CHAPTER 15
The light of the fire blinded his eyes, the scorching red flames reaching several stories in height. Not a single building in Corel had been untouched by the blaze, as each had been a target of the Shinra troops' flame throwers and dynamite. Dyne walked slowly through the carnage, immersing himself in the chaos. He was used to this sight, this dream. And he knew what to expect next, but he still refused to shield his eyes or avoid the pain. To his left, his house collapsed, and the oh-too familiar scream of his wife echoed out before being violently quieted by the flaming debris.
Dyne had seen these sights often in his dreams, yet he never got used to it. He still could not resist the urge to weep, so he did not bother. Instead, he braced himself for what came next.
"My love..." a ghostly, feminine voice echoed through the fading background.
"Eleanor," Dyne acknowledged the unseen entity.
"You cost many lives last night."
"Yes, yes I did," the one-armed man humbly admitted, bowing his head.
"You tried to kill your friends... and an unconscious person?"
"...yes."
"My, my, my. What has become of you, my love?"
"I... I don't know!" Dyne cried out. He dropped to his knees and tried to grab the ground, only to realize he was floating in darkness. "Please... take me. I've done enough here. I want to be with you again. I don't care for this life! I implore you, please, TAKE ME!!!"
There was only silence. Dyne knew that that was Eleanor's way of saying "no".
"Fine!" He spat, trying to hide the anger and disappointment that he felt. "I'll do it myself, damn everything else! I..."
"You must not!" Eleanor's voice echoed out, halting Dyne's revere.
"Why...?"
"You are needed, my dear, sweet husband. The Planet, and everything on it, are in danger. You... must..."
Dyne strained his ears to her his late wife's fading voice... but again there was only silence. This was new to Dyne. Eleanor never faded out like that... none of the voices ever did. They were always loud and omnipresent. But before Dyne could even think to call out Eleanor's name...
He blinked his eyes open, staring at a familiar concrete ceiling. He took deep breaths as he slowly returned to full consciousness. A lose spring of the bed he was on pressed against his lower back, causing a great deal of discomfort. Dyne noticed that his Gun-Arm had been removed, and gave out a slight groan. He supposed that Dox had removed the shredded artillery for his own safety. The one-armed man knew that Zack had done what he believed was right and prudent at the moment, but it wasn't as though Dyne could just walk to the nearest store and buy a new one.
"Ah, you're awake," Dox observed, walking over to the AVALANCHE leader with a glass of water. Dyne rubbed his temples with his good hand while sitting up before taking the water. He slowly sipped the contents of the glass, hardly doing anything else. "You were muttering," Dox observed, "..were you 'talking to your wife' again?" he quipped.
Dyne remained silent and gave the medicine man a cold glare. "...It's none of your business."
"Oh, but as your physician, it is. And you don't have to worry about me telling anyone, doctor-patient privilege and all." With that, Dox took out a notepad and a pen, and sat on a stool next to Dyne's bed.
"Not to mention what the others would think if they knew I talked to voices in my head..." Dyne mumbled slowly.
"So, what'd she say this time?" Dox asked, stroking his goatee.
"Something about the planet being in danger," Dyne replied somewhat dismissively, holding his forehead.
Suddenly, footsteps were heard rapidly ascending the steps. Dox stowed the note pad as both Biggs and Jessie burst in, both rapid-firing their reports at once.
"Dyne!"
"Sir!"
"The Shinra knew about..."
"The bomb was a dud..."
"..they evacuated the whole..."
"..because the equation was..."
"..and so I think that.."
"So you see there's no way.."
"HEY!" Dyne shouted, giving them both a some-what apologetic look. "One. At. A. Time."
Biggs and Jessie both nodded and looked at each other, then looked back at Dyne. Neither of them said anything for a long moment, before, of course, starting to talk at once yet again. Dyne and Dox just looked at each other and shook their heads as the two "professionals" before them carried on like a pair of children.
"Uhm, please slow down..." Dyne requested. Both of the youngsters immediately stopped talking. Biggs smiled weakly and scratched his head, while Jessie looked off to the side and blushed a bit. Jessie started up immediately again however.
"I have... kinda good news. The bomb was a dud!"
"A DUD?!" Dyne replied in surprise.
"Yeah. The computerized formula we received to set it up... it was complete garbage, plus we were missing a key component. I know I should of double-checked before... but I kinda relied too much on my comp catching any errors..."
"So are you saying that it wasn't our bomb that destroyed the reactor?" Dyne asked pointedly.
"I know, I'm SORRY, I messed up, I feel so embarrassed and I... oh god..." Jessie replied, almost starting to cry.
"Jessie!" Dyne snapped.
"...Sir?"
"It was NOT our bomb, correct?"
Jessie nodded weakly.
Dyne began to think this over, and then looked over to Biggs.
"They knew well in advance..." the espionage agent replied, "In fact, they even EVACUATED most of sector one before it all went down. They're reporting that almost a thousand people died when really it was more likely just a few dozen."
"JUST a few dozen?" Dyne remarked. Biggs remained silent, knowing that "just a few dozen" was a few dozen too many for Dye's taste.
"Also..." Biggs spoke up, "I don't think the explosion was that bad."
Everyone looked at Biggs with puzzled expressions.
"Well, if it really WAS a thermo-makular explosion, the whole area woulda been flooded with radiation. And the Shinra led us to believe that it was... except for one thing."
"Which was..?" Jessie asked.
"If there really WAS radiation floating around, how come only a few troops were wearing hazmat gear? And why not AT LEAST President Shinra? You'd think he'd be more concerned for his own safety..."
"As opposed to just waltzing into a radiated area unprotected," Dyne concluded slowly.
"So then how come the blast flattened everything?! In fact, why was there even a blast?" Jessie asked.
"The Shinra set up a series of explosions all over the place, to create the visual aftermath of such a huge explosion. The explosion itself... well, no one I talked to really knows. I think that the reactors hull was just sheared off, and the explosion was actually maybe just a spell or an illusion. The reactor core itself is undamaged, and still supplying power to Sector Eight. Besides, if that WAS a real explosion, the Sector One plate wouldn't've survived, and we'd be dead right now, cross-section or no."
"But why would they do all that?" Dox asked. "I mean, our own bomb didn't work... and the Shinra go ahead and blow everything up anyway?"
"They set us up," Dyne stated flatly, realizing the obvious. "First, we're feed false information on how to make a bomb. Then the Shinra go and pretend we caused the mother of all explosions, while at the same time saving as many lives as they can. Not only does it make them look better, but it makes us look like careless fanatics."
"Or maybe they just wanted to blow us up?"
Everyone turned around. Zack was standing in the doorway, flanked by Tifa and a very distraught looking Johnny.
"What's wrong with you?" Jessie asked Johnny. He mumbled an incomprehensible response as the three companions walked into the room and closer to the others.
"H3's just ups3t cuz I 0wn3d his 4ss in Dr34d!" Zack replied proudly. (*He's sad because I beat him!)
"Oh god..." Tifa groaned.
"5|-|u+ up, N00B, J00 \/\/3r3 |_uC|<y, J00 \/\/1|| L34rn +0 p|-|34r |\/|y L337..." Johnny replied. (*Keep talking, neophyte, for soon I will have my revenge!)
"51|\|(3 \/\/|-|3|\| D0 J00 |<|\|0\/\/ L337?!" Jessie asked Zack excitedly. (*Do you even know what you're saying?)
"Will you people STOP TALKING like that?! It's giving me a headache!" Dyne complained, holding his hand to his ear and putting his arm up against the other.
"Friends don't let friends sp34k l33t," Dox pointed out. "But what brings you three here, anyways?" He asked, referring to Tifa, Zack and Johnny.
"Three?" Zack asked, "But Wedge was just behind us..." He turned and walked over to the door, and saw Wedge struggling up the steps... "Oh COME ON, you're not THAT fat!" he yelled down to the rotund man, who remained silent during his trek upwards. Though when Wedge DID reach the top, Zack observed the reason for Wedge's delay: He had weights strapped to his ankles and wrists, presumably for exercise. "Oh, heh, sorry man!" Zack muttered with a shrug and a smile. Wedge responded with a simple nod.
Dox moaned and walked past everyone over to Cloud's bed, where he picked up a clipboard sitting on a desk next to the bed's base. Everyone came around, waiting for Dox to maybe say something about the blond-haired SOLDIER's condition. Tifa looked down at the man who she knew only as a child, and even then, just barely. She noticed how... strange and out of place his muscles seemed. Not "out of place" as in in the wrong location, but rather, Cloud looked as though he was not the type of person that would have large muscles given his general body type, but they were almost the size of Zack's, despite his definitely smaller frame. She also noticed the wound on his naked chest.
So did everyone else.
"That ain't no bullet wound, and that REALLY ain't a BUNCH of bullet wounds," Johnny remarked slowly to Zack, yet definitely loud enough for everyone else to hear. However, this was already common knowledge to Dox, Tifa and Dyne.
"Well, okay, okay.. I made that part up..." Zack admitted, holding up his hands. "It's just.. I felt stupid..." Zack paused suddenly to correct himself, "...I woulda felt stupid if I said I didn't now what happened."
"But, you said that, anyway," Wedge pointed out.
"Well, maybe HE can tell us," Dox interjected, motioning to the comatose Cloud.
"How?" Tifa asked.
"Well, among other things, I've found that Cloud here suffers from Mako poisoning. That is, a body can only take so much mako, and the mind can only take so much information from that Mako, before everything shuts down. That's why the SOLDIER program is so exclusive, because not a lot of people have the tolerance for Mako that's needed to inject them with enough to make them formidable," the gray-haired doctor explained, again stroking his goatee. "Simply put, it looks like Cloud here was pushed past his limits."
"So, what's the good news?" Tifa asked.
"Well, right now, the Mako is pretty much running his body, except that his mind doesn't know how to utilize it... think of being a two year old and suddenly having to pilot some super advanced space ship. He doesn't quite know where to start, let alone where to go from there, or even how to comprehend what's going on. However, the body, the brain is still functioning and can respond to stimuli..."
"So basically it's like sleeping beauty needs prince charming to wake her up, right?" Zack asked.
"It could be, yes. Though there's no guarantee as to what kind of stimulus is needed to pull Cloud out of his stupor."
"Tifa..." Dyne started, "He recognized you in the bar earlier, remember? Maybe you can get through to him."
"Okay, I guess..." Tifa said with a bit of reluctance. She leaned down over to Cloud until her face was almost a foot from his. "Cloud. Can you hear me? It's me, Tifa, remember?"
Cloud groaned as his already half open eyes opened up all the way, glancing skyward with an empty gaze. Though after a moment, the eyes slowly began to shut again.
"Oh, come on, Cloud... Wake up!"
Wake up!
Cloud groaned again, only this time much more audibly. His chest expanded, filling his lungs to capacity as he began to blink very rapidly. His arms began to move outward in a stretch. He held still for a moment before releasing the air from his lungs and relaxing again...
I see... Zack... He's standing... we're moving... we're... in a truck? "Mercenaries?" What..? I... dark..*
Now... what... water.. hitting me... stop... Zack? No... behind you, look out! I can't move!!! What's wrong with... ahh... fading... no... can't... dark...*
Now... where am I? A bar.... I'm... sitting? What... Zack... Tifa, TIFA, is that you...? HEY! I spoke! Oh no, everything... going dark again... can't think... Tifa, Zack, someone help...*
Huh? A ceiling? Who's this? Vision, blurry... I... Am I wearing a SOLDIER uniform... what...? Have to try and.. talk... UUHH... No, that's not working... Oh no, no, not again... it's getting dark! Please, mister, help me! I can't... stay... focused... don't... let me...*
Who are these people? Isn't that Tifa? Where's Zack? I'm still in this dark gray room... what's that smell? What's going on... I have to say something... I have to try and get help before it happens again... I... Hey... wait... I don't feel all that bad... I...
"Uuugh... Ow... I... HEY! I... I can talk!" Cloud said in a weak, raspy voice, his voice box starting to work once more after years of non-use. He began to sit up...
"HEY CLOUD!" Zack shouted, throwing himself right into his friend's face.
"AAAAAAAAAAGH!" Cloud cried out in surprise. Instinctively, he balled up his fist and let it fly before he could comprehend anything else...
WHAM! Zack flew backwards, blood escaping his nose. Everyone stared at the spectacle in shock, most of all Cloud! He's NEVER been able to throw a punch like that in his life! But then he saw his arm; It was huge! Much larger than he remembered it as having been last time he looked. When WAS the last time he looked?
"Zack...?" Cloud tried turning his head. Zack came up to Cloud, holding his nose but still smiling nonetheless. "How long... where... who...?" The questions just begged to escape like bats out of hell, and he didn't know where to start.
"One: five years. Two: Midgar, Sector Seven Slums. Three: AVALANCHE, Tifa you recognize I take it, and these are Dyne, Biggs, Wedge, Johnny, Jessie and Dox. Any more questions?" Zack answered in rapid-fire succession, all the while giving Cloud his trademarked cock-sure smile.
Cloud took a moment to take in all of Zack's answers, after which only one question really stuck out in his mind. "MIDGAR?! ZACK, ARE YOU FUCKING INSANE?! We want to AVOID THE SHINRA, and you take us to their CAPITAL CITY?!"
Zack just shrugged. "Don't worry, we're safe here with AVALANCHE!" Zack declared.
"I'm sorry to say, but I don't exactly feel all that safe around a sucky hockey expansion team from a state that gets no snow whatsoever..."
"Say what?" Zack queried.
"Uhm, nothing, I didn't say anything!" Cloud quickly responded. He sat up, noticing his chest. The scar was large and perceptible, but what bothered him more were the chiseled muscles that permeated his body. How could a person who's been in a tube for 5 years -then in a coma to boot- possibly have a body that most people work their entire lives to achieve?!
"Welcome back to the land of the living, Cloud!" Tifa said with a smile. She closed her eyes for a moment, bowing her head a tad, then looked at her old acquaintance again. "It's me, Tifa, remember, from Nibelheim?"
"H-how could I forget?" Cloud responded, fumbling for words.
"I don't know, it's just... you know, it's been what, seven years? I didn't know if you'd recognize me, what, with my hair and us grown up and all..."
"What's up with her?" Johnny whispered to Biggs and Wedge. They both shrugged.
"Seven..?" Cloud asked, "But, I..."
Zack cut him off. "yeeeaahh-up! SEVEN years, Cloudy! She's definitely grown, hasn't she?" Zack remarked with a malicious grin and thumbing behind himself right at Tifa's chest.
And just for that, Zack found himself face-down on the cold cement floor, his legs hanging in the air behind him, with a large red hand-print across his face. Jessie giggled while Johnny went into a hearty laugh.
"So Cloud, how've you been?" Tifa asked, holding her hands behind her back innocently.
"I've.., uh.,. I dunno, really," The blond-haired young man admitted, "The past several... years... they've been a blur. There were days... weeks... months that I felt so hopeless and... I dunno. I just, I've lost a lot of time here and I..." he mumbled out, holding a hand to his head.
"Hm?" Tifa inquired, not quite understanding what Cloud was getting at.
"My mind's all garbled. I can't even think straight... One minute I was in a tube, the next I'm in a truck, then I'm here..."
"Well let me bring you up to speed," spoke Dyne, extending his good right hand. Cloud took it, though a bit hesitantly. "As Zack somewhat told you, my name is Dyne. Your under the care of AVALANCHE, an organization determined to avenge the evils of the Shinra empire, and fight for those who cannot fight for themselves. You will receive everything you need, within reason, until you're all better. After that, well, that's your decision. Your friend Zack has pretty much signed on, and we were kind of hoping that you would stay as well. And after what the Shinra have done to you, taken from you, I would assume you will at least hear me out."
Cloud blinked slowly and gave Dyne a skeptical look. He then turned his head over to Zack, who still had a red hand-print across his face, but seemed no worse for wear. He simply scowled at the older former SOLDIER.
"Can I talk to him for a second? Alone?"
Dyne nodded, and turned to leave. The other AVALANCHE members wordlessly followed suite. The two former Shinra employees waited until they were sure they were alone.
"What the hell's goin' on, Zack?!" Cloud hissed quietly, "Why am I in a SOLDIER uniform? What the hell happened to my freaking body?!"
"Well," Zack replied with a grin, "Your clothes were all ripped and dirty and smelly, so I loaned you my spare. Your body... I dunno. Musta been those experiments that those people were doing on us..."
"Gee, ya think?" Cloud retorted.
"Hey, you asked!"
Cloud groaned.
"As for what's going on... well, these AVALANCHE guys took us under their wing. They're all about giving Shinra shit, though lately things have been kinda bad. We tried to sabotage a reactor, but the Shinra made it look like we tried to blow up a whole village! And in the middle of it all, we found out there's a spy, so of course Dyne's all looking at you and me 'cuz we're new..."
"WE?!" Cloud yelled out in surprise.
"Heh, uh, yeah, I kinda told 'em that you'd join too..."
"Are you out of your mind, Zack?! We don't know anything about these people, and they go around blowing stuff up and you're going along with it?!"
"Well, better than wandering around Midgar waiting for the Shinra to catch us again!"
"Yeah, that's another thing: MIDGAR?! ARE YOU NUTS?! The Shinra were experimenting on us for years, and where do you take us to escape from them, THEIR CAPITAL CITY?! My God, any other complete mess ups you'd like to inform me of?!"
"Uhm, yeah, just one!" Zack said, unfazed by his friend's anger and insults. "I told them that you weren't in Nibelheim five years ago, and that you're.. well, you WERE in SOLDIER."
Clouds eyes went wide as he was told this. "ME?! SOLDIER?! What... what made you think..."
"Well, Tifa, man! Your childhood girlfriend? She..."
"She wasn't my girlfriend..."
"...wanted to know why you were wearing the uniform, and I know how embarrassed you were during the mission, so I made up a little lie about you having been in SOLDIER and how you didn't get to go to Nibelheim, but how you tried to heroically rescue us from Hojo..."
"Zack you idiot!"
"...?"
"No one's going to mistake me for someone in SOLDIER! Just look at me I..."
"You look at yourself," Zack responded, presenting a mirror. Cloud was astonished at what he saw. His body was ripped, a body he never dreamed possible, he actually looked, and was, strong. And his eyes...
"...They're glowing. ZACK? WHY are my eyes GLOWING?!" Cloud blurted out as panic crept into him and started to grow at these strange new discoveries.
"Sshhhh! Easy there, little buddy! You were in SOLDIER, remembeerrrr?" Zack said with a wink.
"Oooohhh no! We're going to go tell those guys the truth and..."
"Make me look like a liar, and probably have Dyne execute us?"
"Huh?!"
"Yeah, the dude went ballistic and almost shot YOU in the head cuz he thought I was a spy. If they know I lied, they'll have reason to think I'll -or WE'll- lie about everything else."
"So if we tell the truth, we'll probably be killed? Is that what you're saying? Well, damn it Zack, they're going to figure it out anyway, I suck at fighting..."
"Which is why we gotta get you back on your feet and begin your RE-training!" Zack proudly declared.
Cloud was silent for a good long minute while Zack stood tall and proud over him. "You're kidding me?"
Zack gave no response, which, to Cloud, was a very clear and concise "NOPE!"
The younger man bowed his blonde spiky head in defeat, shaking it. "Crap crap crap crap crap..."
***
"Well, THIS is an... unexpected... pleasure," spoke the fat man wearing a large Wutainese silk robe and blonde mohawk. He was lying in a large round bed illuminated by various multicolored lights. A young woman, no older than nineteen, lay naked and curled in fear next to him. Though to be honest, she wasn't sure which she was more afraid of: The notorious crime boss Don Corneo laying next to her, or the three "gentlemen" in the dark blue suits standing in the entrance.
"Can the sweet talk, Cornball!" one spat out. He had fiery red hair which spiked out mostly behind him and in a pony tail, though a few strands stuck out in front of his relatively handsome face. His clothes were a mess and unprofessional, though this did not help people from fearing him. For he, like his two companions, were of the Turks.
"Calm down, Reno," A taller man in front of him spoke. He was a former native of Wutai as indicated by his slightly tan skin and small, slit eyes. He possessed long raven hair which reached down to his mid-back, though every last strand was combed perfectly. A small ancestral marking stood on his forehead as a symbol of his heritage, though many people would fail to notice it, knowing that they need fear the dark blue suit, not the person inside it or how they looked or where they were from. "We're not here for a fight, remember?"
"The Don" as he was called narrowed his eyes at this. "Well that's just too bad then, Mister Tseng. GUARDS!" The fat man cried out!
Nothing happened.
"Your guards are... unavailable," Tseng noted. The large, bald Negro man in sunglasses behind the Wutainese Turk simply looked behind himself to the pile of unconscious bodies lying in the lobby of the small mansion, and gave a slight hint of a smile in self-satisfaction.
Corneo began to shake in fear, though tried desperately to hide it. "Wh-what do you want?! Can't you see I'm BUSY!"
Tseng came around the bed, and stroked the young girl's hair as if trying to comfort her. They locked eyes for but a moment, giving the girl some sort of unspoken assurance that everything would be okay... Until he quickly grabbed her head and spun it fiercely, snapping her neck. The body fell to the ground in an undignified heap. "Not anymore."
The Don let out a woman-ish shriek of terror as Tseng did this, and fear filled every fiber of the crime lord's being.
"I'll be blunt," Tseng started, wiping off his hands for no other reason than for show, "We know you have ties to AVALANCHE. We also know that you own many... businesses which are... 'technically' illegal, which alone could justify us killing you."
"Wh... what kinds of, uh, business?" The Don tried.
"Oh, you know, taking a percent of even the most minor robbery or burglary. Providing thieves and other such... distasteful individuals with the means to carry out their... 'lively hoods'. Giving said individuals amnesty and aid... Of course, killing you would be bad, oh yes..."
"YES! Yes yes yes yes! Killing IS bad!"
"SHADDAP, ya fat old creep!" Reno shouted out, causing the stout man to flinch.
Tseng sighed, then continued. "It would be bad because there'd be no one to CONTROL the scum. You at least provide some order within the disorder, an odd paradox, to say the least. Also, any number of power-hungry neophytes would try to take your place, the results would be... catastrophic. Gang wars, riots, all sorts of nasty things."
The Don nodded again, beginning to relax.
"BUT!"
"Eek!"
"But... you have ties to some very, very bad people. We WANT those people."
Corneo looked very clueless at this point.
"AVALANCHE," Tseng elaborated.
"Oohh... well, what makes you think I can help?"
"Just tell me where they are..." Tseng demanded in a raspy voice, leaning down towards a man who Tseng thought was disgusting and beneath his general concern. Still, he had a job to do. And once that job was done, within 24 hours... AVALANCHE would be no more.