Chapter Text
Sephiroth hadn’t made it an order that Angeal had to go back into the office, but the man had made it pretty clear he wants people to know SOLDIER is still operating as usual, and it’s hard to do that with literally every First out of view. And there are some things that are better done in person, no matter what kind of remote-working technology Tuesti wants to champion this quarter.
On the other hand…as soon as they’re done with the check-in and Genesis gets passed out with a clean bill of health, Angeal closes the door to the office they’re borrowing. “I don’t really want to leave you back at home by yourself,” he says.
Lucrecia had smartly accompanied the vet they’d found and buttoned up with NDAs, so Genesis hadn’t been able to get up to any hijinks during his examination, and Angeal fully expects him to still be resenting that. So when he looks up from the dish of feed in front of him, Angeal is bracing himself.
“I’m not calling you a weakling, all right?” he tells Genesis, with tissues ready in one hand for whenever his ears start bleeding again. “But you don’t have hands and even if the new keyboard hack is working for you, I don’t really want to just—look, I’m just going to be getting twitchy waiting for you to message you’re okay every fifteen minutes, and you know I’m shit at getting anything done when I’m like that. I’m the problem here.”
Genesis bobs his head briefly, but it’s more in surprise than anger. Then he pushes himself up, pauses to tuck a stray breast feather back into place, and walks to the edge of the table so he can…not scream at Angeal. He just peers up into Angeal’s face for a second before turning around and hooking his new rooster-proofed phone over.
We need an appropriate story for the office, Genesis types. People never expect Sephiroth or me or even Strife to explain themselves, but you make such a habit of volunteering statements that an absence would be noticed immediately.
“…yeah,” Angeal says, and when Genesis crooks his head around to give Angeal a questioning look, Angeal has to ask. “You’re not gonna ask about the amenities?”
For a moment Angeal thinks Genesis wants to peck him. The beak goes forward, the beak pulls back, and then the beak irritably dances over the screen. If I thought we needed extravagant props, I’d be speaking to Fair. Basics first, Angeal, isn’t that what you teach the recruits?
Sure it is, but Genesis insists on artisan spring bottled water for his espresso machine, which is so complicated that they have to borrow someone from Tuesti whenever it breaks down, and once had a quarter-long fight with Procurement about the exact degree of ‘ergonomic comfort’ expected in their office chairs. Which he won, and while Angeal’s spine alignment is grateful for that (better healing doesn’t actually make up for daily lower back sprains), Angeal still has to sit there in disbelief for a moment.
“Okay,” he finally says when it looks like Genesis is going to stomp over if he doesn’t. “So what kind of story, exactly, were you thinking of?”
Now Genesis looks incredulous. Well, he doesn’t really look since his face can’t move that much around the beak, but the way he fluffs around his feathers and snaps his beak communicates the same thing. You’re the chicken expert, he types. Why would you have a chicken in the office? I still have no idea why you even let chickens in your house. Aren’t they meant to be outside?
“Are you ser—look, I know Hollander was there fucking it up in the background and terrorizing Ma, but you literally grew up with me watching me raise those things and you don’t remem—” Angeal cuts himself off before he gets too irritated. He doesn’t like being irritated with Genesis, and before this it’d started to seem like that was all they were with each other, but…it’d actually been kind of okay for part of last night, and then this morning when they were getting ready. He’d really missed that, he realizes now. “You know what, let’s not make this that complicated. Yeah, I raised chickens. We were rural. Banora’s still rural, I still have family down there, they sent me a fucking prize stud rooster as a pet and if anybody thinks they have a better idea what to do with it than me, then I’d like to see them say so to my face. That’s our story.”
Genesis blinks once, then again. His head makes a slight up-and-down motion but then tilts to the side and holds that way. He thinks about it, then sleeks down his feathers as he settles down in front of the phone. Normally I would object to playing into people’s preconceptions of Banora as a village of hicks, but extenuating circumstances. There are enough ignorant idiots around to swallow that.
From him, that’s a ringing endorsement. Angeal grins as he pulls over his tablet and unlocks the screen. “I’ll make sure to say you’re pissed off at me about it and threatened to murder me if I let my new pet anywhere near your closet,” he teases. “Okay, so about the amenities—I’ve got enough food to get us through lunch, and I don’t think we’re gonna be taking any after-dinner meetings, and we’ve got the attached toilet but you should get something to nap on if you get tired. Which perch do you want them to grab from our place?”
He's got the form for a courier up when Genesis hops over and looks not at it, but at Angeal. Who moves back in case Genesis wants more room, but Genesis just shifts forward so he can keep peering at Angeal; Lucrecia said something about chickens needing to constantly twist their heads like that because they have to see around the beak, but Genesis’ stare feels like it’d zero in through solid concrete, even as a chicken.
After another moment, Genesis backs up to his phone. Let’s get the initial shock and awe over with first, he write, with a quick heads-up to check in Angeal, which is a little uncharacteristic for him but maybe that’s also down to the chicken viewpoint. I agree we’re not putting in the full day, so there’s no need to prepare as if we are.
“True, that’s kind of asking for Rufus or someone else to swan in at the last minute,” Angeal says, but he doesn’t dismiss the form yet. “You sure you don’t want anything else?”
Genesis doesn’t type this time and just shakes his head. Then he puts one foot to his phone and pointedly pushes it at Angeal, who picks it up along with his own tablet.
“All right, then,” Angeal says as he gets to his feet.
He’d brought Genesis in the same carrier he’d used to bring him home last night. Earlier this morning, Genesis had made it abundantly clear that he thought the carrier was utterly beneath him, even with a nice soft fleece blanket padding the bottom, but he’d still gotten into it without making Angeal catch him. They did have to drive over and Midgar traffic is not something to venture into without the full set of safety protections, even for an enhanced SOLDIER. But…Angeal looks at the carrier, then back at Genesis, who already has a stiff posture and a twitchy tail.
Then he feels at his shoulderguard. “You think you can keep off the flesh?” he says as he snags the carrier and then turns the door-end away from Genesis. “I can’t walk in bleeding, that’s all I’m saying. Not a good look for the staff.”
Genesis bobs his head, but then promptly flaps his way up onto Angeal’s shoulder. Of course then he needs a good minute to inspect the shoulderguard that he’s already on intimate terms with (when things are good, anyway, because when Genesis wants something off, it’s coming off), scuff his feet around on it, and then, slowly, lower himself down on top.
When Angeal snaps the photo of them, Genesis squawks sharply but doesn’t screech. And then he just resettles himself, though the ruffled feathers keep tickling Angeal’s ear. “It’s to make the story work,” Angeal says as he works up a group email to go with the photo, with his phone angled so Genesis can read along. “If I’m gonna bring in a real authentic Banora Red, I’m gonna let everybody know ahead of time. Just so that they can recognize quality when they see it.”
Genesis squawks again, and while it’s lower in volume, it definitely isn’t lower in disdain. Still, they walk out of that office and Angeal is still blood-free, so Angeal figures he’s doing all right so far.
* * *
Zack will be the first to put his hand up and say it hasn’t been an easy first day, but he’s hoping that things will improve, especially now that he has some idea why Cloud was acting a little off last night. All they have to do is keep Cloud away from the Lifestream.
Don’t get him wrong, Zack fully respects the will of the Planet and all that, given that he lives here and that much as he loves the guy and totally will sign up for any bar-crawl Cid is ever leading, he’s going to wait till a couple more people sign off on those rockets before he tries interstellar travel. But also the Lifestream sort of repeatedly invaded the minds of several of his friends without permission and while he gets the difficulty of communicating when you’re a non-human noncorporeal entity, he still thinks that’s problematic. For one, it made it pretty hard to distinguish between Lifestream-induced psychosis and Jenova-induced psychosis. Two, any kind of psychotic break is not a look Zack really ever wants to see on Cloud again, or on anyone else for that matter.
Anyway, full-time communing with the Lifestream on a completely consensual, voluntary, mutually-respectful basis is Aerith and Ifalna’s thing and everybody is more than happy to leave that to them, so Zack just needs to wait on Aerith’s flight.
“So…we aren’t going to the airport because…” Tifa asks, her tone not so much tentative as enriched with the kind of reluctance you get when you’re staring at a torrential downpour between you and where you need to be without an umbrella, any other kind of cover, or any excuse for delaying the plunge.
She didn’t go with them to the lab because she needed to open Seventh Heaven for the day shift, but showed up again right as Zack was trying to coax Cloud into his carrier. Since she brought lunch and Zack did sort of forget to grab that—for himself, of course he remembered to pack go bags of Cloud’s top three feed choices, plus a fourth in case Cloud changed his mind—he’d been happy to see her, but now she’s gone back to standing around questioning things. It is starting to get on his nerves.
“Because that’s literally across five Lifestream-accessible points and it’d distract Lucrecia if I broke back in and stole her experimental telepathic-shielding stuff?” Zack says. He pushes up onto his elbows, then twists onto just one so that he can wipe at his forehead, which is surprisingly sweaty. “Also, Cloud’s motion-sickness? Still a thing.”
Tifa winces. Then she puts her bags down on the table and comes over to kneel beside Zack in front of the couch. “Is that what’s going on? Do you want me to go get the vet and see if they’ve got anti-nausea stuff that’ll…you know, if there is any that works on mice? I just saw them in Grimoire’s office.”
“No, we asked about that, there’s not really anything but since he’s way smaller I was thinking I could put his carrier in a bigger box with shock absorbers—oh, and maybe some gyroscope action,” Zack says as the gyroscope part just occurs to him. Why only now, that’s on him, because it’s not like he doesn’t spend a good chunk of field time under the hood of various vehicles with the engineers. He twists around a little more, absently wincing as his spine unkinks, and takes another look at the carrier. “Yeah, could do a little platform and have it auto-reorient, and…”
“He says he’s fine,” Tifa reports, now with her head partly-under the couch and her phone in hand. “But he doesn’t want to go hide in a—oh. Wait…okay, look, I’m trying really hard here but I just can’t be constantly going back and forth. You two need to actually tell each other what’s going on.”
Zack hears her but is only half-paying attention at first, because his vision for a new and improved portable mouse box is rapidly sketching in the details and he’s trying to simultaneously build a materials list for it. It’s more the sharp change in her tone that finally hooks him, and he looks up from the half-written list on his phone to her. “Tifa?”
Who starts to answer him, but Zack is admittedly a rude jerk and yelps over her because she’s actually gotten Cloud to come out and sit in her hand. He whirls around and reaches for Cloud, then catches himself and puts his phone out instead.
“Okay, so it’ll take probably an hour to get Reeve to get someone to unlock everything for us anyway, so I’m thinking a quickie pitstop in the shop so we can at least kickstart a new box for the bike for you to ride in,” Zack says as he shows Cloud his idea.
Tifa tries to say something again, but this time she cuts herself off before Zack even looks over at her. And when he does, she has her eyes closed and is rubbing between them like she has a headache coming on.
Cloud squeaks. Zack looks back down and Cloud is staring straight up, even standing on his hindlegs so his body is thin and straining and little quivers are running through it from the effort. He just…always works so damned hard, Zack can’t help thinking, no matter how the odds are stacked against him, or how he feels about it. So long as he thinks it’s going to matter, he won’t stop.
He squeaks again, then drops down onto the phone and types out a message very slowly, with frequent looks back up at Zack. When he’s done, he scoots off the phone and back into Tifa’s hand and then gives the top edge of the phone a push. Zack gets it and reads: seph said no implementation without approval.
“Oh, I mean…I don’t think this is implementing anything, it’s already a place that exists and we know it blocks Lifestream vibes. We’re just bypassing some stuff to get to it,” Zack says, blinking.
“…are you talking about the old Deepground lab?” Tifa says. Her voice starts out low but quickly rises with indignation; she also pulls Cloud in towards her as she stares incredulously at Zack. “Are you kidding me, Zack, that place—they were supposed to bury that place in concrete!”
“Well, they did. Mostly. But there’s a bunch of utility mains that run through it, that’s why those R&D rejects went there, and we can’t cut off half a Sector, so there’s still a couple accessible rooms,” Zack says defensively. Honestly, he made the same comments when he was sitting in on the executive discussion, but was overruled and Tifa probably doesn’t know about that but she should still know him and why she’s being so harsh now is…why is this his fault? He’s just trying to get them what Cloud needs. “Anyway, it’s secure, there aren’t any crazy scientists in it now, it’s still got that weird Planet blind spot ability going for it and I’m just trying to keep the fucking voices out of Cloud’s head before they try and talk him into fighting Seph again, okay? Because how the fuck is that going to go right now?”
Tifa opens her mouth, then visibly makes herself just take a deep breath. Then she frowns as if someone poked her. She looks down, grimaces, and hastily takes her phone out for Cloud. Who scurries onto it, ignoring the phone Zack holds out, and messages Zack: dont want to go.
“But it’d help—”
Cloud looks up at him, then down at the phone. One paw moves forward as if he’s going to type a follow-up…and then Cloud is just this little golden blur zipping around a squirming Tifa and then he’s gone.
Tifa is twisted halfway around and groping at the floor under the couch. She moves over when Zack shoulders in, then turns fully to face that way as they both anxiously scan the empty floor. “Oh, wait,” she says, tapping Zack’s shoulder and then pointing to the hole in the couch cushion. “Cloud?”
“Spike?” Zack says, squinting into the hole. He puts in a finger and tries to move the stuffing aside, and thinks he can just barely glimpse some movement deeper inside the cushion. “Buddy? Are you—are you okay?”
“Can he get out of the room from there?” Tifa mutters as she pushes back from the couch.
Then she winces and grabs at Zack’s arm as he swears and twists to go for the end so he can yank the couch from the wall. He starts to pull free, but before he can, there’s a muffled noise from inside of the couch. They both crowd up to the hole but then Tifa backs off before Zack has to get rude again.
“Cloud?” Zack says. “Is it the Lifestream?”
Silence. Zack starts to swear and go for his phone, which he dropped in the scramble, but then Cloud makes another noise. And then another one, and another one, each a couple seconds apart. “I think he’s trying to show you he’s not going to leave the couch,” Tifa says.
But she doesn’t sound that sure, so Zack puts his eye to the hole again. Which is a bad idea because that shuts out all of the light, so he leans back. “You staying in there? Once for yes, two for no,” Zack says.
“I really think—” Tifa starts, but goes quiet when there’s a single loud squeak.
“Okay. Okay…well, we can do that, we can wait for Aerith from here,” Zack says. Not a great situation, but he’s not sure what’s going on with Cloud except that Cloud really doesn’t want to come out, and he’s not about to make the guy till he’s got more info. He’s not even sure how he could, short of ripping open the couch, and Cloud is so small he’d be terrified of accidentally nicking him. “Um, Tifa, can you…get me that bag? It’s got the food and water and blankets.”
Tifa goes and gets the bag. She also gets the packed lunch and brings both to Zack’s side. “Do you want me to tell Lucrecia or Grimoire?” she says.
“They’re kind of busy and they already know about the Lifestr—” Zack starts.
Cloud squeaks. Once.
“Okay.” Tifa glances at Zack like she thinks he might want to get something out of this, but never actually says what she thinks that is. When he shrugs at her, she sighs and rubs at her nose again, then gets up. “I’ll put a sign up or something so people know this office is being used, so you don’t have to rush.”
“Oh—yeah, thanks. Can you add a ‘quiet please’ to that?” Zack says as he fiddles with his phone. “I think I’m gonna try seeing if I can get Reeve on a videocall—”
Two shrill squeaks. Zack frowns at the couch, then leans forward when he thinks he detects the top of it rippling. But when he touches the spot, the movement stops.
“I’m going to make Tseng get Aerith a priority ride from the airport too,” Tifa says. When Zack looks over, she’s on her way out, shaking her head at something. “At least he should listen.”
“Okay…well, anyway, Aerith is going to be here soon,” Zack says as he turns back to the couch. No response, although after a second he does make out a little movement inside the stuffing. “No calls. Just whenever you feel like coming out, Cloud.”
The stuffing moves again. Zack waits…and then winces when no little head appears. He runs his fingers through his hair, then puts his phone down and goes to get Cloud’s food and water dishes from the table. Refilling them and putting them near the hole in the cushion takes up a couple minutes, and then, okay, he doesn’t want to seem insensitive but his stomach doesn’t care about manners and he needs it to shut up. So he opens up the packed lunch and starts to eat it while he’s waiting.
A few bites in, his phone buzzes and he picks it up. Angeal messaging to see where he is—he replies that he’s still at the lab eating and when Angeal doesn’t immediately fire back, figures the man isn’t looking for him and Cloud for anything. He starts to swipe the phone off to put it away, but then a window strays across the screen and it has his list of mouse box stuff and he thinks of a new piece of gear. So he adds that, and then props up the phone on his knee as he starts looking up Reeve’s schedule. No calls, he’s sticking to that, but there are a couple other things he’s just thought of for Cloud.
* * *
Sephiroth and Vincent arrive at the site in a very different manner than the last time Sephiroth was at this building, and he isn’t referring to his current form but to Vincent’s. Which hasn’t completely shifted demonic, but it’s sufficiently changed that once Vincent lands on the rooftop, he needs to spend a minute adjusting his clothing and checking weapons placement.
The sling functioned perfectly, and after the first disorienting few seconds, Sephiroth learned how to shield his head so the wind wouldn’t overstimulate his whiskers and could actually enjoy the flight. He miaows without thinking when Vincent asks how he is, then lifts himself a little further out of the sling so that he can look around as Vincent heads for a stairwell.
They’ve had the entire building closed down, but the on-site watch team is posted a few levels down and on the topmost floor there should only be sensors due to the number of potentially unstable and immovable (short of knocking down the whole place) hazards identified on it. Sephiroth also sent an order ahead of time to ensure that the SOLDIERs wouldn’t come up, but he keeps hearing things. It begins as very faint scratching noises just on the edge of his hearing and at first he can’t rule out that he’s hearing something from the neighboring buildings. But as Vincent descends the stairs, the walls around them don’t block out the sounds. If anything, they’re growing stronger.
Sephiroth wiggles around to put his hindlegs beneath himself and then pushes his forepaws over the edge of the sling so he can crane around better. Then he pauses and looks up, sensing a change in Vincent, but Vincent only shakes his head as he also looks cautiously around. “Bearing?” Vincent murmurs.
As if the man not only has gauged what might be attracting Sephiroth’s attention but also is taking it entirely seriously, without even a hint that he might be wondering whether it’s only cockroaches or rats. Sephiroth sniffs the air and decides rats aren’t a possibility, so Vincent might also be able to tell that. Then he realizes Vincent is still looking at him—waiting for his input—and he slowly shakes his head too. He can hear it but he’s still uncertain of where the sounds are originating from.
Vincent purses his lips. Then he reaches up and tweaks the sling slightly so that…oh, his gun holster on that side. Sephiroth obligingly shifts his weight and catches a small smile on Vincent’s face before Vincent ducks his head and soundlessly swings over the stairwell rail and onto the floor below.
There is a slight tremor as he lands; even with great skill, one can’t defeat gravity. But the noises continue without interruption and that is very odd, Sephiroth thinks. Any animal, even a mutated one, should react to that; he was expecting it and even he tensed a little before feeling Vincent stabilize.
He worms out of the sling and drops onto the ground. Then hesitates, but no hand comes down to snatch him back up and no muttered curse is fired at his back. There was just that brief sucked breath and he does think he should have tried to signal to Vincent, but Vincent…simply adjusts. He stays back as Sephiroth prowls forward, cocking his head this way and that till he thinks he has a bearing on the noises.
Sephiroth does remember the working map of all the hazards on this floor, and from this…height he also spots a few additional ones he doesn’t think they marked down. That skittering noise doesn’t appear to be diminishing or accelerating as he moves around, so when he comes near one, he pauses and waits for Vincent to come up. Usually the other man sees the issue by then and can enter it into his phone, but at one spot he doesn’t and he’s frowning in inquiry at Sephiroth. But that’s rectified with a quick batting of a pebble to make the puddle flare, and then Vincent rewards Sephiroth with a head-rub before he adds that one.
It's very, very hard not to purr for the man, but Sephiroth is still keeping an ear on the noise they’re tracking, and as soon as Vincent is done, he’s back on the hunt. He eventually manages to narrow it down to a patch of wall in the next room where the noises seem to periodically converge, and when he paws at the crumbling concrete, he thinks he can smell air coming through the holes.
Vincent crouches down and passes his hand over the area. He motions for Sephiroth to back up and then pulls out a little leather pouch containing a number of tools, including drill bits. But instead of attaching them to a drill, Vincent selects one, screws it into a long, thin handle and then uses a combination of lightning and wind materia to send it whirling through the wall, much more quietly than any kind of power tool would have.
As soon as it’s through, Vincent pulls it back out and then quickly inserts an expandable metal probe through the hole. They both hear a muted click as the end of the probe stops somewhere on the other side of the wall, denoting a hollow space. Vincent takes the probe out and starts to lay it aside, but then pauses as Sephiroth puts up a paw. He seems reluctant to let Sephiroth touch it, but does let Sephiroth sniff just above the probe.
Nothing that immediately makes Sephiroth recoil. Sephiroth wrinkles his nose, then resists the urge to pounce at the probe when its tip moves away from him. He watches Vincent drill and test three more holes, then scratch out a rough rectangle on the wall connecting all of them.
The cavity behind the wall isn’t large enough to allow for any kind of humanoid, and would rule out most known dangerous monsters as well. But Sephiroth has run into enough unknowns that he is happy to jump up onto a nearby shelf as Vincent kneels down and works out the best way to cut an opening. He monitors sounds and smells while Vincent busies himself with materia and what might be that missing laser prototype Tuesti had been fretting over last quarter.
Just before Vincent cuts through the last part, he raises his hand and holds up three fingers. He doesn’t actually look at Sephiroth but Sephiroth understands immediately and miaows, then crouches down to brace himself for the last three seconds. This cat form is highly sensitive to sudden changes, and as skilled as Vincent is, he still can’t keep the concrete from grating loudly when he pushes at it.
Clouds of dust also billow up around the cracked edges. Vincent yanks up part of his cloak over the lower part of his face but continues shoving at the concrete, trying to make it pivot out of the wall rather than fall inwards, so the stuff doesn’t seem to be poisonous. It certainly smells terrible, all stale and moldy, and Sephiroth can’t help hunching back on the shelf…but because he does, he also spots the blurred movement just at the far edge of the widening hole.
In an instant he’s off the shelf and down on top of it, slamming one paw into its back while he brings his other one around to pin the head, if that’s needed. But it’s metal under his paw, not fur, and it has an edge that bites viciously into him—he snarls and yanks his paw away, but then whirls and slaps it towards Vincent before it escapes.
Vincent grabs whatever it is with his left hand, its claws closely caging it around as he produces a clear container. He pops it in there, seals the lid, and then immediately reaches for Sephiroth. “Let me see, let me clean it.”
Sephiroth is still exasperated with himself for being so unprofessional as to flinch and he side-steps Vincent’s hand. Vincent makes a low, soothing chest-deep burr and keeps his hand out without moving any closer, and after a moment Sephiroth’s reason overcomes his emotions and he limps over.
The cut isn’t that bad but it’s jagged enough that Vincent takes him up onto one knee to examine it. Some judicious scraping with one of those little tools later, Sephiroth is pressing his paw into a wad of medical gauze to soak up the last of the blood while Vincent peers around in the hole with a small flashlight.
“This goes all the way to the other end and I think it might go down to another floor,” Vincent says when he pulls his head out. He picks up the container and then bends over to rest one elbow on the floor so that his and Sephiroth’s heads are level with each other and they can both look at its contents. “Hmmm. I don’t remember robotics in the other reports.”
Because there hadn’t been any, Sephiroth thinks with a sourness that’s entirely directed away from Vincent and at his own failures. That is very clearly a tiny robot drone in the container, approximately the size of a rat but shaped like a four-legged beetle, with sensor mounts and an oddly-placed hook sticking out of its backend.
Vincent also notes the hook and after putting down the container in front of Sephiroth, he goes back to look in the hole. A few seconds later, he pulls out a tiny sled that pairs perfectly with the hook. “There’s more than one drag-mark,” he remarks as he starts picking at the sled, trying to detach its load. “No camera. I don’t think these are for surveillance.”
Sephiroth lifts his paw and checks its pads. When he sees that they’ve healed over, he hops over Vincent’s leg and takes his own look in the hole. He spots the wire, miaows, and when Vincent makes an inquiring noise, he manages to snag it with his claw and pull it out far enough for the man to see.
The wire is obviously a guide-track of some kind, and as Vincent points out, the lack of cameras seems to suggest these robots aren’t for looking around but are intended to be very directional transportation vehicles of some kind. Vincent thinks a little bit, then suggests he try redirecting the track so they can catch the next one that comes along, since the one they have is too mangled to be put back into service.
Sephiroth agrees, and while Vincent works with the wire, Sephiroth writes up their findings and sends a report to R&D. He also calls up a SOLDIER from the on-site team to come collect the squashed robot from Vincent, but after some thinking of his own, doesn’t have them stay to help with the trap. Aside from maintaining secrecy around Sephiroth’s condition, they’re better off working with Tuesti and the others to try and track down the wire’s origin and destination, since it doesn’t take an entire team to simply watch a glorified mouse hole.
Arguably, it doesn’t take both Sephiroth and Vincent, but Vincent clearly isn’t leaving. And…well, yes, when Vincent sets up his watchpost in the corner, it includes his folded-up cloak in a nice sunny spot and Sephiroth can’t resist that.
Vincent puts out a little snack for Sephiroth as well, then produces a couple rice balls that he eats while Sephiroth is cleaning off his mouth and whiskers. “You can lie down and take a nap if you want,” he says.
Sephiroth pauses and looks over. Then rubs at his face, but much to his annoyance, the yawn still comes. He folds his feet underneath himself and sits on the cloak so that the light is shining directly on his face, assuming that that will help keep him awake…but instead he finds himself yawning again. He swats his tail against the wall, then starts to get up.
“You’re going to wake up if you need to,” Vincent says and Sephiroth stops again. The other man is studying something on his phone, but then glances over as if sensing Sephiroth’s disbelief. “You know it’s important, Sephiroth. There might be some additional instincts now, but you still have all the ones you had before and you’ll wake yourself in time. I’ve seen you operate, I know you do that. If you’d rest up as a human, you should be able to do the same as a cat.”
That is absolutely true, but somehow hearing that in Vincent’s calm, unhurried tones makes it seem—makes Sephiroth remember it. He sits back down.
Vincent smiles again. He returns to his phone, but a second later, a dark line curls out from behind him: his tail, looping softly through the air and briefly teasing at Sephiroth’s head before dropping obediently to Sephiroth’s batting paw. He lets Sephiroth curl up with it, part tucked between Sephiroth’s paws while more rests comfortably over Sephiroth’s haunches and then along Sephiroth’s own tail. It’s…wonderful, and the most wondrous part of it, Sephiroth thinks later, is how utterly natural it feels. He doesn’t have to worry because of how well they both understand.
And he does wake in time, and they do catch another one of the robots. Vincent attaches a microchip to it that can serve as a crude tracker or, once they return and consult with the others, possibly as a method of hacking the robot, then releases it back into the tunnel. Then he scoops up Sephiroth, cleans up the space, and they go up to the roof so he can put out his wings. They report to Grimoire to discuss developments, come up with a follow-up plan that goes out to the other Firsts, and then Vincent takes Sephiroth back to his place.
Sephiroth is still Sephiroth despite the cat body, and that’s what Vincent keeps demonstrating. So while Sephiroth isn’t ignoring the concerns Grimoire raised, he doesn’t think that that’s where the danger here lies. It’s not with Vincent, who’s behaved not merely impeccably, but with so much effortless grace and consideration and—and affection, that anything less than meeting the man on the same level would be a terrible crime. And even before this, Sephiroth had been determined to never add to the wrongs that Shinra and Hojo had already piled onto Vincent.
Now he’s even more determined to do that, and to simply not fail Vincent. He has to rise to the man’s level, he could never forgive himself otherwise. So when Vincent and he settle down on the couch with their tablets and Vincent’s hand ends up stroking his back, he doesn’t move away to type out a question about it. He rolls into it, and lets himself purr till a slow, resonant rumble comes out of Vincent, and makes certain that the man knows how much he appreciates it all.