The exact capabilities of this materia are unknown, but are thought to center around the ability to teleport the user instantaneously between two points. The upper limits of this power are as yet undetermined. The solitary known example of this type of materia is believed to have been lost early in the Wutai War.

Also referred to as: Zephyr, Flash-Step, Lightperch

Barret blinked as he absorbed that information, eyes shifting over to Zack, who was frowning deeply. The man met his gaze, and he knew they were both feeling that same worry.

Ranma, so deep as she was into her research, failed to notice. The big man coughed, catching her attention. “So, found whatcha were lookin’ for?”

She nodded, yawning hugely. “Kinda. This is just the first step really. But I know what I need to look for now and…” The redhead trailed off again, releasing another yawn. “Ugh, ‘scuse me. Probably should start headin’ home soon.”

“If ya need to, you can crash on the couch upstairs.”

“Nah I’m—“ Another yawn. “—I’m cool.”

Zack, still frowning, looked to Cloud, who had join the man in his musing. “I can’t imagine finding the thing will be easy though. Especially since it was lost in the war; who knows where it could be.”

“Your best bet would be military archives,” Cloud hummed, expression serious. “But I can’t imagine they’d be easy to get into.”

“Don’t go giving her any ideas, Cloud. She’s enough trouble as it is.” The dark haired SOLDIER said, a nervous grin crawling over his face.

The redhead frowned, and sighed, as she began closing up her books. “Well, I’ll figure it out later… for now…”

Ranma trailed off without ceremony, and Barret was surprised when he felt her suddenly lean into his side, the redhead letting out a vague, half-formed mumble. He glanced back and forth, his companions giving hm distinctly amused looks, even Cloud, who seemed to be trying suppress a grin. “Hey, Ranma?”

No response. “Ranma, you awake?”

Okay, that was definitely her snoring, and the big man sighed, realizing the girl had conked out. “Well, so much for her getting’ home on her own tonight. I’ll take these two upstairs; past their bedtime, and it’s been a big day.”

Carefully, he shifted the redhead onto his other arm, and was slightly surprised by the sleeping girls weight. She definitely had a lot of solid muscle under that cute exterior.

“I’ll get her things.” Tifa said a moment later, finishing slotting the redheads textbooks into the satchel she carried them in, pausing as she held up the now closed spiral notebook. “And also… Barret, something strange happened earlier with Ranma, right before the reactor exploded.”

“Huh?”

“It was... like she reacted before the sound of it going up even reached us.” She hemmed, speaking after a moment. He hummed and glanced towards the girl he was carrying, not sure of the importance of the matter, but Cloud coughed.

“That’s understating it a bit; it’s more like she responded to it exploding before it had actually detonated at all.” The blonde took a second to compose his thoughts, before he continued. “Her battle awareness has always been good, but this was something else; it was almost like she was reacting to someone whispering in her ear.”

Cocking his eyebrow, he glanced towards his co-conspirator, and the brunette nodded. “She’d just finished delivering some drinks when she stood up straight and spun around; she had to have been looking straight at Reactor One.”

“So, how long we talking, here?”

“I didn’t time it exactly,” Cloud stated with confidence. “but it had to have been close to ten seconds before the explosion.”

He gave Zack a look, but the other man shrugged, not hiding his confusion. “I’ve never heard of anything like that before. Maybe…” He paused, then shook his head. “No, I don’t know. Some of the other SOLDIERs have exceptional situational awareness, but I’ve never seen anyone respond to something like this that far in advance, not even Sephiroth.”

Barret nodded. “Well, somethin’ to think about I guess. Come on Tifa, let’s get these kids to bed. I can tell Marlene’s been waitin’ for me tell her her favorite bedtime stories.”

His daughter giggled, hugging tight to him, and he followed Tifa up the narrow stairway that led to the small apartment above the Bar, a small but relatively luxurious pad for the old owner, and rather cramped for him and his kid. Before long the two of them had arranged the slumbering redhead on the couch and tucked his little girl in for the night.

Finding a story wasn’t a long process, and he went at the telling with gusto. After all, Marlene loved all his voices.

Chapter Text

The Teles gleamed, a golden glowing orb shining the light on her path home. And she just needed to follow it.

Ranma perched on top of a telephone pole, looking out over the clustered shanties, small, well made single family homes and long, 4 and 5 story apartment buildings, broken by trees and small plots of farmland, feeling like she was on top of the world. Overhead, the sky was blue and clear. The distant mountain of the Shinra Executive Building glared down from above, but she wasn’t about to let those jerks stop her. “Alright, let’s see what you and I can do, eh?”

The redhead focused on the materia in her hands, and in an instant she had popped back into existence further down the road, grinning madly. “Awright; nothings gonna stop me now!”

She looked around, finding herself at the now familiar junction just outside the Sector 7 support pillar, and nodded to herself, satisfied with the result. Trusting it to lead her where she needed to go, the redhead focused again on the Teles, and zipped from spot to spot, finding herself in broken alleys and on tops of small office buildings and in front of Furinkan High School. Cloud leaned against the gate, and the blonde gave a nod as she appeared from a puff of smoke.

“You’re on the right track, Ranma.” She said, and raised her arm to point the way down the street, into the hazy distance. “The dojo should just be down that way.”

“Thanks Cloud. For uh, for everything; you and Zack helped me a lot more than I think either of ya know.” Ranma said, feeling a bit awkward and guilty for just running out on the two without explanation.

“Don’t worry about it.” Cloud smiled, the expression seeming far more natural on her face for some reason, and crossed her arms over her chest. “Midgar really isn’t the place for you, we both know that. Now get going.”

She nodded, and blitzed down the street, teleporting from spot to spot, before she had to pause and rest for a bit.

“Oh! Ranma!” Kasumi called out from below, where she was shopping with Barret in one of the rough and tumble Nerimgar street markets, and she waved down, happy to see the familiar face of the motherly Tendo sister. “We’re going to be having Mapo Dofu tonight to welcome you back!”

Oh! Mapo Dofu, she hadn’t had that since she got here. Her stomach rumbled in anticipation of the meal that now danced in her vision, and from below the long haired brunette giggled at how obviously Ranma was looking forward to it.
“Girls gonna need a bit more’n that.” Barret rumbled, holding up a melon in his good hand and gently tapping it with his minigun to test the ripeness. “She’s all skin an’ bones.”

Kasumi nodded delicately in agreement, and waved her on. “Yes, she’ll definitely need more than just that, some mackerel would be perfect. We’ll catch up to you later, Ranma-chan.”

Ranma waved goodbye, and zapped to the next waypoint, pausing only a moment as she saw Biggs and Ayla talking down a pair of Yakuza she’d seen around every so often, but the two clearly had things in hand. And so, she made her way onward, point to point, and overhead the sky began to grow dark; at first she figured it was the Sector 7 plate, but a quick glance skyward showed dark clouds beginning to gather, heavy and threatening rain.

“He knows of you.” Came the whisper. “He comes. Go.”

Rain began to drum down against the corrugated steel of the roof, and Ranma drew her coat close around her before she took off like a shot, running at points and flickering between spots at others, the rain becoming stronger, and the wind kicking up eddies of mist, swallowing buildings whole. Soon the wind had become a tremendous gale, sending clouds of fog spiraling into the sky; city blocks tore from their foundations and followed upwards.

The cyclone was cold, like she remembered it. But somehow it was different, the spiral singing terribly. The tongue was strange, and yet she could almost understand it, had almost understood it, that pulse of feeling and emotion as the reactor had gone up; she glared up into the sky and rain, dread pooling in her stomach. This was wrong. The storm shouldn’t behave like this, but what could it be?

And the sky light up, the clouds boiling away in flames, and she knew.

“No!”

The cyclone tore the upper plates apart and hurled entire skyscrapers into the air, as if hoping the debris would slow the cataclysms fatal plunge; smaller buildings entirely disintegrated, disgorging people screaming into the void. The air shook with sound, and the spiral, now one of many furious tornadoes pressing against the coming doom, raged with flames.

Ranma darted down the street, just ahead of the destructive current, the ground cracking beneath her feet. She tumbled as chunks of street pulled out from under her, preferring the raging tempest to the familiar touch of earth. “Damn!”

She kicked off some debris, flinging herself downward, and spotted an alley promising shelter from the terrible storm. A moment later she shot round the corner, just ahead of the flaming gale, basking in the sudden cool, and the return of natural, if dim, light. But she still felt uneasy. What—

From her side, she heard a noise, something wet and violent. Spinning to face it, her eyes widened in horror as she beheld a tall, silver haired main in a long black coat, the garment fanning almost like wings around him as he stabbed an ōdachi through the chest of an auburn haired girl. Her head lolled forward slightly, her strength leaving her, and her hands, which had been raised as if in prayer, fell to her sides.

“No, how did he get past me?!”

“Aerith!” Ranma screamed out, darting at the silver haired murderer; the man looked up from where he’d run through the unfamiliar/familiar girl, sliding her corpse off his blade. And then he moved; she desperately threw up a block, angling her bracers to drive the blade aside but he twisted the strike past her well practiced guard like it wasn’t there, the great sword biting in from the side.

The redhead coughed, blood spilling down her chin, as her killer held her close, almost gently, tsuba pinning her jacket painfully against her ribs, the angle slightly downward.

“Finally you acknowledge her voice, interloper.” The silver haired man said, with all the casual boredom of someone discussing the weather. “And so we can speak. I suppose this is hello.”

Ranma raised her head weakly, eyes tracing the fall of Holy as it bounced down the stairs and rested on the lip of the pool, Zack, Red XIII and Yuffie watching her die from the other side, helpless, too late to save either of them. The black haired SOLDIER was shouting something, a name, as he drew his sword and leapt at the black clad murderer.

But in the fading of the world she didn’t catch it.

But even if she and Aerith were gone, at least… at least they could stop… Meteor…

“Don’t worry,” Her killer said softly, sleekly pulling the massive ōdachi from her chest, sending her tumbling like a puppet with it’s strings cut. “This is simply a fragment from another’s wonderful dream.”

The time worn stone rushed up at her and she tumbled down the embankment, gravel and stone clattering as she brought her headlong fall under control. She bounced to her feet, glancing over her shoulder at the fading light of the chaos behind her, praying she wasn’t too late. She gripped the Teles firmly and blinked forward, crossing hundreds of feet in an instant, passing bombed out houses and shattered buildings and crowds of stunned, horrified onlookers.

By the time she’d reached the dojo, not much remained of it, mostly just the outer wall, but standing in the doorway was a familiar figure; her mother, seeming almost unperturbed by the disaster, as if she had simply been waiting to invite her back inside this whole time.

And then the storm returned, as if it had never left, the sky casting it’s hellish glow from the second sun trying to flatten Midgar; high rises hovered overhead, and she knew she was out of time. The fires would be here any moment. She stepped forward, pressing against the rapidly stiffening wind, and held out her hand.

“Mom! Mom, grab my hand!” Ranma called out, her voice straining against the raging wind. Finally, Nodoka turned her head, perfectly still in the heart of the maelstrom, and gave her a wan, sad smile. If she could just reach a bit further… !

But then the storm reached them, tearing at the ground, and hurled her mother, the doorway she was sheltering in, and the shattered remains of the dojo up and into the raging storm. “Mom! Don’t go—!“

Wan light filtered in through the back windows, dimly illuminating the cramped apartment. And even as tired as yesterday had left him, Barret was still on his feet, tossing on his vest as he settled in to pop a coffee filter into the old machine by the sink. Gentle snoring rose from the tiny bedroom where Marlene slept, as well as the couch taking up most of the wall near the stairs.

Wouldn’t do to just toss the little redhead out on the street. Especially seeing as she’d done him a solid last night.

Even if it was a small thing, she’d looked after his little angel, and done a pretty good job of it too. The percolator popped and bubbled away, gurgling as he considered his next moves. Well, aside from getting Ranma home safe and sound; given what he’d learned last night, letting her stay in earshot of their operations was putting the girl needlessly at risk.

Best she stayed out of it, no matter how tough the little devil was. And tough or not, that didn’t mean she didn’t deserve care; her covers had mostly slipped onto the floor in the night, and he pulled them back up over the snoring redhead before returning to the apartments tiny kitchenette.

The people he had with him had done a bang up job on the Reactor 01 infiltration, and his cell had decided on their next target before the operation had gone down. But right now, the planning for it was all hypothetical; they simply hadn’t had the resources to devote to even planning two full attacks at the same time.

Well, those resources were free now, and sometime in the next week or two, they’d show Mako Reactor 5 what AVALANCHE was all about. But that was for later. He poured himself a cup of coffee from the old machine, sipping at the bitter drink and letting his mind clear.

“Definitely gonna get busy around here, soon.”

Soon enough he’d polished off his first cup and moved on to the second, taking a bit of time to fix himself up a small breakfast as he went through his morning routine. He’d just sat down to tuck into his eggs, when he heard a soft cry coming from the couch.

A quick glance showed the little redhead had begun to toss and turn in her sleep, small gasps and vaguely word-like sounds escaping her lips every now and then.

She didn’t sound like she was having a good time of it; well, he was no stranger to bad dreams. Some things just followed a man.

He was by her side in a moment, and Barret gave the redheads shoulder a shake. Ranma instantly started out of whatever bad dream she’d been having; the girl gasped out a mumbled cry of alarm, clearly in between the nightmare and reality. “Mom! Don’t go—!“

A moment later she had bolted upright, blinking as she slowly came back to herself. Tears streamed down her face, but it wasn’t long before she realized that she wasn’t alone and scrubbed them viciously from her eyes. Her expression began to firm, and he could practically see her slowly beginning to wrap her scars back around her heart, armoring herself against the world.

“Barret?” Ranma croaked, her tone doing it’s best to remain carefully neutral. But even without the tears from a moment ago he doubted he’d be able to believe that everything was fine. “Where am I?”

“My apartment. Above the bar.” He answered, as he pieced things together in his mind, thoughts lingering on the conversation he’d had with Zack last night, before they’d returned to the bar.

”I kinda doubt we’ll ever have the chance to meet,” The SOLDIER had said, and Barret figured he’d got his meaning now. Just because someone was a hero to one side didn’t mean they’d survived the war that made them famous.

“I… wait, I fell asleep?”

“Yeah. Mid-sentence actually; lucky I was there to catch ya.” The girl humphed as she slipped her feet off the couch, stretching out the kinks. “Figured I’d just check on you. Bad dreams?”

“Oh, uh, that—that was nothin’ to worry about. Happens sometimes.” The redhead said, doing her best to seem nonchalant, looking around the room and locking in on her book filled satchel. She snagged the sack, and began checking the texts, making sure everything was in order. It was easy to get the message. “I don’t want to talk about it, okay?”

But even though she didn’t want to talk, she’d still said plenty. Ranma had barely spoken about her past, and what she’d revealed last night had been the most he’d heard from her about it; if she had had friends, and it was difficult to imagine such an outgoing kid going without, she’d barely mentioned them. And whatever her family looked like she hadn’t said at all.

Until just last night, when she mentioned she was looking for something, a rare piece of materia, to help her “reconnect.”

He should have seen it earlier, but she’d wrapped up her hurt in that vivacious shell so well that he hadn’t even half suspected it ‘til now, when she was off guard, allowing that confident mask to slip just enough for it to show. The war had done so much damage. Entire towns in Wutai had been wiped off the map in the fighting. The slums had always had more than it’s share of orphans, but after the ceasefire they’d been practically flooded with them.

All those kids with no family to look after them.

Here, it seemed, was another. How old had she been when she’d lost her parents, had lost her friends? The worst of that had happened near the start of war, so she’d have probably been pretty young at the time, but it didn’t really matter; their absence still hurt her either way.

Shinra had a hell of a lot to answer for. Here was just one more thing.

Ranma was tough and self-reliant; she wouldn’t want someone to coddle her. She had her pride, scraped together from the streets and worn as a shield. But even so, he resolved then and there to do right by her.

Someone had to.

Whatever else was hiding in the little redheads past, she deserved better than the world had given her.

“Hey, you look like you could use some breakfast,” Barret said, with as easy a smile as he could manage given the heavy vibes, and thumbed towards the apartments tiny kitchenette. “It ain’t much, but I can whip ya up some eggs, if you’d like.”

“Yeah.” Ranma nodded, sounding somewhat more subdued than usual when it it came to food. “Yeah, that sounds great. Thanks.”

There were limits to what he could do for her, especially right now, what with his political activities. But it’d be wrong for him to leave her the lurch, and even more so for him to let her get dragged into it.

So he’d do what he could.

She wasn’t one to stick around, and so he wasn’t terribly surprised when she was out the door after a quick breakfast, and a scan to gather up her things. He hadn’t brought up the nightmare again, and neither had she. Pressing her on it would just get her to clam up even more.

It wasn’t as if she was the only plate he was spinning, in any case. Jessie’d be by sometime soon, of that he had no doubt; Ranma was just one of many out there who needed a little support so that they could be the best possible version of themselves.

And for all that he was out for payback, after everything the Company had done, he considered lifting up those they’d tried to crush into the dirt a part of that vengeance. These were his people, and he was theirs.

He owed it to them all.

Stepping out the door of the little house she shared with her fellow stage play C-Listers, Jessie made sure to put her game face on; she couldn’t go around advertising just how severely the destruction she’d caused had shaken her.

Even now, two days later, she could see the reactor going up in flames when she closed her eyes.

Though Barret had done his best to share the burden, the slender and, dare she say it, dashing young heroine had had an awful lot to unload. More than either of them could unpack, really. But he had done enough, and now she was ready. Fortunately, there would be no wake to attend; that would just make things all the harder.

Today was going to be the big day, the party where they all celebrated coming home alive.

All the big names would be there, of course, each of them sharing the spotlight of a private little stage called the Wallace-cell of AVALANCHE. Alas, though the world was a play, some parts just couldn’t enjoy any recognition; despite her propensity for drama, she had too much riding on her continued anonymity, after all.

Tomorrow, the planning for the next attack would begin.

But Barret had declared today and yesterday, the day after the bombing, to be mandatory break days; he needed everyone running at their best, and even Zack had been a little wired after all the excitement. Or at least, she felt that he was, and she trusted that feeling.

Jessie Raspberry was a girl who trusted what her instincts told her about other people. And what those instincts told her was that Zack Fair was an upright kind of guy who said what he meant and would stand by it. Simple, in the sense that he was straightforward and honest. Uncomplicated, in a word.

Which made him fun as hell to tease.

It didn’t hurt one lick that he was extremely easy on the eyes; a dashing, vivacious heroine needed a strong gentleman like that by her side to see her through the perils of life. Especially a life like hers, living underground and striking at the top.

And the poleaxed expression on his face had been, simply speaking, priceless. It was so sad that she had competition, but she had to admit that, given who that competition was, the man had good taste in girlfriends.

“Speak of the devil,” She murmured, seeing a certain other, shorter redhead rounding the corner ahead of her, carting a pack stuffed full of books. Yet another event in the course of her life that told her that she was the star of a little play with excellent stage direction.

Okay, admittedly she and Ranma lived practically next door to each other, so they’d run into each other almost every day since the girl took up her position in the Watch, but it was fun to pretend. The other girl was also simple, in mostly the same way as Zack, though she did love mischief, as all good redheads did.

But where Zack was mostly just a guy, neither too sharp nor too dull, Ranma possessed a boundless drive that pressed her ever onward. That drive was married to a quick mind with a voracious appetite for knowledge lurking beneath her simple, easily read passions. And even though the girls memory wasn’t the best, she’d shown that she could figure things out in a hurry if and when she needed to.

The other redhead was also fun to tease. And there was one thing that always worked.

“Hey there, bookworm.”

“For the last time, Jessie,” Ranma said, exasperated. “I ain’t a bookworm, I just got some things I need to know.”

Jessie just gave the smaller woman a look, eyebrow raised.

“Seriously, gimme a break here. Oh… uh, morning.”

“Better.” The smaller girl rolled her eyes. “Anyway, what’s up, this is a bit faster than usual for you to get new books.”

“Ah, yeah, it is.” Ranma admitted. “Finally makin’ headway on my research; got the how, when and what, mostly, just need the who and where now, so I ran out to get a few more things I need.”

“Closing in on that treasure, eh?” Jessie grinned, causing the redhead to sigh. “I know, I know, it’s a family thing, but it would be more fun for it to be a buried treasure, hidden in an Ancient ruin somewhere, full of mystery and adventure.”

“Given my luck there’d probably be a bunch of traps. Poison darts, giant boulders and dead falls.” Ranma grumbled. “But nah, it probably got lost on a battlefield somewhere. Needle in a haystack stuff.”

“Oof. Geez, no wonder you’re such a reader. How long have you been looking?”

“Uh… well, didn’t really have a chance to look til I got to Midgar so just a few weeks so far.”

And she was already this far in her search? Either the girl was crazy talented or insanely lucky or both. “Damn, you’re doing good time.”

“Doesn’t feel like it, but yeah. I got lucky and stumbled across the reference I needed; might never have made headway otherwise.” The smaller girl admitted, a hint of a grin at the corner of her lips. “Kinda makes me wonder when the other shoe’s gonna drop.”

“Well, here’s hoping you’re hoping you’re on the right path. It’d suck to think you’ve got it only for it to be the wrong thing.” The slender girl hummed, and the smaller girl grimaced.

“Yeah. It feels like it’s what I’m lookin’ for but… nah, you’re right. Still, even if it’s a dead end, it’ll close off options, narrow what I gotta search for a little.” Ranma frowned, rubbing her chin for a moment before she shook her head. “Better that I admit to that now rather than be disappointed when… if it don’t pan out later.”

“Hey, no need to be down, maybe you got lucky.”

“Lucky?” The redhead chuckled. “Me? Well, maybe. Anyway, I got stuff to get to; seeya round Jessie.”

“You too… oh!” Jessie began to turn before stopping herself. She had almost missed a chance for some juicy drama! Putting on her smuggest grin, the taller redhead continued. “But before I go, I’ll have you know you’re gonna have to start playing catch up soon.”

Ranma blinked, clearly confused and taking the bait. “Huh?”

“After all, I kissed Zack a couple days ago.”

“I… good for you?” And disappointment. Where was the burst of irritation for her poaching her man? “What’s that gotta do with me?”

“He is your boyfriend, right?”

“Wait you think me and Zack are…? W-we ain’t… I like… I’m not into guys, okay? He’s into some other girl who I ain’t met yet. Uh… Aer… Aerith or something, I think?” There was something strange about how the other girl relayed that last bit, sounding almost as if she wasn’t quite sure how she knew the girls name.

Weird.

Still, even though the thrust had been badly angled, Jessie had managed to land a glancing blow. And something about her blurted denial… “Oh! So you like girls? I’ll have to be careful around you.”

“Wha—I’m… I’m not like that…” The smaller girl squirmed delightfully, and Jessie gave her a wink.

“After all, if I treat you too badly, you might not be up to join me for a threesome with my handsome beau.”

Ranma released a sequence of incoherent noises; for all her brains the poor girl was hopeless in social situations. Well, Jessie was here to help her figure out how to handle them at least a bit more adroitly, and relentless, merciless teasing was her tool of choice.

Besides, it was just so fun to watch the little redhead squirm.

Giggling, mood thoroughly improved, she gave the other girl a wave. “Seeya, Ranma. Good luck on your research!”

“I… I… ah… buh.” The smaller girls squeaked, throughly stunned as Jessie sashayed off. After all, the little thing was just too cute. If she had the chance, she’d happily treat the poor dear to a very nice night.

Still, there was one thing remaining to ponder, as she headed off to join the party. “Aerith huh? I wonder what she’s like.”

Despite everything, the Sector 7 undercity still had a few relatively nice places where people could relax, could congregate and meet; indeed, they had more of those places than the plates, where tight zoning restrictions, redlining, restrictive loitering laws and a heavy police presence had eliminated many of the social spaces that might have otherwise been.

But below, in the slums, there were public spaces from when the Sectors had still been thriving industrial towns, and a profusion of bars, cafes, food stands and other small venues had sprung up in absence of any attempt to prevent it. This meant that there was a thriving social scene in the undercity.

It was hardly a wonder that slumming it for a day trip was such a popular passtime with what passed for the hip crowd among topsiders.

And though the parks were mostly barren, and the squares fallen to ruin, they still served the same purpose.

So he supposed it wasn’t a surprise that he’d found Ranma here, running through her kata in one of the nearby parks, where there was still a bit of scraggly grass clinging tenaciously to life among the stumps of dead trees.

“Hey, Ranma.”

“Heya, Zack.” The redhead grinned, finishing up her practice with unhurried ease. “What’s up?”

“Eh, I was in the area, and I had a bit of free time. Done brainstorming our next moves with Barret for now, at least. Not anywhere near go time, though; there’s a bunch of prep work that still needs doing.”

“Figurin’ out what bank to rob next?” The girl teased, and Zack groaned.

“What? No, no. Nothing like that.” He denied, which probably didn’t do much to convince the redhead otherwise. Well, it’d better that she thought they were planning a daring heist insteasd of what they were actually doing, anyway.

Ranma released a knowing hum, and he sighed. Honestly, this girl.

She stepped over to the wooden bench where her bag had been dropped, and pulled out a thick tome with a glossy paperback cover, a bookmark deep into the front half. “Anyway, was gonna do some studyin’ after my kata, but we can spar if you’d like.”

He would, if only so he could test his suspicions, but now was not the time. “Sorry, it’ll have to be later. Besides, we don’t wanna tear this nice park up.”

The redhead snorted, flipping the book open. “Yeah, I guess so.”

“That’s a new one isn’t it?”

“Yeah, ‘Decade of Defiance; The Great Patriotic War of 1992 - 0002’, by Hoshino Rei. It’s a history of the war written from Wutai’s perspective.”

“I can’t imagine it’d be easy to get your hands on something like that.”

The redhead nodded. “Anna had to special order it, get it from a friend she trusts. Guess it’s a banned book, or something?”

“Yeah, I bet.” Zack mused. “Anna?”

“Oh, she owns a used bookstore in Sector 8; it’s where I’ve been getting my books.”

Ah, that’d explain some things. “Must’ve been hard to find, in the slums. I can’t imagine there’s a lot of demand down here for that.”

“Ah… yeah.” Ranma agreed. “Probably explain why the shop was topside.”

Wait, what. “… Ranma, you went up on the plate?”

“Uh, yeah. Somethin’ wrong?”

“Of all the… ! When did you get a fake ID?”

“I didn’t? Those things’re expensive.” Zack blinked, uncomprehending for several seconds, mouth fishing open and closed a few times, before he shook his head.

“That just raises more questions! If you didn’t take the train, how did you get up there?”

Ranma raised her hand and pointed at the central trusses, as if the answer should be obvious.

“But the guard company!”

“Those guys? They’re blind.” The little redhead gave a confident huff.

“What about the sensor net?”

“Sensor net?” She echoed back, clearly having no idea what he was talking about.

He groaned, rubbing his temples, and after a moment fought back the pending headache. “Yes. How did you bypass that if you didn’t even know about it? It goes up 5 meters!”

Ranma blinked, then rubbed the back of her neck, looking a little embarrassed. “Oh, uh… I probably jumped over it.”

Oh. Well, that made sense at least; Zack knew a few individuals who could make such incredible leaps. Though, thinking on it, most of them were SOLDIERs, which raised some more flags about Ranma’s capabilities. He sighed. “Well, as long as you weren’t spotted.”

“It don’t matter if they’re looking for me anyway; they ain’t on my level.”

Zack nodded, allowing himself a sigh of relief, and began to relax ever so slightly before what his ward had just said really sunk in. “Wait, hold on. Ranma... is public security looking for you?”

The redhead snorted, crossing her arms over her chest with a fierce expression. “It’s not a problem! It ain’t like they even know I’m there anyway!”

So. That was a yes.

“You can’t know that, Ranma.” Zack scowled, beginning to feel slightly frustrated that the little gremlin was being so dense. She snorted again, eyes lighting defiantly. Hoo boy. He had to nip this in the bud before things turned sideways. “What’ll you do if they catch you?!”

“They can try! Those goons ain’t no match for me, and those dumb flying robots are pretty damn smashable, too!” The redhead hopped to her feet, placing her balled fists on her hips.

“Listen, it doesn’t matter how tough you think you… wait, robots? What robots?!” Zack’s upbraiding was suddenly derailed as the second part of what the redhead had said came barreling into his consciousness.

“Eh, these weird ball shaped things with four jet engines strapped to ‘em.”

“… that sounds like Slug Rays. When the hell did you fight those, they weren’t present at the ambush? Hell, where did you fight them?!” If they were lucky, it would have been long before the girl had reached Midgar.

“Uh… a couple weeks ago, up on the Sector 8 Plate…?”

“Where this bookstore is…” Zack slapped his forehead into his palms and groaned, the sequence of events starting to slot together into a rather distressing picture. “Ranma, you fought Public Security, on one of the upper plates.”

This was not a question.

“It wasnt my idea! It’s why I took to sneaking around, since those guys have such itchy trigger fingers, didn’t wanna risk someone else getting caught up in things.” The tiny redhead shot back.

“I… hold on, what’s this?”

“Remember when Cloud and Wedge told us about that girl getting whacked up on the plate?” For the first time the redhead looked a bit guilty, and he realized that she probably held herself responsible for the death of someone else.

Which would be commendable in another situation. But right now it meant she was operating based on misinformation.

After all these years, he finally knew Shinra Electric Company too well to think otherwise.

He closed his eyes in frustration, as more and more pieces fit together into something increasingly worrying. “Ranma, that’s you. That girl is you.”

“Huh?”

“It’s a cover story Ranma! They made it up to smooth over the incident!”

The redhead blinked a few times, probably not quite realizing the implications, and shook her head fiercely. “Well, it ain’t like they’ve seen me since anyway, so they’ve probably given up by now!”

“Ranma, you attacked Public Security! Of course they haven’t given up!”

“Hey, they attacked me okay?! I was just mindin’ my own business—“

“Oh my god.” He buried his face in his palms, at once wondering how his troublesome ward could at once be so smart and so very goddess damned stupid. “Ranma, that doesn’t matter! Shinra isn’t going to worry about who started it!”

“I aint seen nothing to worry about!” The girl fumed, her dander clearly risen past the point where she was going to listen. But Zack’s frustration and worry had taken hold, and he couldn’t stop himself from diving onward.

“Nothing was worth that risk, Ranma! You can’t find your families heirloom materia if you’re dead!"

“Cloud tell you that?” She hissed back, folding her arms over her chest. “And ain’t it my decision whether somethin’s worth the risk?!”

“Ranma, I’m worried about you!”

“I don’t need you to watch over me, Zack! I’m a… I’m a big girl, I can take care of myself!” She shouted, turning around and stomping off, chunky boots stamping loudly against the dust and cobbles.

“Hey! Dammit Ranma, listen to me!” But the girl only picked up speed, and slipped around a corner. “Dammit.”

Now he could only hope that the girl would take his words to heart, before something terrible happened.

If it hadn’t already.