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Reunion and Eruption

Summary:

What happens to Aerith, Tifa, and Avalanche if Cloud doesn't live through the fall from the Sector 5 Reactor? How does Aerith meet up with the others? What happens to Tifa on her Corneo mission?

Attempts to follow canon story events with alternate universe revisions in the wake of Cloud's death. Also Tifa and Aerith will eventually fall in love.

**Archive Warnings and Characters/Tags will evolve as chapters post, and if any new Archive Warnings apply as time goes on, I'll note it at the beginning of the chapter.**

Notes:

(See the end of the work for notes.)

Chapter 1: Metal Sky With A Chance of Cloud

Chapter Text

Aerith Gainsborough shelters from the explosion that rips across the metal sky. Debris rains down all around Sector 5, and she can only hope she’ll be safe here in her church. Her church with her precious flowers.

She shelters in the back of the building, and keeps her head down, listening, waiting for the moment that something destroys this place, kills her. She screams as something does indeed slam into the roof, cracking it open. The debris falls through, ripping apart ceiling beams and crashing to the floor of the main hall. Aerith can’t do anything but wait.

Until the debris stops falling. Until the screams from all over the Sector dwindle away. Until the flames in the sky die.

Slowly, she picks herself up, shaking off the rubble and dust. “Please not the flowers, please not the flowers…” 

She cracks open the door, and gasps. The dust still settles out here, but she can clearly see in the beam of light, proper sunlight, that shines through here. A man, and not just any man, but the one from the other night up on the plate. The one who protected her from the shadow things and refused to take a free flower like some kind of jerk. That big sword sits amid the rubble. And that armor, so familiar. A flash of black hair crosses her memory, but this is clearly not Zack. For one thing, he’s too pretty. Even in death, this man’s features are breathtaking.

He lies there, unmoving, amid the white blossoms of her precious flowers. The floor has cratered from his impact. It’s less gruesome than she might have expected, from a fall that high.

She creeps forward, hesitant to just rush out in case something from the roof falls, and urges him to wake up. “Don’t be dead, sword boy,” she whispers.

When he doesn’t move, she steps into the flower bed, careful not to crush any more of her little lovely plants, and checks his pulse. Nothing. She sighs. What a strange coincidence, that she should be where his body ends up. That he should remind her so much of Zack. And yet nothing can be done. Dead is dead. Already his spirit must have rejoined the planet. She prays over the corpse, wishing him a speedy retreat from this life.

His eyes are open, unseeing. He’s got the same brilliant aquamarine irises. Not Zack, but a SOLDIER all the same. She huffs and tries to lift him out of the flowers, but he’s too big. She could drag him, maybe, but that would kill more of her flowers. 

So she searches his pockets, regretful to be looting the dead, but she hopes to find something, anything that will help identify him. He’s carrying an assortment of curatives, medicines, and materia, and she guiltily takes the satchel containing it all. He won’t be needing them, and she can use or sell them. Some of this medicine is expensive. Some of this materia is rare. It can be used or sold to great effect.

In another pocket she discovers a tiny napkin, like a cocktail napkin, with a logo on it that she can’t quite make out in this light. It’s soaked through with blood, and all she can make out is garbled letters and “--th H--ven”. As she stares at it longer, careful not to get the blood on her, she thinks the symbol in front of the “th” is a seven. Seventh Heaven? She’s never been, but she’s heard stories about a bar in Sector 7 going by that name. Is that where this SOLDIER spent his time before his death?

The large double doors of the church burst wide open suddenly, and Aerith stuffs the napkin into the satchel as she stands up with it around her shoulder. She expects maybe one of the Sector 5 kids to be at the door, checking on her. They’re so sweet how they all treat her like the big sister none of them have, but they put themselves in so much danger running about alone.

Only it’s not one of the orphans. It’s not anyone she recognizes, but she knows the type. This is one of Tseng’s flunkies. A sharp black suit with a deep plunging “V” neckline, showcasing his pecs. He’s pretty in a cocky way, with bright red hair and a grin that says anything can be funny if you laugh hard enough. She instantly dislikes him, though. It’s been a while since the Turks came after her.

And he comes with backup. Several Shinra soldiers filter in behind him, guns pointed at the floor, but all stand ready.

“Damn,” the Turk says, “And here I was hoping maybe that debris would’ve knocked you out or something. Make my job easy.”

She realizes she’s standing in front of the dead man, and this Turk hasn’t spotted him yet. 

She says, “I must not be important enough for the boss these days. Do you have a name, underling?”

He scoffs, thumping a wicked-looking baton on his shoulders. “Reno, you jumped-up slum ditch. I hear you’re good at giving my pal the slip. Bald guy, likes his sunglasses.”

Rude. She smiles as she steps to the side, revealing the body behind her. “I’ve met him. He’s nicer than you, Reno.”

He shrugs. “I don’t get paid for nice. You two, grab her.” He points at two of the soldiers, then does a double take at the flowers. “Is that a fuckin’ body?”

“It’s not fertilizer,” Aerith says, taking small steps backwards. She has no idea how she’s going to get out of this. She let herself be distracted by the sky falling. She’s usually better about slipping around unseen.

“Well, shit, it might be now. You a killer, girlie?”

“I kill germs, does that count?”

“No…” Reno says, trailing off. “This dude fell from the explosion up top? Damn, look at him. He should be a pile of guts and jagged bones.”

“Sir, she’s retreating,” one of the soldiers says.

“Yeah, yeah, go get her. Boss said nothing gross, so don’t get all handsy or I’ll break them the fuck off, you got it?”

“Such a charmer,” Aerith says, turning to run. Before she can take two steps, something thumps into her back, and all sense of place is lost to her. Sharp pain, shock, and she drops to the ground, twitching. She can barely breathe. Above her is Reno, grinning with his shock baton sparking at the place she just fell. So fast. She never stood a chance getting away from this jerk.

He says, “Bag her while I check this dude out. Something’s up with him. At any rate, if he fell from the reactor explosion, I’m sure the top dogs’ll want to identify him.”

Aerith struggles to breathe, to shuffle away, but her body won’t listen. One of the soldiers comes forward with handcuffs and a bag to throw over her head, and she tries her best to kick out or do anything at all. Even tries to blindly activate her special materia, hidden in her hair-bow. If it were ever going to do anything, now’s the time!

But of course nothing does. It’s just worthless, glowing white. Like a nightlight. Comforting and the only thing she has left of her real mother, but useless.

As the soldier reaches down to cuff her, the shadows swarm in, knocking him back, confusing everyone, and suddenly Aerith is dragged away on the black mists of these creatures. She manages a surprised sound as she slides through the door to the back of the church, watching the soldiers panic at invisible forces. The door slams shut, and the shadows release her. She gathers herself up, coughing and struggling to recover from the disabling shock. Had these things really just helped her? They’ve always been a nuisance when they showed up before. 

She has no time to worry about it. She grabs her staff from the banister, settles the satchel with all the dead man’s belongings back into a comfortable position, and looks for an exit. The only way out is up, as the church butts up against mounds of old wreckage. Maybe if she’s lucky, the hole the man made in the roof will be accessible and she can get out that way.

So she climbs the steps, brushing past old furniture, looking for ways to get up to the roof. She spots the ladder that leads up to the rafters, but it’s on the other side of this back room, with mountains of furniture and broken floors in her path.

She screws up her courage and starts climbing over furniture, making her way slowly up the steps to the second floor. As she’s transitioning from one cabinet to a desk, the door begins banging loudly, startling her. She nearly falls backwards, but the shadow things push her back, like being lifted on a cushion of air. She has no idea what to make of these things, but she’s not about to argue when the Turks have finally started taking her acquisition seriously.

It’s hard out here for a poor Cetran girl.

She keeps climbing, clambering over the piled up furniture until she reaches the third floor, but now there’s a long broken section of floor with a flimsy board connecting both sides. She’s never been super confident about crossing these questionable gaps, but no time like running for her life to get used to it. She still feels a little shaky from being electrocuted, but she thinks she can do this.

The board creaks ominously as her full weight rests upon it, but it holds, and she creeps forward, concentrating on not looking down, on not settling her entire weight on a single foot, especially as she reaches the center of the board, its structurally weakest part.

The door below finally crashes open, and two Shinra soldiers stumble through, followed by an angry Reno and the rest. She nearly loses her balance in surprise, stumbles forward, hears the board crack under her.

The soldiers raise their guns, firing warning shots well clear of her body, but the shots spang off wood and rusted metal, scaring her even more. She’s never been shot at before! And as terrifying as it is, it also makes her angry. She leaps forward, clearing the last few feet, and ducks down to avoid their gunfire.

The board splinters under her jump, but doesn’t crack through completely. So she slams it with her staff, where it snaps in two, falls downwards onto the massive pile of furniture that other Shinra soldiers are already clambering over and tossing out of the way.

One half of the board strikes a soldier, and he topples backwards in surprise, grabbing for the bookshelf he is climbing over. His weight pulls the shelf with him, and they fall backwards together directly into Reno, who was waiting impatiently at the bottom of the steps. 

Aerith doesn’t have time to check what happened to them. She sprints for the ladder and climbs. The wood rots and threatens to break as she goes, and she brings her heels down on each successive rung, shattering the wood as she climbs.

She makes it to the top of the church, the attic and the rafters, and it’s almost peaceful up here. She spots a path to the hole the man made when he fell from the metal sky, and creeps over to it, listening for sounds of climbing, of the soldiers and Reno.

But as she reaches the rafters, where she’ll have to walk along narrow beams over the front of the church, she hesitates. There’s nowhere to hide if they come out and look for her. Nowhere to run but out the big hole. They’d be able to follow her easily, track her progress.

But then Reno shouts down below, being helped out of the back room with some injuries from the collapsing furniture. Serves him right, the jackass.

“To hell with this shit. Let Rude find the bitch.” Ugh. Rude is nicer than Reno, no question, but he is also something of a creeper. She thinks it’s that way he appraises people by lowering his shades just enough that you can see his eyes. Unnerving.

She decides to wait them out, as they stumble their way out of the church. On the way past the flowers, Reno hesitates. “Hold up. Grab the body. The big boss is gonna want to know why a SOLDIER is fighting against Shinra.”

“SOLDIER, sir?” one of the normal guards asks.

“Yeah, you know, the real guys. All caps, not you shitheels.”

“Y-yes, sir.” He points at his underlings. “You two, gather up the body.”

They move forward, and Aerith can’t see them very well, but she knows they’re about to trample her flowers. She can’t do anything about it, though.

Then Reno says, “Hey, watch the flowers.”

They do, delicately lifting the body and trampling only a few more flowers as they carry the young man out. Aerith has a moment of regret. He might be a big jerk, but at least he respects beauty. It takes a little time for them to filter out and head away, and she sighs with relief once they’re gone. Well, most of them. A couple stay behind to monitor the church. And Reno mentioned Rude... She’ll have to be careful on her way home.

Now if she can just figure out how to get down from here safely, everything will be fine.

She stands up tall and crawls out of the hole in the roof, wondering just what she’ll find when she makes her way to Sector 7. Outside, the sun lamps flicker occasionally, but manage to stay on despite the increased load on the other reactors. That’s two gone… the planet must surely be happy about that.

She takes a deep breath, opens her eyes, and nods to herself. She can do this. Her heart races as she climbs and hops her way across the rooftops. Sometimes she has to leap over a little gap, and each time her pulse thumps. Every time she kicks rubble inadvertently and it drops to the ground below, she stares at it like it could have been her.

She has a moment to think that this pathway over the junk of the slums is a little too useful, and that makes her wary. Bandits and thugs often use out of the way places as hideouts, but she hasn’t seen any evidence of them yet. Just as well. She’s very good at evading them on the ground; she knows all the little secret paths and hidden entrances all throughout the slums. Sometimes because she finds them herself, sometimes because the kids at the orphanage show them to her. And sometimes--like now, when she’s in trouble--she gets a feeling. And that feeling shows her a safer path. She’s learned to trust those feelings.

She spies a path up ahead that will take her up higher, and let her get a better sense of how she can progress forward. It leads up to an old water tower or something, and she carefully navigates to it. The ladder is metal, and rusted, but she pulls on it a bit to test it, and it holds well enough.

So she begins to climb. On the second to last rung before the top, the ladder shears loose of the tower, and begins to fall forward. She panics and leaps up for the lip of the tower, barely grabs hold of it. And dangles. The ladder bangs against the center of the tower and rests there, mere feet from her reach, but worthless in this state. She’s used to crawling around and running, but hasn’t really had occasion to do this kind of physical exercise. Her arms burn while she hangs off the edge of this thing. She can drop back down and likely not hurt herself too much, but this was the only way she saw forward, and she was following her instinct. It’s gotta be the way forward.

So she grits her teeth, locks one arm, and pulls her staff free from her back with the other. She’s got maybe one chance. Aerith strains forward, reaching the metal staff out to the ladder. Loops it inside the rung and pulls, trying to raise it back up enough that she can get her legs on it, rest her arms.

It comes slowly, and more rust flakes away as she brings it closer. Her fingers begin to slip on the top of this structure as her arm almost vibrates with the strain of holding herself up. She gets one foot on the ladder, tucks it in and pulls it up next to her body. She can’t rest all her weight on it without it falling forward, or worse, back, but she clutches the staff to her chest, between it and the ladder, and switches her arms, letting the left one rest for a moment while she holds the ladder in place, deciding what to do next.

She tries to put weight down on the ladder, use it to climb while still holding the lip above her. If she can get another foot higher, she might be able to get her elbow above the line, and then drag herself up sideways. But any attempt to hold the ladder in place just wobbles her, putting new stress on her arm and threatening to lose her tenuous grasp of the top of the structure, her staff, and the ladder.

The staff slides loose and begins to fall, and she narrowly grips it as it bounces off a rung. And this gives her the idea of how to get up.

She pulls the staff higher, swings the ladder outwards a tiny bit, and wedges the metal staff in between rungs. Then she loops the top part through the vertical railing very near to her hand on the lip of this tower, and leans her weight forward, using the staff as leverage to hold the ladder steady. The ladder creaks, her staff groans against the strain, but the whole assembly holds.

Enough to climb another couple of rungs without it slipping out from under her. She sweats and gets her arms up, uses the railing to continue climbing, and drops to the roof of this tower, panting and laughing. She manages to free her staff from its position, noting that it’s actually a little bent along the middle now, but better that than breaking her skull open on the ground. With the staff free, the ladder falls loose, clanging to the ground amid rust and dust, and then silence reigns once more.

Eventually she sits up, and stands. She wipes the sweat away, and gasps at the view afforded her. She’s grimy, covered in rust, dust, some of her blood where she’s scraped herself, and her favorite dress has a few choice rips, but she’s alive, and she can see the wall to Sector 7 from here. And everything in between: all the mounds of rust and waste, all the small smokes from stoves and engines releasing their smogs into the undercity. She doesn’t know why, but she loves this place. With all its dents, and rust, and monsters both human and otherwise lurking about. It’s her home, and a view like this reminds her that it’s vast, and filled with people all just trying to get by. 

She tears her eyes from the view and glances around, trying to find a place to progress or drop down, and thinks she sees a large tube farther ahead that might get her closer to the ground. So she circles the tower, climbs down and over several more connected walkways, and clambers over a metal girder that bridges a large gap. If she were with the orphans, for whatever reason, she’d pretend to lose her balance. Little jokes. But she’s alone, and she sighs as she gets to the other side. This is where the large tube is, some metal pipe that is mostly intact. She can’t quite see where it lets out, but there’s enough scuff marks on the base of it that she knows people have used it for traversal.

So she holds her staff close and sits down in the chute, shuffles forward until gravity takes over, and momentum carries her down. Wind whips past her face, ruffling her hair and her dress, and she yells out with glee as the slide deposits her… somewhere else. This is the closest she’s gotten to the ground so far, and she thinks she can climb down the side of the building, let herself drop the last five or six feet.

But it looks much higher from where she stands right now, and it takes her a moment to gather her courage. She glances both ways down the path between the church and Sector 5’s slums, her home, making sure no one’s around, especially the Turks or Shinra. She drops the staff and the satchel with the man’s belongings, then levers one leg over the edge of the roof. Then the other, and tries to lower herself down gently. But her arms are still tired from the exertion earlier, and her left arm locks up, losing its grip, and she slips free of the roof. 

Her arms and legs splay out, searching for purchase, finding none. For the briefest moment she panics, wondering who would find her, skull cracked or ankle broken, and what they would do to her.

Then she drops into a crouch, protecting her head, and lands hard on some sheet metal, which twangs loudly against her impact.

Pain shoots through her shoulder, her hip, and she loses feeling in that side of her body before she comes to rest. She cries out in pain, can’t help it, and then stifles it just as quickly. This is the no man’s land between points of civilization, and she needs to draw less attention to herself now that she’s on the ground again. 

But the pain is vast, and she doesn’t know if she’s broken anything. But she can breathe, and she doesn’t seem to be bleeding. She feels around for breaks or bone piercing through the skin. She hurts, but nothing feels dangerously broken or busted.

Still, this is hardly ideal, and she gathers up the satchel and her staff, groaning from exertion and still working feeling back into her arm. With her other hand she feels around for the materia she saw earlier. It’s bright green, almost cheerful, and she knows that green materia can be curative. Heal minor wounds and revitalize an exhausted person, keep them conscious when their wounds would otherwise knock them out.

But she doesn’t know which is which, and she holds one of the green orbs, feeling it almost vibrate with energy, and concentrates on it to activate it. A tiny bolt of lightning sparks out, zapping against the rusty building next to her. She lets out a tiny yelp of surprise and puts that one back. Definitely not the one she wants.

There’s only a few green ones in the mix, so she grabs another, and concentrates on it, trying to determine if there’s some way to feel what it does. This one radiates warmth and almost pulses with energy, rather than vibrating. She puts that one back, grabs another. This materia is cool to the touch, hums with energy, and just holding it makes her shiver.

She grabs the last green materia, and this one feels totally different from the others. It matches her heartbeat with its vibrational energy, and where it touches her scuffed palms, she feels soothing energy bleed into her. This is the one. She activates it, and a wave of bluish-green energy washes over her, lifestream energy folded into its true purpose. To regenerate. To heal.

Her little hurts and cuts scab over immediately, and all the aches and pains vanish as if they had never existed. She feels… revitalized, and yet also like she’s drained. Channeling materia is just as taxing as swinging a weapon, as running a race. 

Interesting. She’s always known how materia works, and has had her share of small experiences over the years, but to actively use this green variety is something altogether different. She drops the materia back into the satchel with the others, thanking the nameless stranger for this unintentional gift. Now if only she could figure out what her little white orb of materia was good for.

She glances out of the tiny alcove she’s in, makes sure there’s no one else, and hurries on her way to the Sector 5 train station. Here she avoids the Turks again, who are scouting around in a helicopter. She spies Reno once as he accepts help into the copter, and the other one she knows, Rude, steps out, cleaning his sunglasses before putting them back on. As if he needs shades in the slums. 

Aerith takes another path she knows, through construction zones and around the main thoroughfare. The danger here is creatures, twisted by pollution and mako. They gather wherever people aren’t, and when they get brave enough, or hungry enough, they go where people are.

So she holds her staff in one hand, and the sparkly materia that she now knows can shoot lightning in the other. She’s fought creatures off before, but it’ll be nice to have an extra weapon for the journey.

And she has to use it before the afternoon is done. Large rats swarm her first, and she uses the materia against them, but all it does is stun them a little, scorching their fur and sending them scurrying for safety and more numbers.

So she finds the warm materia, and the next time they come at her, she lashes out with a tiny ball of flame on the leader, a larger rat they call doom rats, and the flames boil over it. Its scream is horrible, but it dies quickly. Not painlessly. But at least it didn’t suffer.

Other creatures attack on this path, but between her knowledge of the slums, her staff, and the new combat materia she’s stumbled into, she makes short work of them all. By the time she finally reaches the other side of the construction zone, she’s feeling pleasantly exhausted. Using materia takes a bit out of you, but it sure beats swinging a staff like a golf club or baseball bat all day.

She reaches the outskirts of Sector 5, and immediately is pulled in various directions by friendly faces. Some just want to say hi, some ask if she’s okay given her bedraggled appearance. A couple of the kids from the orphanage want to talk about the crazy news, and drag her over to the large television in the center of town. On the TV is a news report up on the plate, outside of the Sector 5 Reactor. A severe and attractive woman threatens the reporter and cameraperson, while at the same time assuaging fears about the terrorist attacks. The former kind of ruins the sentiment of the latter, but it cuts off before anything real happens.

Aerith lets herself be pulled along by the kids, chattering about the explosion, and what they did or didn’t see. They eventually make it to the Leaf House, the orphanage for Sector 5, and she is distracted by it all. The Turks know where she lives, have for a very long time, but now that Reno is around and it seems like they are going to be more aggressive about getting her to comply, she isn’t sure what to do about it. 

If they come for Elmyra, Aerith doesn’t know what she’ll do. The Turks have never been this way before. She excuses herself from the Leaf House, and carefully makes her way home down the littered, covered path that leads to her garden. She’s wary of the Turks, or increased Shinra presence, but nothing happens that strikes her as worrisome, and she comes into the glade, glad to be free of the normal smells of the slums. Earthy, floral scents envelop her, and she hears the feelings of the plants all around her. Flowers, carrots, roses, catstalks. Every one a unique voice, so soft, so delicate, all susurration and whisper.

This is her home, her sanctuary. She loves it here, and spreads the wealth of her sanctum to everyone she comes in contact with in the slums. Besides the church, this is the only place in the entire slums where anything substantial will grow. She knows she has something to do with that, as a Cetran, but the knowledge of how and why is lost to her. The plants speak to her, but she sometimes has trouble talking back.

A sudden feeling of being watched comes over Aerith, and she spins in place back toward the path that leads to her home. Rude stands there, arms crossed, eyes hidden behind his shades, light glinting off the bald head. 

“You treated my partner awfully bad,” he says, taking measured steps down the stairs on the path. Aerith grips the cold materia, not sure what she should do here. She doesn’t want to hurt her plants, but neither can she let this man come in here to her home and do whatever he wants.

She takes a step forward, away from the house. “He wasn’t as nice as you.”

“I fear my name is going to be indicative of my personality going forward,” Rude says, grinning.

She scoffs, gripping the materia tighter behind her back.

“I’m not coming with you. And if you try to hurt my mother, you’ll find out just how cross a flower girl can be.”

“Shaking in my loafers,” Rude says. He stops at the tiny bridge over the creek, and Aerith stops on the other side of it. Rude isn’t as fast as Reno was, but he’s no slouch either. She isn’t sure she can use this materia on him fast enough if he rushes her from this close distance.

“So what’s your move, Rude? Are you going to kidnap a helpless girl, use her mother as leverage, burn down my home?”

“I won’t have to do any of those if you’d just agree to meet with the boss.”

She says, “The last time I saw Tseng, he said he didn’t want to force it.”

Rude grins. “Sorry, I mean the real boss. Rufus Shinra.”

Aerith’s attitude changes. So that’s what this is. Someone new is in charge. “I thought the Vice President was away on diplomatic missions to Wutai.” She’s pretty sure that’s what the news reports say about the young VP.

Rude shrugs. “Above my pay grade. Do you want to come nice and easy, or are you gonna hit me with your fancy stick?”

“I was thinking about sticking it somewhere,” she suggests, eyes rolling up innocently.

“Cute. You may have gotten lucky with Reno, but there’s no furniture to throw at me out here.”

She’s about to say something pithy in response, but he rushes forward in the space of a breath, and she’s so surprised that she falls backwards trying to avoid his outstretched hand. Yet the gloved hand snatches the strap on the dead man’s satchel, and she yanks to a stop inches from the ground, held aloft by the strap. Rude leers over her, casting a shadow over her body.

And grins. “Now’s a good time to give--” 

Aerith holds the materia up between them, activating it blindly. Rude receives the full impact of a sparkling ball of ice in his chest, which almost immediately shatters, knocking him up and away, shredding his very nice suit jacket and splashing red droplets of blood all over her.

Aerith drops down when Rude loses his hold on the satchel’s strap, and moments later Rude drops about ten feet away, landing in a crouched, kneeling position, coughing blood and pulling his broken shades off his face.

“No one said you had materia,” he complains, standing and pulling a second pair of sunglasses out of his breast pocket. These are also broken from the impact of the ice materia, and he tosses them aside glumly.

Aerith scrambles to her feet, wiping at the blood on her face, no doubt rubbing it in like warpaint. “You got a new boss, I got a new weapon.”

He rotates his neck and cracks his knuckles, smiling. “And here I thought you were going to be boring.”

“You can leave any time, Rude. I won’t tell your boss you got beat by ice.”

“This fight is long from over, Miss Gainsborough.” The door to Aerith’s house bursts open, and her adoptive mother, Elmyra, holds a rolling pin in one hand, and a frying pan in the other. 

“Everything all right out here, Aerith?” she calls, eyes on Rude.

“Just the Turks delivering a message. I’ve got it under control, Mom.”

“One cheap move does not equal control of a situation, girl.” Rude squares his shoulders before taking a defensive stance, and Aerith holds the materia out to him again. She concentrates on hitting him with another ball of ice, but when it appears at his chest, his stance shifts subtly. He uses the ball of ice as leverage to shove himself away from it, letting his shoes slide over the dirt path. The ice shatters outward, sending crystalline spikes in every direction, but he dances away unharmed. Aerith huffs in annoyance, wondering if the one that shoots lightning will work better against a guy who can block that.

But as she shuffles for the different materia, Elmyra coming forward to protect her, Rude pauses, putting his hand to his ear. He listens for a moment while Aerith holds the lightning materia out, ready to strike him with it, but he whispers something she can’t hear, and drops his stance.

“Giving up?” she asks.

“Stick a pin in this, Miss Gainsborough. I’m being recalled for bigger and better things. You’ll see us again before too long, though.”

He pats at his other pockets, and pulls a third pair of shades from one of them, sliding them onto his slightly bloody face. He grins, waves casually, and jogs off.

Aerith heaves a sigh of relief, letting the lightning materia fall back into the satchel, where it bonks against the others. Elmyra puts an arm around her, hugging her close.

“I guess we knew this day would come eventually, didn’t we?” Elmyra asks.

“The day they finally get pushy, yeah.” Aerith leans her head into her mother’s shoulder, and they watch as Rude disappears around a corner. “I already got away from the new guy earlier. Red hair, far too pretty for his own good.”

“You do like the pretty ones.”

Aerith blushes slightly. “Not my fault.”

Elmyra laughs. Her laugh has always brought Aerith such warmth, and it does so now. “Well, it’s certainly not mine. You spend too much time with beautiful things not to appreciate it wherever you see it.”

Aerith doesn’t have a response to that, but she sighs. “Today was a day, as you can tell. I don’t think I can stay home.”

Elmyra shakes her head in agreement. “No, I suppose not. If the Turks are finally coming for you in force, you’ll need to stay hidden.”

“I have a place I might be able to go,” she says, thinking about that bloody cocktail napkin from the dead man’s pocket. “I--I guess I shouldn’t tell you about it, huh? In case the Turks decide to interrogate you.”

“Best not,” Elmyra says, frowning. “Who knows what they’re truly capable of. Come inside, dear. Whatever called that one away, I imagine you’ve got some time.”

Aerith nods, and lets her mother lead her into their home. She glances at her gardens, her sanctum, wondering when next she might be able to see them, to walk among the whispering plants, to hear their joys and sorrows.

But first thing tomorrow, she’s going to sneak out to the Sector 7 Slums, looking for the trail of a dead man. A dead man carrying a sword and wearing armor too familiar to her. To maybe find out what happened to her first love.

Chapter 2: Miss Tifa's Dangerous Mission

Summary:

Tifa Lockhart goes on a mission to Don Corneo's. Aerith finds her way to the Sector 7 Slums alone.

Notes:

(See the end of the chapter for notes.)

Chapter Text

The sun lamps in Sector 7 flicker. They’ve been doing that more often of late, even moreso because they just destroyed a second reactor. Tifa Lockhart watches them from her posh chocobo carriage. She smooths her exotic dress, something she would never have believed she would wear, and it isn’t precisely what Cloud told her she should get, but the whole point of a fancy dress-up date is to be someone else. Right? But she also had it altered to be much shorter, in case she needs to fight. The black kimono is too much, but maybe too much will be enough for Corneo.

The inside of the carriage smells nice, perfumed, but it can’t fully mask the closed-in damp that is the entirety of the slums beneath Midgar’s plate. The sun lamps flicker again, and they stay off for several seconds before coming back on again.

Her fingers brush the bright yellow flower in her hair. The flower Cloud gave her and had no idea what it meant. She tries not to think about Cloud. Not exactly her friend when they were growing up, but they had stupidly made that promise to each other. If she needed his help, he’d come. No questions asked.

Well, he did. And now he was probably dead. Tifa looks away from the metal sky, concentrating on her breathing. The mission has to go on. Avalanche knows Corneo is looking into them, but not why. The only real intel they could gather on Don Corneo is that he controls Wall Market and has a fondness for busty young women. Well, Tifa isn’t sure she fits that narrative, but the way that Wedge and Biggs stared agog at her in this getup was reassuring, if mortifying. 

Chocobo Sam, a charming older man with a gruff accent that doesn’t fit anywhere Tifa’s been, clears his throat from up front. “We’re comin’ up on the wall, Miss Tifa.”

She tries to be cool and assertive. “Thank you, Sam. How long to Wall Market?”

“Depends how long it takes to get the door open.”

“I’m sure it will be fine. I’m told the Don has connections.”

Chocobo Sam grunts laughter. “That’s putting it mildly. You just keep that attitude as perky as your other attributes and you’ll be fine.”

Tifa can’t see the man’s face while he sits facing away from her, and she’s glad for that because she can’t hide the sudden blush at that impropriety. She needs to get used to being talked about like this, if she’s going to get in to see the Don.

Money changes hands, and the Shinra soldiers open up the gigantic gate well in advance of the daily schedule. Why they thought it necessary to control who comes and goes between some sectors of the slums, Tifa doesn’t know, but seeing corrupt Shinra soldiers doesn’t surprise her. She knows there are many just trying to do their best, to provide for themselves and their families. Who don’t understand all the things Shinra does wrong.

She also knows that the corruption starts at the top and runs downhill. Like an Avalanche. After their run-in with Heidegger of Shinra, gloating about using them to make a point, she knows there’s no stopping this without bloodshed. She doesn’t have to like it, though.

As the gate slides open, Tifa has a moment where she’s sure Cloud is on the other side. That he’s going to be banged up but somehow survived that insane fall from the catwalks outside the Sector 5 Reactor. It would be just like him. Standing there, kicking dirt, hand on that ridiculous sword trying to figure out how to get past the gate.

Wishful thinking.

It doesn’t stop her looking around as the carriage passes through the gate. There’s an abandoned playground here, way nicer than what they have in the Sector 7 slums. But no Cloud. No SOLDIER 1st Class, with those haunting teal eyes that never look quite at you when you want them to. Instead there’s just a lonely young woman sitting atop the slide in the playground, eating a simple lunch. She’s hard to make out at this distance, but pretty. Long brown hair, a cute little red jacket. Almost seeming out of place, like she doesn’t belong in the slums at all. Like she doesn’t belong in this dreary world. 

The woman sees Tifa, grins, and waves politely. Like an old friend. Tifa blushes at being caught watching the woman, and waves back. They share a moment, strangers connected by transfer between the wall. The woman hops off the slide and jogs toward the open gate while Tifa loses sight of her around a corner. For just a moment, Tifa thinks there is something familiar about her.

The satchel. Cloud carried one like it. And were those yellow flowers peeking out of the bag? Yellow and cheerful, like the one Cloud gave her after the first reactor mission, in her hair at this moment.

She shakes her head. Wishful thinking again.

She rides on to Wall Market, trying not to fidget with her outfit. Trying not to worry about the bar. About Avalanche. This is such a risky maneuver, but the crew believes in her. She just wishes she had their faith. Though she’s wearing the fanciest dress she’s ever seen up close, and her hair and makeup are something out of those bougey salons above the plate, she can’t help but realize that this is her projection. She doesn’t know what it’s like up there, not really.

Where she sees a fantastically expensive dress and expertly-layered makeup, someone from the rich areas above the plate can probably see the forgery. They know she wouldn’t belong. Will Don Corneo be similar? Will she be enough to entice him, to get him into a room alone and extract answers from him?

She doesn’t know, but time has run out. The carriage comes to a stop, and Chocobo Sam hops off, opening the back gate for her to climb down. He extends a hand to her, which she almost doesn’t take out of a desire to prove she doesn’t need the help. Then she remembers she’s supposed to be shy and demure, and accepts the hand. The mission is the mission, and she’s got to follow through.

The sounds of Wall Market are near. Tinny music, loud voices. A babble that devolves into incomprehensible white noise. Bass bumps from clubs and bars. People drink openly on the narrow streets and warrens. Street toughs protect alleyways. Harsh neon glare forces a squint.

A couple of men approach, and Sam smiles at the two of them. “Good to see you, Kotch, Scotch. Staying out of trouble?” Those don’t even sound like names, but Tifa averts her gaze. Jessie’s lessons on how to be pliant and shy sound an awful lot like how Tifa just acts in general, but she focuses on amplifying those effects. Smile shyly, don’t keep eye contact. Giggle at anything even remotely resembling a joke. If these men are with Don Corneo, she needs the act to be on point starting now.

The darker-skinned man with the bleached blonde mohawk grins. “You know us. Trouble is at least one of our middle names. This the girl?” He walks up to Tifa, casually grabs her chin, lifts her face up and starts examining it. His breath is hot on her cheek and smells of stale beer. She does her best not to kick in this guy’s chest out of disgust.

“This here’s Miss Tifa. Careful how you treat her. She’s a looker, but I think she’s feisty.”

Damn. That’s not what she wants them thinking.

“I got a cat feistier than this,” the other man says. He’s wearing dark shades and has his hair slicked back. “Come on, let’s get Miss Tifa up to her private suite.”

“Aw, c’mon Scotch,” the first man, apparently Kotch, says. “I know you had your heart set on more than one lady tonight, but we’ve got the Corneo Cup to look forward to. You know the ladies love a grandstander.”

“Yeah, yeah. Gonna end up at the Honeybee Inn again.”

Chocobo Sam tips his hat to Tifa. “These gentlemen will escort you up to the Don’s place. It’s been a pleasure being your escort, Miss Tifa.” He takes her hand and kisses it like a proper gentleman, and Tifa blushes a little. Then she remembers that this man, as charming and nice as he seems, is escorting women into a criminal’s hands and thinks nothing of it.

So she thanks him politely and follows Kotch and Scotch through the Wall Market. They chatter and laugh with locals as they go, and Tifa receives a few appreciative catcalls as well as many sad looks and furtive glances. Tifa begins to have a bad feeling about being the Don’s lady for the evening, but she can handle herself. If she can get him alone, she can subdue him no matter how big and strong he is. Especially if he tries to get her to do anything with little Don. No faster way to stop a man in his tracks than to apply a little pressure. She wishes she didn’t know this, but the slums, even the relatively nice Sector 7 slums where people take care of each other, has its bad element. 

You don’t run a bar without kneeing a few jerks in their bars, in her experience.

They pass through the Wall Market and up an elaborate set of stairs leading to the gaudiest, most foreign place she’s ever seen. She knows vaguely what Wutai-inspired architecture looks like because of movies and wartime footage, but this is gauche and impractical. It’s red and gold, and opulent, and the clearest sign of overcompensation she’s ever heard of. How did no one ever paint such a picture of this place before? 

Scotch mistakes her stare of incredulity with awe. He smirks and says, “I never get tired of the ladies seeing this place and creaming a little bit.”

“Come on, Scotch, don’t be lewd,” Kotch says, elbowing him. “Let’s get her up there. We’ve got a Coliseum fight to announce.”

“Yeah, yeah. Come on.” Scotch scoffs, but Tifa follows them dutifully up the stairs and through several large, ornate doors into the pagoda-like palace. Another group of Corneo lackeys covers a final door into the mansion, and one of them holds up a hand to get them to stop. He’s got a sort of casual disinterest in his attire and in the way he looks at the three of them walking up. He wears a white shirt with a red-accented black jacket, a baseball cap, and a look of eternal boredom.

“Do we really need to do this every time we bring a girl in, Leslie?” Kotch asks.

Leslie shrugs. “You do your jobs, I do mine. Show me the recommendation for this one.”

Kotch pulls out a slip of paper with a clearly-identifiable chocobo stamp on it. “This is Tifa.”

Miss Tifa,” Scotch corrects with a sarcastic grin.

“Uh huh. And she’s really the only one for tonight? Didn’t get anything from Andrea or the Madam?”

“Guess not. You guys got her from here?” Kotch nudges her forward. “We’ve gotta go make our money. This escort shit doesn’t pay the bills.”

They begin to walk away, and Tifa lets out a little breath in relief that they’re going. They are overbearing and not a little bit gross. 

The man named Leslie, looks about the same age as Tifa, sighs and nods to the other guys. “Open it up. Follow him upstairs and do not leave the room until you’re called for, got it?”

“Will I be meeting Don Corneo soon?” she asks, trying to cover her interrogation with innocent curiosity.

“Tonight after the Corneo Cup. And if we get any other candidates, you’ll have a chance to impress him before he makes his decision tonight.”

“Candidates?”

Leslie sighs again. “The Don is very picky. If you’re very lucky, you’ll have competition for his attentions tonight.”

“Other girls,” she says, mostly to herself. That could go very wrong.

“I wouldn’t worry too much,” one of the other guys says. “It’s getting late in the day for new arrivals.”

“Oh, that’s good,” Tifa says, smiling at them all. “I hope I don’t have to compete.”

“You’ll wish you did,” Leslie says under his breath, and Tifa cocks her head at him. He clears his throat. “Up you go, Miss Tifa. You’ll get called when it’s time.”

“Thank you, Leslie.” She smiles for him, but she gets the strangest stomach-churning vibe off him. He’s not like the others, and he seems to be hinting that whatever’s in store for her tonight, it’s not going to be good.

But she allows herself to be guided up the stairs inside this opulent palace. The ground floor just overflows with crates and storage of Wutai furnishings. The other lackey walks up behind her, several steps below and leering at her. She holds her hands behind her back, keeping the skirt from flapping out and displaying her goods to this pervert. Despite herself, she blushes with embarrassment and anger.

To distract him, she waves a hand out over the vast collection of Wutai junk. “Don Corneo seems to have a love for foreign things.”

“He loves anything that other people can’t get. We’re at war with Wutai? He buys hundreds of thousands of gil worth of black market Wutai products. Same with women. What he can’t have, he buys.”

The guy in front says, “Miss Tifa? Through these doors.” There are three sets of doors on the second floor, but Tifa is led through the doors farthest from the exit. This feels like it’s on purpose, so that any girl who decides to back out has a long way to travel to leave. And she’s beginning to suspect that leaving isn’t an option.

The room they lead her into is likewise opulently furnished, with several paintings of women in lascivious poses or mythological Wutai dragons curled up around them protectively. She notes there is not a bed or anywhere to really sit in here. 

“Sorry, could I trouble you for a drink? It was a long trip and I admit I’m nervous to meet him.”

The first guy grins at the second guy and says, “Sure, doll, coming right up. You just wait here.” She doesn’t like the sound of that at all. If they bring her anything, she intends to dump it for fear of it being drugged. The doors shut behind them, and immediately lock. She almost rushes to the doors to try and force them open, but she’s being shy, demure. Passive and trusting. She wouldn’t break a door down the moment she’s alone.

But she waits for several minutes, and when no one comes back with a drink, she attempts to open the door, tentatively. Like a person who doesn’t realize it’s locked.

It doesn’t open, and she knocks timidly. “Um, hello? Is there a bathroom somewhere?”

She doesn’t receive a response, but a hissing sound reaches her ears. It sounds pneumatic, not animal, and she glances around for vents. A green smoke billows out of several vents in the walls, choking her. She sucks in a great breath, not knowing what this is, and holds it while she thinks about what to do. If they’re just trying to knock her out, they can wait out her lungs. If they’ve done this often, they’ll know all the tricks. She isn’t going to dramatically pass out early and get them to open the doors.

They’ll wait several minutes. And she’ll be unconscious. She searches for some material to cover her mouth, but this room is mostly paintings and wood or metal furniture, like shelves. Nothing she can use as a makeshift filter.

She can’t let them do this to her! She strides toward the door, already wanting to take a breath, her lungs screaming for oxygen. She’s going to get one chance at this, and if those doors are as sturdy as they look, that one chance is razor thin.

She hikes up her already short skirt to give her complete freedom of motion, and charges at the double doors. She jumps at them, raising both legs up to apply as much force to her kick as she can. She connects with the handles on the doors, and shoves out at them like her legs are pistons. 

The handles break off with a clang and the door shudders, but holds firm. She falls back and twists to land in a crouch. Now that she’s exerting herself, her vision goes blurry and her body does everything in its power to get her to exhale and breathe in. She holds it in, feeling sluggish as she goes back to the door and tries to prise it open with her fingernails. It doesn’t work, of course, and she bangs against the door.

Laughter from outside incenses her, but she’s out of energy. She has to breathe or pass out, and breathing probably leads to passing out.

Her vision dims, and she drops to the floor. This was supposed to go different! This was going to be a simple mission: in, extract information, get back to Sector 7 and prepare for what’s next. Instead she’s going to pass out and be subjected to something she can’t even imagine.

She can’t stand it any longer. Her chest wants to burst with the pressure of holding in what’s rapidly becoming poison to her lungs, and she tries one last time to bang at the door, only to hear laughter against her feeble attempts. 

The air whooshes out of her, and in its place a toxic gas fills her lungs, choking her. She almost immediately loses consciousness as her body drops to the floor.

*****

Aerith breathes in the life of Sector 7, learning its smells and tastes. It’s been a long time since she’s had reason to be here. It’s more spread out than Sector 5, not as cramped as Sector 6, and the people here all seem to be in high spirits. She passes by a neighborhood watch all gloating over how safe things have been since the merc came to town. She passes by a schoolyard with kids running here and there, talking about the Lifestream and learning Mathematics. There doesn’t seem to be an orphanage here, which is a good thing, Aerith supposes. She pulls out several flowers by their stems, handing them out to the little girls and boys as she goes, and they all delightedly take them, gossiping to each other about the flower girl. Normally she’d be charging a pittance for them, but she’s flush with gil at the moment after selling some of the curatives to the Sector 5 medics, and she can afford to be frivolous for the sake of strangers.

She wonders briefly where the gorgeous woman in the chocobo carriage lives, and has a strong suspicion as she passes a rowdy building with a bunch of pretty young women, arguing about clothing and makeup, dress rehearsals and the like. All dressed up as she was, perhaps she lives at this burgeoning actors’ studio. She smiles cheerily at them, handing out yellow and white flowers as she goes. One of them, a tall and lithe girl with brown hair and an easy smile, tries to pay her for the flower, but Aerith just skips along, refusing gil. 

Aerith continues on her way, looking for the 7th Heaven bar and passing out cheer and joy in the form of smiles and flowers. Some regard her with suspicion, and the neighborhood watch with their guns and their red bandanas eye her curiously, but she doesn’t let it get to her. It pays to be wary of new faces in the slums. Not much lateral movement down here. If you end up in the Sector 5 Slums, that’s where you tend to stay. Anyone else has either fallen on hard times, is a con artist, or an outright thief.

But she smiles and hands out flowers and keeps her eyes open until, finally, she sees the sign hanging above the low buildings. Big stylized number 7, hard to miss once you cleared the outskirts. There’s a large open space, like the public square in front of the big screen in Sector 5, that faces the bar. It seems to be in decent shape, with seating on the front porch area. At this time of day, there’s a few older people sipping beer and iced tea, chatting with passersby. 

Aerith takes a deep breath, drawing her courage up for a confrontation. If the dead man had been hanging around here, and he was an eco terrorist, that could mean others of that sort are around. She doesn’t really know if she wants to get involved with that level of rebellion, but her curiosity over his gear and his eyes being so similar to Zack decides her. Whatever else happens, she can’t go home quite yet, and might need to make some fast friends. Fortunately, she’s very good at that.

There’s a man from the neighborhood watch at the door, acting like a bouncer. He’s handsome, if a bit stiff, and she notes him watching her the moment she starts in the direction of the bar. He eases the door open, says something she can’t hear at this distance, and closes it up again. A curtain at one of the windows ruffles, and Aerith is now sure she’s being watched. Curious.

Aerith hands a yellow flower to the old woman at a table, and bobs her head cheerfully at the woman’s unexpected delight. She steps within a few feet of the man at the door, noting that he has a pistol and a combat knife. The way he carries his shoulders, he’s often had cause to carry a rifle. She’s seen a lot of soldiers, a lot of grunts, in her days, and this man is no stranger to a fight.

“Hi there!” she says, stopping and holding out a hand to him. “My name’s Aerith, what’s yours?”

The man ignores her hand and then his eyes dart to her satchel. The dead man’s satchel. “Business, and it’s none of yours.”

She pouts playfully with a big frown. “I’m a big scary bully, watch me turn away customers,” she says in a mock deep voice. 

“Hey Biggs, I see you met the flower girl already,” a bright and cheery voice says from behind Aerith. It’s the tall girl from the women’s dorms she met a little bit ago, only now she’s got form-fitting armor and a red bandana tied around her head. 

“Cool, I guess we’re just sharing our names with any pretty faces we come across,” the man, Biggs, says. He sighs. “After last night, we need to be more careful.”

“Careful shmareful,” the woman says. “Look at her, do you think she’s gonna roll inside the bar and start shooting?”

“I don’t know what she’s gonna do, but it’s not gonna be inside the bar. Boss’s orders.” Biggs crosses his arms in front of his chest. “In fact, why don’t you wait right here… Aerith, right?”

Aerith smiles and nods. “I was hoping to talk to anyone working last night. I’m looking for--a friend,” she lies. She has the distinct impression that Biggs recognized the bag she’s wearing, and it set him on edge.

“Yeah, just wait right here. Jessie, you got her for a minute?”

“Right as rain, Biggie.” Jessie, the woman neighborhood watch, winks at him and takes up his position at the door while he steps inside.

“Cautious lot,” Aerith says. “I didn’t know you were on neighborhood watch.” She sizes the woman up a little bit, deciding that her first impression was a bad one. She’s fit and ready for action, and there’s a familiar spark of mischievousness in Jessie’s eyes that Aerith recognizes all too well.

“He’s always been that way,” Jessie says, shrugging. Finally her eyes take in Aerith, the hastily-mended rips in her favorite pink dress, the smudges of dirt that wouldn’t come out of her little red jacket. “You’ve seen a hard day, I’d wager.”

“You’d win that bet,” Aerith says brightly. “Were you at the bar last night, Jessie?”

“I--wasn’t. Patrol.” Aerith catches that hesitation, wonders if it’s a lie or just a dodge.

Before they can continue the conversation, the door opens back up and Biggs gestures at Jessie. They whisper back and forth a moment, and then both nod. 

“Boss says you can come in,” Biggs finally says. 

“Sorry, I haven’t lived in the slums my entire life just to blindly walk into a trap. I’m looking for someone who knew the man this bag and materia owned.”

The door bursts open now, shoving Biggs out of the way, and a shorter, pudgy man with a red bandana and a gravelly voice pops out. “You’ve seen Cloud? Is he okay?”

Aerith recoils from him in surprise, but Jessie’s behind her, preventing her escape. She taps her knuckles against her breastplate. “Sorry, but you’re not leaving until we get answers, ‘mkay?”

A towering black man with some kind of machine gun contraption in place of an arm also appears at the doorway. “Come on in, Aerith. We got some talking points.”

A young girl’s voice cries out, “No, Daddy, she gave us pretty flowers! She’s not mean!”

One of the little girls at the schoolyard comes rushing up from the street, and hides behind the big black man, of all people. Well, Aerith isn’t one to judge. Families come in all shapes and sizes in the slums. Adoption is pretty normal. 

The black man opens his mouth in surprise at the interruption. “Marlene! You’re s’posed to be at school.”

“I was coming back to show you the flower, like the one Tifa had! She was giving them away to everyone.” Marlene points to Aerith, who smiles.

“Aw, you’re welcome, Marlene. Here, you can have the rest.” She opens up the satchel and pulls the last few flowers free, holding them out to the little girl. 

Marlene’s eyes open wide as saucers and she glances up at her father. “Can I, Daddy?”

The man glances down at Marlene, then up at Aerith, and his shoulders relax. “Yeah, okay. We got some questions for you, Aerith, like how’d you get that bag and how did you know to come here?”

The pudgy neighborhood watch man says, “Come on, she’s obviously seen him. Is he okay? Did Cloud survive the fall?”

Aerith stands and watches them all, eyes sad now. She says, “Sorry. We shouldn’t talk about this in front of the girl.”

The black man grunts in acknowledgement, and says, “Wedge, take Marlene back to school. Do not take her to visit your cats first.”

The pudgy man scoffs, but Aerith has the impression that he absolutely will do that regardless. Wedge nods and holds his hand out for Marlene. “Come on, kid. You gotta learn or you’ll never be smarter than Jessie.”

Jessie elbows him playfully as they pass by. Aerith waves goodbye to the little girl, and sighs. “Cute kid.”

The black man says, “Adorable. Now if you don’t mind, let’s talk.” He holds the door open for Aerith while Jessie and Biggs offer her sheepish smiles. Her earlier worry of this being a trap isn’t gone, not completely, but their crestfallen faces when she wouldn’t outright say Cloud was alive or dead tells them everything she needs to know.

These are good people, and they’re not going to hurt her.

She steps inside the bar, handing the satchel over as she goes. It no longer has the fire or the cure materia; those are hers now. The rest are intact.

Once they’re all inside, the big man sighs. “So he’s dead.”

Aerith nods. “He fell out of the sky.”

Biggs scoffs. “How do we know she’s talking about the same guy, Barret?”

“Not a lot of folk fall off the plate,” the big black man says. He shrugs. “Describe him, uh, if you can.”

Aerith does, and it takes no time at all for their eyes to go wide and for the reality to set in. Barret curses, Biggs shakes his head in disbelief, and Jessie stares at the floor.

Jessie finally says, “Yeah… that’s him. Stupid man, dying just to avoid going on a date with me.”

Biggs chuckles at the apparent joke. “Hey, at least you don’t have to pay him, now, Boss.”

“Ain’t funny. That spiky-haired chump was Tifa’s friend, and I know y’all got close to him.”

“It’s kinda funny,” Jessie says, standing now. “I didn’t think anything could kill him.”

“Just ‘cause he was SOLDIER doesn’t make him immortal.”

Aerith says, “So he was a SOLDIER.”

“You know about them?” Biggs asks.

Aerith shrugs. “I knew one, once. Long time ago.” Not that long ago, but they don’t need to know that. “You guys are that environmental rebellion group, Avalanche, right? The ones responsible for the bombings.”

Barret shrugs. “Suppose we are. What do you intend to do with that information?”

Aerith knows this is dangerous territory. They’re terrorists, no argument about that. But the planet feels stronger since they took out the reactors. They might be breaking laws, but they’re doing a good thing overall. 

She says, “I’m also on the run from a Shinra organization. I guess what I intend to do with this information is… join the resistance.”

Notes:

Next Chapter: The Plate Falls

Chapter 3: The Plate Falls

Summary:

Tifa struggles in Don Corneo's dungeon and learns a terrifying secret.

Aerith makes some new friends and joins the fight to stop Shinra from destroying Sector 7.

Notes:

(See the end of the chapter for notes.)

Chapter Text

Tifa doesn’t know how long she was out, but when she first stirs, she can’t see anything, and there’s something strapped in her mouth, preventing her from talking. Her head pounds from whatever that gas was. She struggles to move and cry out, but her wrists and ankles are bound with some heavy chain that clinks when she shifts, and she only succeeds in making tiny moans.

“Oh ho, she’s awake!” a voice calls out. It is weasely and grating, and she imagines it belongs to a pasty-faced man with patchy beard and a bald spot.

The hood covering her face slides off, and a harsh light above her head blinds her momentarily. She sees only shadows until her eyes adjust, and she sees two things:

The first is that she wasn’t wrong about this man. He’s pasty, ugly, balding, and grinning like a fool over a steak. His massive belly hovers over the edge of the table she’s strapped to, and he runs a hand along his mouth, wiping away saliva. So gross. 

The second is that she’s in a dungeon. Like a torture room out of some bawdy adventure tale. There’s a stretching rack in the corner. A table with an assortment of torture implements, or perhaps they’re supposed to be sex toys to this depraved man.

“Allow me to introduce myself, Miss Tifa,” he says, gleefully running a hand down her face, caressing her cheek. She shakes her head trying to throw it off, but he merely grabs the wooden stake in her mouth, holding her still. “I suggest you play nice, girlie. I’m a reasonable man with reasonable needs, and since you were the only girl on the docket tonight, you won by default! How lucky for you!” He guffaws and turns away, laying fingers on some of the items on the table.

Tifa struggles more, rattling the chains that hold her down and releasing a stream of invectives that come out as angry mumbles.

Don Corneo turns back to her, giggling cruelly, and reaches for her face again. She swings her head back and forth, and he slaps her. Not hard, but enough to shock her, and she seethes. Tears form at the corners of her eyes. Never in her life has she been this vulnerable, this close to true danger. Not since--

She shoves the memories of Nibelheim away.

“Now now, my dear,” Corneo says, running his fingers along the red space on her cheek where he slapped her. “I’d promise to remove your gag if you’d promise not to scream for help, but to be fair, your screams won’t leave this very nice dungeon, and sometimes I like a little fear crying.”

The gorge in Tifa’s throat rises. This man is completely despicable, and she’s at his mercy, of which he appears to have none. But she tries not to panic. There’s information to be gained. She wants to throw up, and curl into a ball, and never see the light of day again even thinking about what she might have to do. But what’s the other option? Give up? Wait ‘til he gets bored with her and has her disposed of? 

So she calms down. Tifa Lockhart is a member of Avalanche, and they always follow through with their missions. She leans her face into the Don’s pudgy, clammy hand, and tries to remember how she looks at Cloud.

“Oh, aren’t we compliant all of a sudden?” But he chuckles, and reaches his hands behind her head, feeling for the buckle that will release the gag. It slips free and he is careful to pull the gag away quickly, before she could try to bite him. She knows better than to try that while her limbs are immovable. No reason to bring punishment down when she quite literally can’t do anything about it.

With the gag gone, she rotates her jaw and works saliva back into the parts of her mouth that were blocked by the wooden rod. She coughs and tries to speak. “Th-thank you, Don.”

“See, now that’s lovely. I show you a little kindness, you show me a little gratitude.”

“You’re a powerful man, Don Corneo,” Tifa says, playing on his ego. She’s not very good at this, but she’s got to try. “Surely you don’t need to resort to this for willing women?”

He cackles laughter. “Well, no, but willing women just don’t rev the ol’ engine these days, you know? When you sleep with a new girl every night for a couple years, you tend to need some excitement .”

Tifa swallows the reply in her throat. She isn’t sure it’s not just actual vomit.

“Could I get some water?” she asks instead.

“I’m not a monster.” He chuckles. “Well, matter of perspective, but yes, I think you can have a drink before we get started.” He disappears from her sight for a minute, and she can’t twist her head to follow him and doesn’t know exactly where he is, so she doesn’t struggle with the chains again. Instead she observes her surroundings, looking for anything she could use to distract him, get him talking. A tinny song begins playing, upbeat and funky, and she can twist her head just enough to see a truly ugly jukebox that looks like a cartoony version of Don Corneo. The man himself steps away from the jukebox, swaying his overlarge hips in what he must think of as seductive, holding a glass of water.

Don Corneo says, “Here you are, my dear. If you try to bite me, things will become much, much worse for you.”

“I’m just thirty, Don.” She accepts the cup to her lips, and briefly considers just spitting it back in his face, but once the water is in her mouth, she drinks greedily, the cup spilling at the edges of her lips. He pulls the cup back, and she swallows what’s left. It’s infuriating that she’s so thankful to him, despite putting her in this position.

“Now, I have a confession, Miss Tifa.” She’s coming to hate that name. He sets the glass down on the table with all the… toys. His smile as he turns back is not kind. “I know you are a member of Avalanche.”

Tifa’s eyes widen and she strains against her bonds, to no effect, of course. 

“You dirty motherf--” Corneo slams his fist into her jaw this time, knocking her head to the side. The rings on his hand rip at the skin of her cheek. He actually doesn’t hit very hard, but the rings make up for it, like a makeshift knuckle duster. 

“I can put the gag back in, Tifa Lockhart.”

She continues to strain, and is rewarded with a tiny bit of movement. She immediately stops, knowing if he notices, she won’t get her chance to escape. She works her jaw, running her tongue over her teeth to feel for loose ones. Blood drips down her cheek, mixing with the water on the table she splashed earlier.

“What do you want with Avalanche?” That he knows her name is cause for concern. Possible that he’s gathered far more intel on them than they realize.

“Hmm. Do I reveal my master plan? What would that say about me?”

Several sarcastic responses come to her, but she is already starting to understand that this maniac wants his ego stroked. “You can say whatever you want, right?”

His lips spread in a grin. “Because you’ve already figured out--you’re not leaving this place alive.”

Chills run down Tifa’s back. She wishes she’d spat on him when she had the chance. “So why is Don Corneo so interested in Avalanche?”

“It’s not really a matter of my interest, my dear. You’ve become something of a thorn in a very big lion’s paw, and I’m just the mouse plucking it.”

“Not many men would call themselves the mouse in that metaphor.”

“Not many men have the ambition of Don Corneo, Miss Tifa. A mouse steals your cheese, and builds his empire. A mouse, with enough patience, can become the lion.”

“What does your boss want with Avalanche, then?”

“Don Corneo answers to no one. Hmm. Wouldn’t want that to get infected.” He holds a finger out like he’s going to touch her cheek again, and she pulls away. “No, I suppose it’s going to be safe to tell you. It’s happening tonight, and your chances of somehow escaping are very slim.”

He pulls up a stool and sits down next to the table. The metal groans under his weight a little, and she has vague hopes that it’ll buckle and dump him to the ground, but it holds.

He tells her an unbelievable story, about the Sector 7 plate, and how it’s going to come crashing down on thousands of people simply to squash out Avalanche. Shinra’s already en route, and the support pillar that holds the sky up high will soon collapse, killing Avalanche. The longer he talks, the more Tifa’s fear and anger grow. This is unbelievable. Unconscionable. 

“How can this be true?” she asks. “I know Shinra’s greedy, but I didn’t think they were just outright evil.”

“Evil is subjective. You should know that. After all, you came here under false pretenses, trying to take advantage of my lovely offer. Isn’t that evil?”

“You’re pathetic human garbage, Corneo.”

“I’m a lion in waiting, Miss Lockhart. Haven’t you been listening?” He stands up, adjusting his pants under his cruddy red robe. “I’m going to send in one of the boys with instructions to clean you up. Wouldn’t want that to scar.”

“You can’t leave me down here while Shinra’s planning to murder all those people. Please, Don Corneo! There are innocent people in Sector 7. Children.” When he isn’t swayed by her plea, she rethinks it. “Think about all the beautiful women you’ll miss out on.”

“Oh ho ho, you’re speaking my language, dear. But one thing that’s certain in this life: there’ll always be more women.” He runs a finger down her side and grins when she squirms away from it.

He leaves, and Tifa immediately pulls herself together. She’s got to get free. There’s nothing more important than warning Sector 7. They have to stop it. They have to evacuate. And they’ll never know it’s coming unless she breaks free.

She starts struggling, yanking at the loose chain she felt earlier. If she can just get one hand free, she can pull the straps on the chains loose for the rest. Hell, if she can get a leg loose, she can use that leverage to help with the arm chains. 

She tenses, and releases. Tense, and release. Strain and relax. But the more she struggles, the more tired she gets, and the harder her head pounds from whatever toxic gas they used to knock her out earlier.

She makes a tiny bit of progress, then hears hollow, echoing steps approaching. She settles back and waits. Kotch comes in, with his mohawk and puffy jacket. “Aw, Miss Tifa, you made the boss angry.” He carries a bowl of water and a first aid kit, which he sets down on the table next to her and sits on the stool. 

“Kotch, do you know what Corneo is a part of? What’s happening tonight?”

Kotch nods. “It’s a bad deal, but what can you do? Listen, Miss Tifa, I’m gonna put this gag back in so you don’t get any funny ideas. You’re cool with that, right? Can’t risk you getting hold of my wrist and making a mess of things.”

Tifa resists, but Kotch gets the wooden gag back in her mouth and cinches it shut. He talks the entire time he’s patching up her cheek, putting a bandage on it. He talks himself up, how he and Scotch ran the Coliseum and watched all the usual suspects dominate. The beastmaster, the thugs, the cutters. Nothing unusual tonight.

Once he’s done patching her up, he removes the gag again. “For what it’s worth,” Kotch says, “I’m from Sector 7.”

“So why do you think this is okay? You can help me, and we can take the Don down.”

He laughs. “No one takes Corneo down, Miss Tifa. My suggestion for you would be to forget about all that stuff, and think of a happy place. You’re gonna need it in the days to come.”

“Kotch!” she cries, real tears forming now. “You bastard! You could stop this!”

He cranks the volume up on the jukebox, waves goodbye as he leaves the room, and she can faintly hear whistling as he goes about his day. No one in this organization can be spared. Not a one.

*****

Aerith shares what she knows about this man named Cloud, which boils down to his death and the Turks collecting his body. And what these people know of him is surprisingly little for all that they seemed worried about him. A mercenary with connections to the bar owner, Tifa. A man who joined the resistance for money, and who people like Jessie and Wedge got overly fond of, given their reactions.

But when she learns even this little bit, there’s a tug at her insides. Something is there, something important. Maybe it’s confirmation that he was a SOLDIER, like Zack. But for the briefest moment, the shadows dart about her in the dimly lit Seventh Heaven bar. They vanish almost as they appeared, and the members of Avalanche don’t notice at all.

Just as well. She doesn’t know what they’re doing, and doesn’t have time to explore it.

“I can’t believe he’s really gone,” Wedge says. “He broke my high score on darts and now he’s dead. I can’t even enjoy taking it back from him now.”

Jessie snorts laughter, but Aerith can tell she’s holding back emotions, pent up inside her. She liked the man, and her domineering personality would have let him know it.

“Ain’t funny,” Barret says again, echoing their earlier conversation. He seems to be at a loss for what to do now. Tifa’s on mission, and they’re holding down the fort until she completes it. “How are we gonna tell Tifa the boy’s dead when she makes her way back here?”

“Sorry, I just have to ask,” Aerith says, “Do you know anything about Wall Market?”

He shrugs. “Not a lot of call for that type of entertainment when we’re fighting a damn war.”

“Well, from what you’ve told me, Tifa’s in trouble if she went in alone.”

“She’s a big girl,” Biggs says. “You’ve never seen her roundhouse kick a bandit before, but trust me, she’ll knock your head off.” He gets a softer expression on his face now. “You said you’re from Sector 5? How’s the Leaf House?”

Aerith smiles. “You know about the orphanage?”

He shrugs a little from his position leaning on a wall, arms crossed. “I used to help out around there. Long time ago.”

“It’s good! The kids are always striving to learn and laugh. There’s never enough to go around, but they never lack for compassion and beauty.”

He nods, a little secret grin on his lips. “I’d like to take a trip back there someday. We’ve been kinda busy, what with saving the planet and all.”

“So serious,” she jokes.

Barret clears his throat. “It is serious, Miss Gainsborough. You know what they’re doing to--”

“I know it, Mr. Wallace,” Aerith interrupts him. Probably better than you do. “I already got the pamphlet, you don’t need to give me the hard sell.”

He grunts, clearly not knowing what to do with being interrupted. “Well, good,” he finally says, standing up. “We’ve got plans to make, and they didn’t include you. Jessie, can you go with Aerith for now? Keep her out of trouble while we go over next steps, contingencies for where we hit next.”

They don’t trust her, but they also can’t just leave her by herself. Though she’s been kind and forthright, they’re suspicious. Right to be.

Jessie nods and waves her hand in a “come on” gesture. “I’ll give her the tour and we’ll bring back some grub, yeah?”

“Sounds good. There’s been a lot of Shinra copters floating about today, so keep an eye to that pizza.” Barret dismisses them with that, and Jessie leads Aerith out into the early evening. She hadn’t realized so much time had passed while they were in there swapping stories.

The artificial darkness of the evening, with the sun lamps dimming to bring on night, makes Aerith yawn, and then her stomach growls loud enough for Jessie to hear. The girl chuckles.

“Well, all right. We’ll hit the kabob stall first and then the proper show-around.”

Jessie starts walking, and Aerith falls in step beside her. Aerith whispers, “So you guys really are the bombers? Lots of people died or got hurt in those explosions.”

Jessie’s face flinches and her shoulders hunch. “Yeah… Shinra did that, actually. After the mission last night, we found out they were using us as scapegoats. I knew my explosives weren’t enough to cause that, but Heidegger of Shinra freely confirmed it for us.”

“Shinra killed innocent civilians, just to make you look worse?”

Jessie nods, her dour expression vanishing behind a false smile. “Yeah, makes it easier to hate them, you know? A power structure where they freely murder their own people for an agenda is corrupt. Even if they weren’t killing the planet, they’re still killing people and leaving hundreds of thousands in poverty.”

Aerith doesn’t say that she’s always liked the metal sky, and hadn’t ever really thought she was poor. A rich life filled with beauty, laughter, love. How much better might it be if she wasn’t stealing all these moments of wonder from under a corporate hellscape?

She doesn’t have time to wonder about this for long, though, because a wave of Shinra helicopters comes swooping out of the distance, their hum growing louder by the second.

“Okay, scratch all that,” Jessie says. “What’s this new horror Shinra’s doing?”

She jogs back to the Seventh Heaven bar, and Aerith follows. Barret, Biggs, and Wedge come bursting out of the bar about the time Aerith and Jessie catch up to the open space in front of it, and Barret shouts, “What the shit are they doing?”

“They’re surrounding the pillar!” Biggs says, pointing at their formation. “Do they think someone’s going to attack it?”

“No,” Jessie says, reaching for her sidearm. “No, based on what we learned last night, they’re making everyone think someone’s attacking it. They know we’re here.”

“You don’t mean--” Barret starts, and Jessie nods and finishes for him, “they’re gonna bring down the entire sector, and blame it on us.”

Aerith’s gut drops. There’s no way. “They might be corrupt, but that’s just pure evil,” she says. “Can they even do it? It must take a lot of explosives to bring down a pillar.”

Jessie nods. “The worst kept secret about Shinra tech is that they build in obsolescence. Gotta be able to break it in order to build a new one.”

Biggs says, “That fucking thing has explosives built into its entire structure, for controlled demolition. And you can activate it way up there.” He points to the top of the pillar, where already soldiers are offloading from choppers and taking up defensive positions.

“I believe it,” Barret says, holding Cloud’s satchel back out to her. “They wanna kill people to prove we’re bad, they’ll kill a whole lot more to make it worse.” He holds his gun arm up and the machine gun activates when he taps it with his other hand. 

“We’re gonna go stop this mess. You in, Miss Gainsborough?”

She takes the satchel. “I’m not much of a fighter, but I can hold my own.”

Barret grins. “Good. Time to show these Shinra thugs what they’re really messing with.”

Biggs runs inside the bar and comes back out moments later hefting two assault rifles and a bag of ammunition. “And you all thought I was crazy for having a stash inside the bar.”

“You’re still crazy for that,” Wedge says, accepting a rifle. “Guns and drunks don’t mix.”

“We can argue that shit later,” Barret says. “For now, we’ve gotta stop Shinra.”

Wedge and Jessie run off to coordinate with the Neighborhood Watch and make sure Marlene gets home safely, while Barret leads Biggs and Aerith to the base of the pillar. Members of the Watch and others with seemingly no affiliation join their group. Other soldiers in Avalanche?

He issues orders to them, and they scatter. Evacuation plans. The backup in case they can’t stop Shinra from toppling the tower. Once they reach the base of the pillar, they find Shinra soldiers have taken up defensive positions both inside and outside the fenced-in structure. Normally only a single guard was on duty here. Someone should have realized this, Aerith thinks. Someone should have reported the increased activity.

Doesn’t matter now.

When the soldiers clock Barret and the others approaching, they nudge each other and point guns. “Stop your approach,” the leader says. He’s wearing a red uniform compared to the blue of the foot soldiers, and he’s got one of those riot shields lazily positioned to his side. It comes up in front of him, protecting him in case Barret starts shooting.

Barret snaps his fingers, and their party scatters. Aerith stands there like a moogle in headlights until Barret grabs her arm and drags her behind a truck. 

“Forgot you wouldn’t know all the signals,” he says. “They’re gonna start shooting, and we can’t let that stop us. Understood?”

Aerith shakes from fear. She’s been in bad situations before, some of them as recent as the day before, but this is different. She’s running towards the danger now, instead of away from it. Instead of mitigation, she’s being asked to murder.

Can she do it? To stop the murder or thousands, she can. She nods.

“Cloud had something for this,” she says, reaching in for one of the materia from the satchel. They’re all carrying guns and have tech. She can’t hit them all, but she can cause a stir.

“Oh, you know how that stuff works? I was never very good with it.” Barret grins, then whistles to Biggs and the other Avalanche member who are positioned behind a cart. The area is vacant otherwise, with the people of Sector 7 wise enough to know a group of Shinra soldiers usually meant bullets were going to fly.

“Do it,” Barret says.

Aerith peeks out from behind the truck, getting line of sight on the soldiers, and concentrates on the materia. Lightning materializes in an instant, striking the fence and shocking one of the soldiers leaning up against it. A transformer attached to the fence blows, and sparks shoot out among the soldiers. Panic and confusion reign; shots fire out; Barret and the others rush out of cover and charge the group, shooting as they go. The one she doesn’t know drops from a hail of gunfire. The lead Shinra soldier hides behind his shield. The others are shot down in their panic and Aerith uses a different materia while Barret plows into the shield, knocking it away and firing a few rounds into the man’s chest.

The cure materia has no effect on the Avalanche member who was shot. She kneels down and checks his pulse. Dead. Aerith has seen a lot of bodies in a short time, and she can’t tear her eyes away from this man she doesn’t know. 

Whom she couldn’t help.

Biggs jars her out of her shock by shaking her shoulder. “Hey, if you can’t do this, tell us now. We’re about to shoot our way to the top and we can’t babysit you.”

Barret rips the fence free in a corner and steps through. “Help us or help the Watch. We can’t wait.”

Aerith stares at the man on the ground one last time, working up her courage. “I can help.”

She stands, and holds her staff defensively in front of her. Biggs nods at her and leads the way into the fenced-in area. Barret lets the fence fall back into place, and looks up.

“That’s a lotta steps…” he says. 

Biggs jokes, “Least it’s not Shinra Tower.”

Barret nods. “Guess we best hustle.”

They only make it to the third platform before the soldiers from the top have filtered down, and take up defensive positions. One sets up a turret, and they have to deal with them before they can move on. Aerith targets the turret with lightning, while Biggs and Barret take out the soldiers with their guns. The turret glitches and fizzles out, and as they run past it and reach the stairs that continue up, it suddenly reactivates. Barret and Biggs are beyond it, but Aerith is so surprised by it that she swings out wildly with her staff, and the thing topples over before it can target and fire.

“Good shot,” Biggs calls as they charge headlong into more danger above.

It takes several minutes to scale the tower, and the things Shinra employs to fend them off are a strange assortment of soldiers, flying drones, and men with copters and guns floating just out of reach. In a tense moment, one of the copter soldiers rises up behind Barret with a free shot at his back, and Aerith throws her staff at his whirling copter blades. It collides with the blades, where they shatter and send the staff flying into a corner. He drops into a crumpled heap behind Barret, who clocks the motion behind him and drives his giant heel into the man’s chest, taking him out of the fight completely. Aerith can almost hear the crunch of his ribcage as she looks away.

Closer to the top, Biggs takes point and almost immediately takes a bullet to the shoulder. He falls back, laughing at his own stupidity, and they pause for a moment while Aerith uses her materia to try and help. This doesn’t really do miraculous curing, and all she manages to do is lessen the bleeding on both sides. Clear shot. Bullets hail overhead, and a chopper looks like it’s finally taking notice of the action below the top of the pillar, and is shining its lights around looking for them.

“I’ll be fine,” Biggs says, holding his shoulder to keep pressure on it. “We’re running out of time. You gotta get up there.”

Aerith shakes her head. “We should get you to safety.”

Before Barret or Biggs can disagree, the shadows swarm around her, pushing her back. Into the gunfire and away from Biggs. The two men stare at her with confusion as she struggles against forces they can’t see.

But Barret says, “What the hell are those?”

Aerith, recognizing she’s about to get riddled with bullets, doesn’t have time to process that Barret can see the shadows now. She grabs a random materia out of the bag and holds it in between her palms, almost like a prayer, and concentrates on it. The shadows dance away from her just as her magic unleashes. A gust of wind buffets the spray of bullets, sending them off-course and spanging off metal harmlessly behind her. The wind knocks the soldiers back, and gives the trio a much-needed opportunity. Barret doesn’t wait. He charges from behind their cover while Biggs tosses his last grenade over Barret’s head. 

The grenade explodes in a swirling puff of smoke, choking the soldiers. Moments before Barret reaches the confused group, the wind whips the smoke away, and Barret knocks one the soldiers clean off the tower. His scream is long and abruptly cut short. Barret fires indiscriminately at the other two soldiers still on the tower, taking them down in their panic and confusion.

Biggs yells, “Go! Stop this!”

Aerith spares him a determined grin. He returns it, though his grin is laced with pain.

She joins Barret at the final stairwell leading up to the top platform, and he gives her an approving nod. “You ready for this?”

“Not even a little bit, but let’s do it.”

Before they can, though, the chopper’s lights find them, and a hail of bullets dances through the space. They dive for cover. After the bulletstorm, a familiar voice rings out from the chopper, amplified and ear-piercing:

“I don’t believe it,” the voice says. “I guess flower girls can be extremists, after all.”

“Turks,” Aerith hisses. “No wonder they got called away from chasing me if this was the new assignment.”

Barret scoffs and pokes his head out long enough for the hail of gunfire to begin again, and ducks back down. “What the hell’d you do to piss off the suits?”

Aerith shakes her head. No time. “If we live through this, I’ll tell you the story.”

“When we live through this, I’ll bring the popcorn.” The gunfire dies down again, and Barret looks around at their surroundings. Biggs has posted up farther inside the platform, nursing his wounded shoulder but in no immediate danger.

“We gotta make a move and at least take out their guns,” Barret says.

“I can hit them with lightning,” she offers, “if you can get me a second of focus.”

“I’ll draw their fire. Hit the rotor on the blades if you can.”

She nods. She has no idea what a rotor is, but if she can channel enough of her own will into the materia, it should short out anything electrical on that chopper.

“Come on out, terrorists! We aren’t letting you destroy the pillar!” Reno’s voice is snarky and Aerith wants nothing more than to shut him up in that moment. Using a public display to push a fake narrative, it’s gross and horrible. He deserves whatever’s about to come his way.

The lights from the chopper flash overhead, and Barret dashes out, firing indiscriminately at the flying machine. It immediately tilts his direction, and the miniguns spool up to begin firing. Surely he’s not fast enough to avoid this.

Aerith steps up from cover and holds the materia out, concentrating. She’s going to get one shot at this. The essence of the planet flows through her, and she can feel it cry out in pain as she prepares to kill with that energy.

Only the chopper spins back to her the moment they see her, and dips down out of sight as her lightning arcs harmlessly into the metal sky.

And an explosion sounds from down below, followed by Jessie shouting, “Hell yeah! Avalanche, one and stupid Shinra choppers, zero.”

The helicopter veers back up into view, an image of distress as it tilts left and right. Reno’s voice comes back out again, “Bitches! We’re coming for you.” The lower part of the helicopter, including the guns, is a twisted wreck of fire and steel, and sparks shoot out ominously as it lifts out of view.

Immediately there is a crash above them, the helicopter landing roughly on the top platform. Aerith hopes it killed them, but it doesn’t seem likely.

Another chopper weaves into view, and begins firing on the floor below them, where Jessie presumably was climbing the pillar. Biggs yells, “I’ll back her up! Get your asses up there and stop this!”

Aerith and Barret nod, and charge up the steps to the final platform. Aerith ducks for cover behind a transformer as Barret unloads a full cylinder from his gun arm, peppering the Shinra soldiers. The helicopter has crashed on the other side of the pillar support controls, behind a chain-link fence. Smoke and fire roil out of the chopper, but the Turks emerge unharmed.

Rude’s glasses have broken again, but he withdraws a new pair from his suit jacket’s breast pocket. How many pairs does he have?

They’re not carrying guns. Barret grins at them as he takes up a defensive position at the pillar controls. “End of the line, ya murderin’ shits.” Aerith joins him, wary of another helicopter joining the fight.

Rude easily rips the fence free and steps through, while Reno leaps up and over the tall fencing without even trying. These two are dangerous, for damn sure. Aerith clears her throat, wiping away sweat and holding her battered staff defensively.

She whispers, “They’re both freakishly fast, and strong. Might not be SOLDIER, but they’re enhanced all the same.”

Barret nods. “Put enough rounds in ‘em, they stop moving eventually.”

Aerith chuckles, but doesn’t have a witty retort. She’s terrified, and this wasn’t really her fight until just now, when the Turks showed up. She wonders if Tseng is around.

“Well, well, well,” Reno says, tapping his electric baton on his shoulder for each word. He and Rude spread out, forcing Barret to choose who to aim at. He chooses Reno, which Aerith thinks is probably unwise, but he sprints forward instead of monologuing or giving Barret time to fire.

“What the fu--” Barret starts, but his voice cuts off as Reno’s elbow nails Barret in the stomach, knocking the breath out of him and doubling him over. Aerith swings her staff at the all too pretty man, but he’s way too fast. He lazily deflects her strike with his baton, takes a moment to grin like a jackass, and uses the momentum of his deflection to yank her off balance, throwing her away from the pillar controls.

Her world spins and she loses hold of her staff. She lands roughly, tearing skin and clothing as she bounces once, then skids to a stop near the edge of the metal platform. She spits red and glares.

“You’re not supposed to end things before I get to punch someone,” Rude says. 

With Barret struggling to breathe and Aerith disoriented, the Turks must think they’ve won before the fight ever began. Reno dances back from Barret’s weakened swing and kicks the leg out from under him, dropping him to the platform as he wheezes.

Reno says, “He’s got some fight in him. Give him a round or two.”

Rude approaches Aerith, though, and she struggles to stand, to get hold of an orb of materia, to rally any kind of defense at all. He asks, “You think we’ll get a bonus for completing the Ancients mission at the same time as the frame job?”

Reno shrugs and approaches the pillar. “We better. My chest still hurts from that lucky shit she pulled to get away.”

Rude chuckles and grabs the satchel as Aerith goes to dig for something to fight back with. He pulls her off balance again, and yanks her around for a moment, attempting to free the satchel from her body. She holds on tight, though, and spits in his face for good measure. A glob of red spittle trails down his cheek, but he barely even reacts to it.

Rude says, “At least you didn’t lose a game of dodge the iceketball.”

Reno laughs at that. “Boss always says you’re too serious, but we know better.” He works at the controls while Aerith struggles and Barret coughs, regaining his breath.

“Y-you can’t,” Barret manages. “You’re killing thousands of people. Innocent fucking people!”

Reno shrugs, pulling up pillar self-destruct menus, navigating through them. “Boss says jump, we destroy a sector.” Rude yanks on Aerith’s satchel again, pulling her in close and wrapping an arm around her, restraining her. She struggles, but can’t get free of his grip.

Thousands of lives. Both those in the slums and up on the plate. Shinra’s cold-blooded calculus enrages Aerith, but she still can’t fight back. 

Barret appeals to Reno again, this time at the point of his gun arm, aimed at Reno’s chest. “How are you gonna live with yourself, knowing you personally killed my daughter, who never hurt anyone? How you gonna live with that evil, you piece of shit?”

Reno flinches slightly, but shrugs again. “Whiskey and women, my terrorist friend.”

Barret shoots at him, heedless of anything else. Reno ducks and dodges away, faster than Aerith can even track, and the spray of bullets sends sparks flying from the pillar controls. Barret’s scream of rage fuels Aerith. While Barret tries and fails to shoot at Reno, Aerith lifts her heavy boot and brings it down solidly on Rude’s foot. He grunts and his hold loosens on her. She throws an elbow back indiscriminately, and he shoves her away to avoid the worst of the impact. She spins as she twists away, turning his hand holding the satchel strap at an awkward angle. Not willing to put himself at a disadvantage to hold the bag, he releases it and dances back, grunting at her maneuver.

She immediately reaches in for the lightning materia. They can take on Rude together, but Reno’s too fast. She whirls in place, eyes alighting on the charging form of Reno, lightning baton sparking, glee glinting off his eyes. Why are the pretty ones always the most problematic?

She focuses her will on the materia, and a bolt of lightning arcs out, overloading the baton and zapping Reno with its unexpected discharge. He flings away from his trajectory and collides with the controls. Barret, realizing what she’s done, twists his gun arm over to Rude and begins shooting, providing her cover to take the pretty boy out.

She scoops up her staff, and points it menacingly at Reno, who coughs and holds his smoking chest while gunfire and impacts sound from behind her. Barret and Rude throw down, and Aerith glances at the screen. The monitor displays the self destruct confirmation, and it requires a high level Shinra password to confirm or abort.

“What’s the code to stop it?” Aerith demands.

Reno shrugs, coughing, and working his way up into a crouch. “Lucky shot.”

“Once is lucky, twice is coincidence. Wanna go for three and really hurt your feelings?”

He scoffs, but doesn’t immediately retort. She asks again, “How do we stop this?”

“You don’t,” Rude’s voice whispers from directly behind her. Her eyes widen in panic as she spins to confront the man, but already he’s kneeing her in the stomach, stealing her breath. She holds out the lightning materia, intending to flail out with the magic and take out whoever she can, but Rude pummels her with an open-palm technique to the chest that shoves her back and over. She lands with a hard thud, stars in her blackening vision, and just barely manages to hold the staff and materia.

She catches a glimpse of Barret unconscious on the ground, and struggles against losing it herself. The rest happens in a daze. Reno stands and plugs in the code, and with a big shit-eating grin slams the activation button. Rude calls for evac while Aerith struggles to get upright again. Avalanche failed. 

Aerith holds the materia out, struggling to draw breath into her body. If she’s going to die in this moment, she’s going to do it fighting, not laying down while her city is destroyed under false pretenses. Reno grabs Rude’s shoulder as a helicopter raises into view near the edge of the platform. Klaxons ring out, red lights flash. It’s a noisome fury.

Rude shrugs the shoulder off and steps towards Aerith. They’re going to take her. All this running and fighting will have been for nothing.

She prays to the planet, asking for the strength to stop these men. And for once, it seems, the planet listens. Lightning arcs all around her, thunder booming. Rude steps back from the electric blue radius that crackles all around Aerith.

If they come near her, she will fry their brains. Cook their hearts in their chests until the physical matches the blackened ruin of their souls. The pillar will break, the plate will fall, and they’ll already be dead.

Reno grabs Rude again, nods to the pillar controls, where a minute long timer has begun to tick down. A minute of life. A minute to evacuate. She hopes Wedge and the rest of Sector 7 took it seriously. She hopes they fled.

Biggs and Jessie are somewhere below. Are they still alive? Did they retreat?

She just doesn’t know, and in the moment, she doesn’t care about anything but stopping these Turks from doing any more harm.

But the pair of them glance at the countdown, at each other, and then at Aerith, before they both shrug. “The boss doesn’t need to know about this, does he?” Reno asks.

Rude nods. “If she lives, we can deal with her later.”

Reno's lips curl up into his cocky, smarmy smile, and they dash away from her, from their inevitable deaths. In a matter of seconds, they’re in the helicopter, flying away to safety, while the timer ticks down second by second. 

She draws a breath, letting the crackling energies fade, feeling worn out and spent. With under a minute to go, they have nowhere to escape. She hobbles over to Barret, who stirs and begins to wake after the cooling energies of her cure materia waft through him, invigorating him. She does the same to herself, if only to stop the ache in her chest where Rude drove his palm into it.

“We lost,” Aerith says, dropping to her knees. Half a minute.

Barret gathers himself, curses for a solid five seconds, then glances around. “We can tally our losses after we’re still alive to do it,” he says. And yanks her to the edge of the platform, where she’s afraid he’s going to just throw themselves over, to plummet to their deaths.

The last thing she remembers is being swept up into his gigantic, sweaty arms. Then it all evaporates in the concussive force of a pillar exploding, and a plate falling. She can hear the planet cry out its fury and sorrow, and it sounds like a dragon mourning the loss of its egg.

*****

Earlier .

Hours have passed. Tifa has no idea how long she’s been strapped to this table. How long still until Corneo comes to gloat again, how long until he does to her what he’s done to countless girls before her. Struggling doesn’t work. She’s lost the will to resist, lost the energy to keep working at her bonds, and now she rests. Gathers her energies to her. She can still get free, can still warn Sector 7. She just needs a minute to rest.

But before she can go back to struggling, it happens. At first there’s a light rumble that shakes the room, swinging the lights, like an earthquake. Then a sound and fury follows that will haunt Tifa every day of her life, however long that ends up being. The room quakes. The stones in the walls shudder. A sustained rumble and boom follows. The plate falls. Though she can’t hear them, she imagines the screams. Her bar crashing under the rubble. Barret, and Marlene, and everyone else she knows and loves. Wondering what happened to Tifa right up until the sky fell. Dust shakes loose from the ceiling, and she blinks back tears against the onslaught. Tifa stares, eyes streaming. She blames herself for this failure. For not acting on her instincts fast enough to prevent getting caught.

For failing an entire Sector of the city. Never again. First she is going to free herself. Then she’s going to end him. Then she’s going to end everything and everyone that led to this moment.

The plate falls. The chains rattle. The jaunty music keeps on playing.

Notes:

Next Chapter: Tifa Punches People. A Lot. A lot of punches on a lot of people.

Chapter 4: Eruption

Summary:

Barret and Aerith decide what to do after platefall.

Tifa pummels her way to freedom.

**TAG NOTES** This chapter contains graphic descriptions of physical violence and death, and suggestive non-con intentions. There is no actual non-con, however. **TAG NOTES**

Notes:

(See the end of the chapter for notes.)

Chapter Text

The sounds of the plate falling never seem to stop. Crying children, wailing adults, the planet itself weeping, or so Barret would recall. Explosions, and twisting metal, and collapsing buildings. The upper plate hangs askew, large sections completely cratered. Anything underneath the plate is a pyre or a pile.

Aerith and Barret swung to freedom and life like some kind of mythic heroes, using a cable attached to the pillar support structure. They can’t stop even when they skid and roll upon landing, outside the gates between Sectors 6 and 7. They run, dodging raining debris, catching up with others also fleeing.

And then, when all is quiet once more, Barret gives in and weeps. Not for anyone in particular. Not for his daughter, or his trusted friends in Avalanche. He cries because he knows there is no beating an enemy who would murder thousands just to deal with an inconvenience.

Won’t stop him, though, oh no. He gets it out of his system, already thinking about backup plans and contingencies. Where Wedge would take his daughter, and the others would regroup. Where the resistance would go on.

Aerith lays a hand on his shoulder while he kneels in the dirt. “Do you know where to start, to find Marlene?” she asks. “We can go back to my home in Sector 5 if not.”

He nods. “There’s a place, I think you’re already familiar with it. Heard you and Biggs talk about it.” Biggs. He and Jessie were up there when the plate fell. Barret tried to look for them on the way down, but there was too much chaos.

“I’m sure they made it out,” Aerith says, offering a hand to him. Cute that she thinks she can help him stand when she’s a quarter of his weight. He takes it, though, and stands.

“‘Course they did. Wedge would never let anything happen to my daughter, or his cats. Biggs always has a backup. And that Jessie’s got more lives than she has… had roommates.”

Aerith smiles at the bad joke. “So Sector 5, then?”

“Nothing else we can really do just yet.”

Aerith nods, and then frowns. “What about your friend, the one at Wall Market?” The one you can’t stop asking about, Barret thinks. 

“Tifa can handle herself for a little while. She’s probably out of her mind with the plate falling, but we gotta handle what we can handle.”

“Sure. I’m sure you’re right. I just worry about women going into that place without knowing what they’re getting into.”

“Regrouping includes our wayward spy, kid.”

“I’m not a kid.”

He nods. “Maybe not. You climbed that tower, fought the Turks.”

“Maybe I’m a SOLDIER,” she jokes.

He chuckles. “Nah, but you’re something, all right. I was out of it, but they wanted you for a different reason, huh? Anything to do with how that materia responded to you like I’ve never seen before?”

She shrugs. “Maybe.”

“And I know I was a little unconscious, but I swear I heard one of ‘em say something about the Ancients.”

She falls silent, and he grins. “I’m not prying. Come on, let’s find our people.”

And this strange girl nods, happy to let the conversation redirect to something less accusatory.

With any luck, they’ll find their people. He’ll find his daughter. He can’t let any other possibility inside his heart. 

 

Don Corneo adjusts his pants as he wipes his mouth. His heart beats fast as the adrenaline high of watching thousands die courses through him. With Shinra’s resources and his connections, he is unstoppable. Even the mild terror he experienced as the debris fell far too close to home for comfort is just exhilarating now. 

Once the rumbles fade and the sparks settle, and the screams become moans of horror at their new realities, Don Corneo is ready for his bride. “I’m going to freshen up a little before the evening’s festivities,” he says to Kotch, whom he is mildly amused to see thinks this display of power and cruelty is a bit much, if his frown of discontent is any indicator.

But Kotch is steady. He’ll get over it or he’ll shut up, and it’s all the same to Corneo. “Of course, Don. Would you like her prepared for you?”

“Prepared?” It takes him a moment to realize what Kotch means, and then he giggles and shakes his head. “Why, that’s the fun part with a feisty girl like Miss Tifa. No, I expect I won’t need you again tonight.”

“We serve at the Don’s pleasure,” Kotch says, and backs out of the balcony, leaving Don Corneo alone with his thoughts.

Soon enough, Shinra will let him operate somewhere less filthy. They made him promises. And a lion always gets what he’s promised.

Don Corneo laughs to himself while he saunters through his pagoda, his spire of passion. All the while working himself up to a lather thinking about what’s to come tonight. What he’s going to do to her… to make her do to him… to break her like a stubborn chocobo.

Yes, this is going to be a special night.

He bobs his head to the jaunty music coming from the jukebox as he makes his belabored way down the stone steps of his pleasure chamber. Sure, others may call it a torture room, but it exists for his pleasure, and therefore it’s the pleasure chamber. Even walking down the steps, Corneo wheezes slightly as he reaches the bottom, and briefly considers that he should have an elevator put in as he pushes the heavy door open, looking down while he reaches for the buckle on his belt.

The rattle of chains behind him is the only warning he receives. In a flash of panic, he sees the table is empty as the chains flip over his head and close on his neck. He gets one hand up as the chain crushes in on his throat, and then fights for his life.

This bitch, this utterly stubborn bitch! He splutters and yanks on the chain, but Tifa forces her knee into his back, holding him in place as he struggles. He drops to his knees, trying to get leverage, and she just tightens the grip until the bones of his fingers snap. His eyes bulge out, and spittle flies from his lips as the life is choking from him.

In a moment of blind, panicked inspiration, Don Corneo struggles back to his feet and lunges his heavy body backwards. The sudden loosening of chain gives him a chance to suck in a great breath. He cries out, “Guards!”

Tifa curses. His backward momentum throws her off-balance, and to avoid being crushed against a wall, she dodges left into the center of the room, losing all leverage with the chain. Her eyes are bottomless black pits of rage, and she snarls as he tumbles backwards through the open door, toward the stairs.

Already Scotch and two others come rushing to his defense. Scotch puts his sunglasses away and cracks his knuckles as he stands in front of Corneo. Tifa drops into a defensive stance.

“Show this bitch who’s boss,” Don Corneo wheezes, struggling to his feet and running up the steps. He’ll let his lackeys take care of business, and then he’ll come back.

“Get out of my WAY!” he hears Tifa yell as he shuffles up the steps, to safety, to freedom. Sounds of fighting commence. At the top of the steps, more of his guards stand at attention.

He snarls, “Shoot the whore if she makes it this far. Call the rest in just to be safe.” 

“Yes, Don!” They bow at him after the Wutai fashion, and a flurry of activity follows the Don. Guns cock, knuckles crack, his army laughs.

Don Corneo retreats into his bedroom and locks the door before hiding behind the gold statue near his bed. In his good hand he grips his gold-plated pistol. He’s never fired it at a person before, but he knows it blows holes in the thickest armor, and she might as well be naked in that kimono.

The bitch. The rutting, filthy whore. 

And yet, despite the near miss, he’s excited. Breaking Tifa Lockhart will be all the sweeter now that she’s tasted freedom and had it ripped away.

Only a matter of time.

 

The monster in the guise of a man vanishes up the steps, and Tifa tries to give chase, but Scotch and the two lackeys get in her way. She’s weaker than she wants to admit, and her muscles hurt from the stress of ripping those chains out of the table, but she’s got the rage of Sector 7 burning inside her.

“Get out of my WAY!” she yells, charging at the group.

One of the lackeys, a bulkier man in a leather vest, grins and throws a lazy punch at her. Underestimating her. That’s the last time any of them will make that mistake.

She dodges under it, whipping the chain up and around the arm in one fluid motion, then uses his own momentum against him to yank him off his feet. The others laugh at their friend’s mishap, and Tifa drives the thick heel into the man’s wrist, shattering the bones within. His scream is satisfying, a precursor to what she’ll extract from Corneo. The pig.

Tifa dodges back from the other two once they realize she’s actually going to be trouble. Every second she’s down here with these goons is another second the Don prepares for her upstairs. Or gets away. Her nerves scream out for vengeance even as they help their friend to his feet while he cradles his shattered wrist. She slips off the useless heels, wishing for her good ass-kicking boots.

“A broken bone for a second,” she says.

“Lucky shot,” Scotch shoots back.

“No. You’re not getting it. For every second you hold me up, I will snap another bone.”

“You’re not getting up these steps, feisty bitch,” Scotch says, but she can see the sweat. He’s not so sure now.

She starts counting seconds out loud, and then rushes forward, catching them off-guard. She jumps at the big man with the leather vest, but feints in midair towards the smaller lackey. He brings his arms up to block the kick, and she feels the snap as much as hears it, as both radius and ulna splinter, bending the arm at an impossible angle.

Using the momentum of him holding his ground, she follows the kick with a roundhouse to his jaw while throwing the heavy chain at Scotch. He ducks the lazy throw, which gives her the distraction she hoped for while teeth scatter and blood spatters. The smaller lackey drops to the ground, unconscious and bleeding.

One down.

She starts counting again, and Scotch pushes the big man in the leather vest forward. Together they rush her, and she pulls back in a defensive posture until one of them makes the first move. She twists and rolls along the outside of Scotch’s clumsy grapple attempt, knees him in the stomach and forces him between her and the big lackey.

The big guy surprises them, though, by just tackling both of them. Tifa panics, tangled up with Scotch and being pushed to the wall; she wriggles loose with a strong leap upwards. She drives her knee into Scotch’s forehead on the way up, which screams pain but is far more punishing to the forehead than it is to her.

Momentarily above the fight, she twists in the air and angles for the big man while Scotch drops to the ground, clutching his face. She lands on the big guy’s shoulders, straddling his head with her legs, while he’s looking around confused. Before he can fight back, she chops at the exposed part of his neck, causing him to double over gasping. Tifa boxes the soft pads of his ears for good measure as she rolls backwards off him while he tumbles forward.

He just manages to stop himself before falling on Scotch, and she recovers as both of them stand back up, bleeding, injured, but still ready to fight. Tifa, aware that time is wasting away while she messes with these underlings, makes a brash decision. 

She feints a roundhouse to throw them off, and spins into a crouch while sweeping her leg out to trip up Scotch. His legs give out beneath him and he tumbles to the ground while the leather vest goon swings one big meaty fist at her. 

Tifa, wary of even one strike from him, continues the momentum from her leg sweep into a roll, coming up under his fist. She thinks briefly of her mentor, Zangan, who always told her not to do anything silly and flashy when something simple would do the trick.

Well, she’s put herself into a bad position, and sometimes the flashy move is all you have left.

She reaches up and grabs his shoulders, using the man for leverage. She rocks back and rotates upward, letting her momentum carry her leg upward in a tight arc. It slides up the man’s body, heel connecting with jaw in a satisfying crash, and drops him in a splashy arc onto Scotch, who collapses under the weight and can’t get back out.

With the three of them handled, and her body aching from hard use, she grabs the chains from their pile on the ground and sprints up the steps, wary of what awaits her at the top. She didn’t see any guns on the way in, but any bodyguard outfit is going to have a rifle or two.

Fortunately, this path doesn’t seem to have a lock on the door. Though the chains make a little bit of noise, her feet are silent as she climbs. She could play this safe and hope Don Corneo hasn’t already fled, but she’s gotta use this adrenaline while it lasts. Use this rage.

Get the bastard.

She shoulder checks the door open at the top of the steps, taking in her surroundings of an opulent office filled to bursting with Corneo lackeys, several of whom are aiming at the door with pistols and a machine gun.

She wildly throws the chains at the guy with the machine gun while diving and sliding across the slick, polished floor towards one of the guys with a pistol, who is standing next to a fancy structural pillar. They all open fire, but she is too fast, takes them by surprise. Chaos and confusion reign. One guy gets shot by the machine gun guy and he drops, screaming.

She kicks out while her slide is still strong, thwacking the gun out of the guy’s hand. While he recovers from this surprise, she digs her other foot into his leg, uses that as leverage to roll up into an uppercut to the guy’s groin. He wheezes, veins popping all over his face, as the force actually lifts him from the ground, so that most of his mass clears the desk. Behind the desk is the guy with the machine gun, so she leaps up to use his body as cover, and presses her back to the ornate, golden pillar while she piston kicks with both legs. The lackey topples over the desk, pelted with bullets while colliding with the machine gun guy. They both tumble out of sight, and Tifa drops into a crouch.

There are at least four still up in this room, and she can hear more on the way. Shouts and yells, calls to action. Boots pounding marble steps.

She quickly dodge rolls over to the desk, barely avoiding pistol fire. She wishes she had clocked where the pistol went when she kicked it from the lackey’s hand, but there was too much going on. With reinforcements on the way, she can’t hesitate, and with the four of them in this room between her and Don Corneo, and the rest coming from behind, she’ll be full of holes before she can blink if she doesn’t act now.

One more grunt with a gun. The machine gun guy is down but not out, and if any one of them recovers a gun, and she doesn’t know about it, she’s toast.

She reaches a quick hand out above the desk, grabbing for anything, and comes back with a heavy paperweight, a crystal orb with a tiny depiction of Corneo’s pagoda inside. If she didn’t need a weapon right now, she’d smash this fucking thing.

She risks a quick glance above the desk and drops back down as the guy with the pistol shoots wildly at her.

But it’s enough. Two pillars with ornate room-dividing screens between the outside of the pillars and the walls. Behind one pillar is the guy with the pistol. Two more are helping the machine gun guy get out from under the now dead body of their companion.

Tifa chucks the paperweight at the guy behind the pillar, knowing she won’t take him out or even hurt him, but she needs to get back there and this is the only distraction she has right now.

The moment she throws it, she sprints out from behind the desk, charging for the pillar. Only her aim is off and the paperweight smashes against the wall harmlessly, not even cause for distraction, and she stares at a grinning guard who draws line of sight on her. Aiming low, ready for her to roll or slide like she’s already done.

Instead, she leaps back and to the side, aiming for the corner of the desk. The bullet passes through the space she just vacated, and her feet land on the corner of the desk while he moves the gun over. She launches forward like a drill, spinning in the air, and torpedo tackles the guy behind the pillar. He makes a sound of guttural surprise as they collapse into a pile, but manages to hold onto the gun. Instead of trying to shoot her, he uses it like a bludgeon and racks her in the back with it. Pain explodes and she elbows him in the chest, then uses her legs to wrap up his gun arm, twisting until it snaps and the gun falls away. He screams, but she doesn’t let up, bringing a right cross pounding into his face. The split of lip and splatter of blood are immensely satisfying..

He drops unconscious, but she has no time to savor it. The machine gun lackey has been freed and points the gun at her. She grabs the unconscious body in front of her as cover, and throws herself back behind the pillar and the dividing screen. Meaty bullet wounds appear as the unconscious lackey becomes a dead lackey. The screen isn’t going to do more than provide a little bit of uncertainty to her position, but it’s all she has now. A flash of memory at all this carnage, a sword through her gut. She shakes it off, no time for bad memories.

She glances around for the pistol she knocked away, but it’s also out of reach. Tifa scrambles back to the corner, where there are supplies stacked up. She’s trapped in a killhole if any of them think to press the advantage.

Instead of waiting for the machine gun guy to get brave, she lifts the entire room-dividing screen and runs with it around the pillar, obscuring her exact location while she collides with the remaining guards.

The screen’s flimsy fabric rips as people get tangled up in it, and one of the goons pops through a frame of the screen entirely as it clatters to the ground. 

Tifa uses this moment of surprise to lay into him. A series of hooks and jabs to the soft flesh of his stomach, which turns out to be not so soft. He flexes and grabs her, shouting, “I got the bitch, shoot her!”

The guy with the machine gun finally rips through the fabric of the screen that collided with him, and draws aim down on both of them. The guy who managed to grab her realizes his error as Tifa’s body slips free from the sheen of sweat she’s worked up. It’s ruining this wonderful black kimono, but it was already going to be worthless after all the blood and spittle she’s grinding into it.

She drops as the machine gun fires a spray of bullets across the man, and more blood spatters out. He manages to look both ashamed and shocked at this turn of events.

Tifa grabs the man and rolls backward with him, over the tattered screen, and launches the dying man through the air to collide with the machine gun guy. They collide, and both crunch against the nearby pillar, which cracks from the impact. The machine gun fires indiscriminately at the ground, ricocheting bullets harmlessly around the room, before he falls unconscious from the blow to his head against the pillar.

Tifa, rolling to a crouched position, stares around. One more guard, and this guy is reaching for a gun on the ground in front of the door she suspects Don Corneo to be behind. He grabs for the gun and fumbles it a bit while she launches up from her crouch. She charges the man as he gets hold of the gun and raises it up in a wide arc to shoot her. She gets to him first, jumps into his chest with both feet and kicks off.

She flips from the impact to land in a defensive posture while he jolts backwards. The force with which she kicked him literally rips the door from its hinge as he stumbles backwards, attempting to keep his legs under him.

Everything happens in a blur. The doors behind Tifa burst open, and Kotch stands there with several more guards, all carrying machine guns. Tifa sprints for the open doorway to Don Corneo’s private chambers just as they yell at her to stand down. Tifa clears the threshold before Kotch and the others open fire. The man she kicked through the door stumbles backwards another step or two, then as it looks like he’s going to recover, ear-shattering blasts erupt from the corner of the room, ripping huge holes in the man.

Tifa dodges around the dying man, landing on a carpet in the center of the room, which rings tinny and curiously hollow under her feet. The carpet is next to the disgustingly opulent bed Corneo hides behind.

He grins suddenly, and reaches for what she took to be just an arm of a statue, careful of his twisted and broken fingers.

She throws caution to the wind and leaps onto the bed, just as the trap door Corneo activates drops out from under her. The shot man falls into it, already too weak to cry out. She hits the surprisingly soft mattress and struggles to gain a foothold to get to the man she wants to end.

So she throws a pillow at him, which erupts in a shower of feathers when he shoots at her through it. Her ears ring, and the bullet whips past her head so close she swears she can feel it, and explodes a huge chunk of brass bedframe behind her.

No time to waste. Tifa gets hold of Don Corneo’s hand holding the gun, and smashes it against the golden statue. Bones crack and he cries out, dropping the huge gold-plated monstrosity. She rolls off the bed while leveraging herself with his shattered hand, keeping him off-balance, and sucker punches him with her free hand as she comes down beside him.

All the wind rushes out of him in a whoosh of decaying gums, and she manages to wrap an arm around his throat while he struggles. And she squeezes.

She drags him out into the open, so he can’t use anything against her, and knocks him to his knees while still squeezing his neck. Kotch and the others rush into the room, weapons held low, and he holds a hand up to keep them from doing anything.

They are at a standstill, while Don Corneo’s pudgy body drains of life before them.His piggy eyes beg his lieutenant to help, to shoot her, but Kotch hesitates.

He holds a hand up in peace, and says, “You kill the boss, you won’t make it out of this room alive.”

“That’s not the right threat,” Tifa hisses through clenched teeth. “I took out nine men to get to him, and some of them had guns.” She counts the ones that got shot through no effort on her part. They won’t know the difference. 

Corneo struggles and thick, dirty fingernails drag across her arm, ripping flesh and causing her to wince, but she holds tight. No one’s stopping this. Not for this piece of shit.

“Well, all of us have guns,” Kotch says, but she can tell they’re not convinced. 

“I’ll make sure you’re buried with them.” She squeezes tighter on Corneo’s neck, so tight she can hear his windpipe straining. A little more and it’ll collapse, and no one in this room could save him then.

Kotch and the others glance among themselves, clearly doing their own selfish math. If the boss dies, the gravy train dies with it. If they can’t kill her, they also die with him. The bodies in the room tell their own compelling tale.

Corneo’s struggles falter, and he droops, losing consciousness. Tifa hisses, “Save the boss, or save yourselves.”

Leslie comes rushing up behind Kotch and the others, just as the last dregs of consciousness fall away from Corneo. “Let him go, Tifa,” he says, almost pleads, fear in his eyes.

“You have pity for this man?” she yells. “You want mercy for what he is? For what he did to Sector 7? For what he was going to do to me?”

“No, listen,” Leslie pleads. “He’s got information we need. You think we all do what he wants because we’re as bad as him?”

Tifa nods. She isn’t sure what these men can say that will get her to let Corneo live, if he can even be revived at this point. “You let it go on. Kotch, you cleaned me up despite knowing what he was going to do to me, to my home. Our home.”

Kotch looks away, some kind of shame on his frowning face. “Yeah, well, I never said I was a saint.”

“None of us are, Tifa,” Leslie says, taking a step closer. “But we did what he wanted because he took something from us, too.”

“Whatever he took, you let him. You got fat and greedy on his lust. You let it all happen.

She releases Don Corneo’s limp body, and before it falls to the ground, she spin kicks it at the trap door that’s still open in the center of the room. The body thuds against the side of the pit before disappearing into darkness. There is no scream, no thud or splash that greets her.

Leslie cries out “No!” as he reaches for the body in vain. Everyone else in the room is too shocked to take advantage of Tifa’s vulnerability. 

She pants, wipes sweat from her face. Stares at Kotch and the others. They’re not drawing on her, not firing. Not running away, either. And what Leslie says makes sense to her now that the Don is dead. Maybe they’re not all bad. Maybe some actually were forced into this life.

“Corneo ran Wall Market and supplied Shinra with intel,” she says, working it through.

Kotch nods, then shakes his head no, while Leslie extends the ladder in the side of the trap door into the darkness. “He… he would tell you he ran all of it, but I think Andrea might have more control than anyone thinks.”

Andrea is one of the Trio she learned about when preparing to go on this mission. The ones who supply Corneo with his brides. Chocobo Sam is another and she needs to have a chat with him. She nods. “Are the Trio as dangerous as Corneo, or as stupid?”

Leslie vanishes down the ladder without another word, panicked at the thought that Corneo is dead. Kotch shrugs, “I don’t know.”

One of the other lackeys grunts. “Can’t believe the boss is dead.”

“Believe it,” Tifa says. Her heart feels hard. This was supposed to be a simple mission: get in, interrogate the Don, get back to her people. Now her people are probably dead. Avalanche is gone. Bringing it down from the top was never going to work. She sees that now.

Corruption from within, at every level. You can’t ask a corrupt government to play nice. There’s no incentive. You can only force it. And you can’t force it if there’s no repercussions.

Tifa says, “Corneo worked for Shinra. The Trio work at the pleasure of the Don. What else does the Don provide to Shinra?”

Kotch runs off a list: “Booze, drugs, contraband, women, the occasional man. It’s a long list.”

Ideas are forming. Thoughts she can’t believe she’s having. There is no way to salvage an organization as corrupt as one that is willing to destroy an entire sector of the city just to prove a point. To kill thousands in cold blood. The entire thing must be dismantled. Destroyed from the ground up. 

Shinra must be subject to an Eruption from within.

“If you’re not going to shoot me,” Tifa says, “then you should go recover that rat’s body with Leslie.”

Kotch and the others glance at each other again, and back at her. Kotch nods. “Yes, Miss Tifa.”

Tifa stands up straight, adjusts her bloody kimono, and lets her hair down. Hard hearts have no friends. Leaders have no peers. Those who do what is right, what is necessary, must be willing to sacrifice everything. She has nothing left to sacrifice. Nothing that hasn’t already been stolen from her. 

She says, “Send someone to get rid of the trash in the dungeon as well. Oh, and I expect you to address me properly.” Kotch hesitates as the other men with him begin to descend the ladder, rifles slung over their backs. Following orders.

Kotch bows and says, “Of course. My apologies, Donna Lockhart.”

Notes:

This chapter is later than I'd hoped, but writing is difficult right now!

Also, if you're upset about the sudden and violent shift in Tifa's behavior and demeanor from what you're used to and were maybe expecting, please bear with it! She's been through a lot in a short amount of time, but Donna Lockhart is not the end of her progression. If you liked everything up to this point, I hope you stick around through what's next. =)

Chapter 5: Five Conversations to a New You

Summary:

The subordinates and employees of Don Corneo sit down to interviews by their new boss, Donna Lockhart. The results may vary.

Notes:

(See the end of the chapter for notes.)

Chapter Text

Kotch wipes sweat from his brow and adjusts his mohawk, removes his sunglasses. It’s been a few hours since they sent in the cleaning crew, and Kotch doesn’t know what he’s about to find when he goes into the Don’s--Donna’s office. But he’s been summoned, and he’s already committed himself to this, for better or worse.

He pushes open the big double doors, chased in gold and immaculate on this side. On the other side, when he pushes them closed, there are bullet holes, shattered wood, splintered gold. This room may be free of the carnage, but it’ll take time to clear it of the coup. She’s not here yet and he sighs with relief. Everywhere there are signs of the recent battle. Darker stained flooring where the blood wouldn’t come up. Shattered pieces of furniture shuffled off to the corners of the room. Scuff marks where the big desk was pushed around during the fight. And everywhere, like with the doors, bullet holes. That, if nothing else, proves she deserves to be here. She freed herself, fought through experienced guards and ex-military, through height and weight, through weapons and guns, and came out on top like some kind of Wutai legend.

Scotch enters the room from the dungeons, followed by Donna Lockhart in a new kimono she found among the Don’s belongings. Now that he knows what she’s capable of, it doesn’t suit her, this red and orange formalwear. Scotch has been bandaged up from his defeat, and true to her word, Tifa is letting him go his own way. Kotch’s former partner in crime grins at him and waves. She goes to stand behind her desk, giving Kotch a moment with his friend.

Scotch says, “I guess the band had to break up at some point, right, brother?”

Kotch sighs. “I guess so. Least you’re alive.”

“Looks like Trouble’s gonna be my middle name and you…” He glances at Tifa. “You’re gonna be causing a whole different kind of trouble, I think.”

“Maybe.” Kotch leans in to his former partner and whispers, “I don’t know what she’s planning, but I’m curious.”

“You always had a soft spot for the soft girls.” Scotch pulls open the battered door and gives a mock salute to Donna Lockhart. “No hard feelings, eh, Miss Tifa?”

Kotch hears her sharp intake of breath from her, sees the moment of panic in her eyes before it vanishes under hard scrutiny. “You’re not out of the building yet, Scotch.”

“Of course, of course. No hard feelings, Donna Lockhart .”

“I want to make one thing very clear,” she says from her position behind her desk. “Wall Market is not for you anymore. Find another den.”

“Oh, I will. I hear Sector 2’s got a nice gambling hall. Until we meet again, Donna.”

He leaves, and Kotch leans his head out the door to the guards downstairs. “Make sure he doesn’t take anything on his way out.”

Scotch looks back at Kotch, almost wounded, but grins again. “Go lick the new boots, old pal.”

Kotch averts his eyes and closes the doors as he steps back inside. His friend and partner in crime, gone. Off to make new connections and probably get himself killed with his attitude. He sighs and turns back to Donna Lockhart.

“My apologies for his behavior, Donna. He’ll be out of our hair soon enough.”

“He’s of no consequence, Kotch. Pull up a seat, we need to chat.”

Kotch glances around to the ruined furniture in the room and grabs an ornate, only slightly damaged bench from one wall, sets it a few feet back from the fancy desk in the center of the big room, and goes to sit down before he realizes Tifa is still standing. He stops, and waits for her. 

She doesn’t sit immediately, and then her eyes narrow slightly as she gets the picture. She sits down, crossing her legs lazily, and gestures to the bench. Kotch nods graciously and sits.

She doesn’t say anything at first, and Kotch isn’t sure she knows what she wants to ask. Knows what she needs to learn. He saw her at her worst, chained to a table in a dungeon, begging for help. It suddenly makes sense that she starts by talking to him. Kotch knows her better than anyone right now.

“Donna,” he begins, “we’ll need some time to get this room fixed up right. These boards will have to be replaced, the metalwork repaired. We’ll get a fine craftsman from topside down here.”

“That’s good,” she says. “I think, though, I’d like the doors to remain as they are.”

He follows her gaze back to the ruined doors at the entrance. “Why?”

“I ran a bar in--” She cuts off, voice choking a bit, but she muscles through it. “--I ran a bar before this. The first thing you learn, after where to kick a man to take him down quickly, is that it doesn’t matter how nice or rundown a place is. What matters is the door and the impression it gives. That keeps a man in line, seeing a door with a little damage.” She doesn’t explain any further, and Kotch stares at her, mystified.

He nods, though. “Of course, Donna. We will not have the doors repaired.”

She leans forward now, attentive, and to Kotch’s eyes it seems as though she’s attempting to be confident and cocky, but she’s not doing a very good job. The kimono doesn’t help. The uncertainty in her eyes is worst of all, though.

He continues, “We also had the bodies disposed of in the sewers.”

Tifa shudders before she says, “I didn’t kill any of them, I hope you know.”

He nods, though he disagrees with that assessment. Putting a living man in front of a bullet meant for you is definitely you killing them, but it wouldn’t do any good belaboring that point right now. “Other people pulled the triggers, of course.”

She nods curtly, then leans back in the big chair again. It’s too big for her, and where with Don Corneo that size accentuated his own meaty grandeur, it gives the impression that she’s a child playing at crime boss with just how big it is compared to her. Kotch makes a note to have the chair replaced with something more appropriate. There’s more than enough imported Wutai furniture here to make do.

“Can I ask you a question, Donna?” She nods. “I know you’re not going to keep the operation going the way it was before. No more nightly brides, no more desperate women. What are you planning on doing with the Wall Market?”

Tifa shrugs. “Who says anything is going to change?”

Kotch doesn’t know what to say to that. “I--Donna Lockhart, do you want me to bring you some entertainment?”

Tifa says, “I need to know more about my predecessor’s operations. Who answers to him, who he answers to, how often, where the money comes from. I need to see the books, Kotch.”

Kotch nods, feeling whiplash from the conversational pivot. “I can have that information brought to you. Leslie knows more about the nitty gritty details, though. I mostly just run the arena and--and deliver the girls.”

“I will ask him when I talk to him next. He’s still in the sewers looking for Corneo’s body. Tell me about the fights, then.”

He does, though there isn’t much to it. Structured fights that are generally unfair to the challengers, with champions brought by the powerful in Wall Market and elsewhere. Most tournaments are among the Trio, and they make a good bit of side money. Chocobo Sam is one of the Trio, along with Madam M and Andrea, and Kotch sees she’s making mental notes that these people must be interviewed as well.

He says, “We normally do a Corneo Cup to cap the week’s bouts. I can’t imagine a better way to announce your… promotion, than running a Lockhart Cup.”

She shakes her head, though. “I’m not ready for that exposure. You will find a replacement announcer for Scotch, and continue to run the fights. The Corneo Cup will continue as normal. No one beyond us and the Trio needs to know he’s dead just yet.”

Kotch nods. Nothing changes, then. Not really. His heart drops a little. He had been looking forward to whatever new day this was supposed to be, but if she falls into all of Corneo’s bad habits and criminal enterprises, he still won’t sleep well at night.

“Donna Lockhart, if I might ask another question?” Another nod. “Are you going to be a tyrant like Corneo?”

Her hesitance and demeanor suddenly shift into outrage. “I will be nothing like that garbage heap. And I will never subject a woman to the horrors he got off on.” Her hands clench the armrests on the chair so hard that the wood creaks and groans. 

She says, “I don’t know how to be a crime boss, but I can tell you that I know how to run a discreet business, and I know how to kick some ass. To the outside world, nothing is going to change. To Corneo’s contacts at Shinra, nothing is going to change. It’s very important that people think business as usual is business as usual.”

“And for those of us on the inside?” Kotch asks, hope returning.

“We’re going to cause a little mayhem for the people who destroyed Sector 7. Our home will be avenged, Kotch.”

He nods, feelings goosebumps all over his skin and that weird feeling you get that spreads out from your chest into every part of your body when something truly profound hits you. He becomes something else in that instant, more than a petty thief, more than a common criminal, more than a crime boss’s lieutenant. Donna Lockhart is a woman with a wish, and that wish is justice. He stands and bows to her.

“I will bring you anything you need, Donna. Anything at all.” She’s not the Donna she needs to be. Not yet. But Kotch is ready to help her get there.

She sits back in her chair, a relieved and pleased smile on her face. “I need something from the dungeon while I wait for Leslie.”

 

Leslie Kyle begins to climb out of the sewer and he’s not happy about it. The only evidence of Corneo he could find was a scrap of his big red robe, hanging out of the mouth of the giant sewer beast he kept as a disposal unit. The beast fled through a sewer tunnel, recently created by the terrible destruction of Sector 7. Leslie can’t think about any of that right now. He’s got to figure out what to do about Corneo and the things he held over Leslie’s head.

But now he’s at an impasse. He has no idea where the creature went, and if it ate Corneo, then Leslie might never find the information he needs. He might never find Merle.

As he climbs the ladder, though, that terrible, jaunty tune Corneo likes to play for his victims in the dungeon begins to play. Did Corneo live? Did he somehow make it from the sewers back to the mansion and get rid of the girl? 

He hustles up faster, equally hoping Corneo is alive and dead, but for different reasons.

But as he reaches the light at the top of the ladder, where the music is louder now, he hears the girl. Tifa shouts, a wordless attacking cry, and he crests the lip of the trap door just in time to see the woman who killed Don Corneo charge at the Corneo-shaped jukebox in the corner of the room, and slam into it with a knuckledust-covered fist. The resulting crunch of plastic is satisfying, and the cartoonish bulb of a head crumples inward. The jukebox tilts backward from the force, and then rocks forward again.

Leslie crawls out and watches Tifa take out her anger and frustration on this avatar of the most evil man she’s ever met. Shards of metal and plastic scatter, and eventually the music skips a beat before silencing altogether. The lights die out, and with one final punch, a feeble spark shoots out of the cratered hole in the middle of the machine before it falls silent, still, and as dead as the man himself.

She breathes heavily in a kimono that Leslie recognizes, chest hitching as she kicks it. It plunks over and she drops to the floor next to it. She wipes at her eyes as she finally realizes he’s in the room.

She sniffs back the tears while standing back up. “Heh. I got bored waiting for you to come up.”

He hesitates and edges around the trap door in the floor before tapping the arm of the statue that closes it up. “I guess now I should thank you, you took out the true monster in the room.”

She smiles, but it seems confused. “Based on your attitude when we first met, I thought you’d be happy the real one is gone, too.”

“Oh, I am. But I’m also not. He knows where my fiancee is and he’s not in the business of sharing that information, even when he’s breathing.”

“So I did you half a favor, is what you’re trying to say.” She shrugs. “Sorry.”

He shrugs right back at her and adjusts his cap. “You couldn’t know. The guy who found me down there says you took over.”

“Something like that.”

“One crime boss for another.”

“Not quite like that.” She sits on the opulent bed and then suddenly thinks better of it, standing up and rubbing her exposed fingers together like she wouldn’t mind an acid bath. “I’ll have to throw everything out of this room, won’t I?”

Leslie chuckles ruefully. “I wouldn’t really touch anything in here, no.”

“Well, that won’t be a problem, I suppose.” She removes the gloves with the knuckledusters attached, and drops them on a nearby dresser before rubbing her fingers again. “If you hated the man so much, why didn’t you kill him yourself?”

“He has--had--information. About my fiancee. About a lot of things, on almost all of us. Definitely those of us who stuck around.” He tells her about Merle, how she disappeared and only the Don knew her whereabouts. How the others have missing family, property, secrets they wished to keep from the public. Some, like Scotch and Kotch, served willingly enough, content to enjoy the cash and the castoffs.

Some, like Leslie, served in the hopes that he could find out where the Don sent Merle. Where the love of his life was sent away.

After he finishes, Tifa stares thoughtfully into the middle distance for a time. “I figured it had to be something like that, the way you talked, the way Kotch went on about it.”

“You let Kotch stay on?” Leslie asks, genuine surprise in his voice.

“He was the first to pledge new loyalty. Do you have dirt to sway my opinion on him, as well?”

Leslie scratches his head. “Not really, no. He always kinda went with the flow, did whatever people were doing. Guys like Kotch, they need a firm hand to guide them. To keep them in or out of trouble.”

She nods, a mild frown on her lips. “He spoke highly of you.”

“I doubt that. We didn’t see eye to eye.”

“He said you knew more about the intimate details of Corneo’s plans, deals, cash flow.”

“Oh, I guess I do. He and Scotch ran the arena, but I kept the books. You learn a lot about a criminal enterprise when you see where the gil goes, and where it comes back.”

“It sounds like I’m going to need you, Leslie.” She approaches him now, and his back stiffens, ready to fight back or run. “Tell me, what does your loyalty cost?”

He gapes at her. Her slightly bruised eye, her split cheek. She’s not the drop dead gorgeous woman he met earlier, but even with this battle damage, she’s something special. He almost says “nothing” and then shakes his head.

Leslie says, “I believe Corneo has secret tunnels and a warehouse somewhere in the sewers. If he’s not actually dead, that’s where he’ll have gone--”

“So you couldn’t find the body.” Her eyes widen in fury.

“We found a scrap of his robe, that’s it. But he keeps mean pets down there, too.”

“Pets don’t normally eat their masters.”

“These pets eat whatever comes their way. Maybe ‘keeping as a pet’ is generous. More like a garbage disposal.”

She searches his eyes for a lie, and he doesn’t break his gaze. She nods. “Okay. If he’s alive, he’s in his hidey hole.”

“And if he’s not, the secret bunker or warehouse or whatever is sure to have some information. If we can find that and it has what I’m looking for, I’m your man for as long as you need me.”

Tifa holds a hand out to him, and he reaches out with his own to shake. It’s a firm handshake, full of promise and warning. “Give me some time to get established, to set in motion what needs to happen, and then we’ll find this rat’s nest.”

Leslie smiles, relieved. He doesn’t know Tifa, but he doesn’t get the sense that she’s a liar. In fact he thinks she’s rather naive and gullible and that’s more trouble than being dishonest in this business.

But if she can help him find Merle… he’ll do whatever she wants, to whomever she wants.

“I look forward to it, Donna Lockhart.”

She nods approvingly. “Good.” She goes over to where her gloves are situated on the dresser, and he realizes that’s also where her black kimono has been stashed. On top of the kimono is the yellow flower she wore in her hair when arriving. Despite the abduction, the dungeon, the fighting, and everything, it looks pristine, bright, and beautiful, as though nothing can touch it. 

Her fingers caress the delicate petals of the flower. When she turns back to him, her eyes are hard and focused. “Now tell me about the Trio.”

 

Madam M huffs in frustration as her attendant lags behind. He hauls a portable massage table and a case full of oils and scents. It has been a long time since Corneo requested her masseuse skills personally, and that she is forced to go to him and not the other way around vexes her.

But what the Don wants, the Don gets, even in the midst of a terrorist disaster that killed their next-sector neighbors. She feels the horror of it deep in her soul, but like anyone in a position of authority, she holds herself high, reassures those she passes by, and tries to ignore the increased homeless and displaced as she carefully walks along, so that it seems she floats on a current of air.

After the plate fell, Madam M caught some whispers that there was something else happening at Corneo’s mansion, but if he’s requesting a private session--ugh--then it must have really riled him up. She made it clear in no uncertain terms that she would not personally service him ever again. That he has reneged on that--multiple times--is of no consequence. He respects that boundary more than most, and she clings to it like a child to her mother’s legs. Yet she still goes when he does call.

When she reaches the mansion, and glides up the various stairs with her attendant in tow, the atmosphere is different. The heavily perfumed air is muted. There are only a few guards, a small number in comparison to what she usually sees. The stacks of imported Wutai goods have been shuffled around, gone through. Corneo must really be in a mood. She sighs heavily as she is permitted entry. This will be terribly unpleasant.

Leslie bows graciously to her as she and her attendant come up the interior steps and approach the first room. “It’s good to see you well after the disaster, Madam.”

She accepts his bow with equanimity. This boy has always seemed rather soft to serve a man as cruel, as perverted, as Don Corneo, but the Don makes his decisions by his own internal compass, and so long as no one stops him, he can’t be stopped.

“Has the plate falling whet the Don’s appetite?” she asks. It disgusts her to say it, but she plays her part, as they all do.

“Something like that. Before you begin, you should know that it’s not the Don you’ll be servicing.”

“Oh? Is he doting on Sam’s latest bride? That man always finds his favorite type. It’s infuriating.” It’s gross.

“I guess you could say yes.” He grins. “Please, after you.”

Her attendant opens the doors and she steps through, plastering a fake smile in case the man is in here. He likes to watch these things sometimes. Only instead of Don Corneo or some blushing bride, the room is empty save a beautiful, battered woman in a Wutai kimono of orange and gold. Her legs are covered, but she is clearly wearing dark silk stockings and not much else under the formalwear. Her hair is straight, long, black, shiny. Covetous. The kind of locks only women from the upper plate can normally achieve. Despite the bruise and cut on her face, she watches Madam M enter the room with guarded closeness, with a ferocity in her brown eyes.

No, not a blushing bride. Just what is this? What new misery has Don Corneo cooked up for his subordinates?

“Will the Don be joining us?” she asks, directing her attendant to set the table and case up, which he does with practiced efficiency and speed. It all clicks into place and is ready for her within seconds, and no one speaks while this is done.

Leslie says, “If your boy would like some refreshment, you can get acquainted in private with the Donna.”

Donna? Now that’s curious. So curious that Madam M waves her attendant away, eyes never leaving this girl. This Donna . She is maybe half the Madam’s age. Before she has to hide the gray, the wrinkles, the bitterness of a life misspent. 

The door closes behind her, and they are alone. Madam M gestures to the massage table with her long-nailed hand, but the woman doesn’t move.

“If you would be so kind as to strip down and get on the table, we can begin,” Madam M says, mildly frustrated.

“You’re not going to ask what this is? Why he called me the Donna?”

She waves her hand imperiously. “I’m sure Don Corneo has his reasons. Maybe he’s getting into roleplay, who knows.”

This woman shrugs. “Maybe he’s dead.”

That brings Madam M up short. “Dead.”

She prides herself on reading people, and this woman’s cool exterior is veiling something, but she can’t tell exactly. Fear. Anger. Horror. Maybe a little of all of it. 

This Donna says, “I choked the life out of him because of what he did.” Madam M does her the favor of gasping dramatically, while backing away a couple of steps towards the door. Part theater, part tactful retreat. 

“If he’s dead, then why hasn’t Shinra come raining down upon this place? They keep a close watch, I’m told.” Widening of eyes, tightening of jaw. 

The woman shrugs. “You didn’t know. Why should they?”

Madam M smiles back. She saw the crack in the woman’s demeanor that time. She may know about Corneo’s Shinra dealings, but she isn’t aware of how deeply in their pocket he is. Was.

“So then you’re the new power in Wall Market, is that what this is? You’re… asserting your dominance? A show of power?”

“I am merely getting to know my employees.”

“And you have me at a disadvantage, I’m sure. If you are strong enough to take down the Don, surely you could snap my neck as soon as look at me.” She can’t see this woman’s muscle definition under the kimono, but she believes it’s there. There may be uncertainty in her voice, but there’s confidence in her movements.

“You may call me Donna Lockhart. I’ll be honest, Madam M. I don’t really want a massage. I’m… learning as I go. I wasn’t much for organized crime.”

That has the stink of honesty about it, and Madam M smiles viciously. There’s an opportunity here. “So you kill the big fat man for laying his hands on your big fat assets? Seems a little overkill, if I’m being honest.”

Donna Lockhart doesn’t smile back. “For his hand in Sector 7.”

“What did he have to do with that?” 

This Lockhart woman approaches the massage table, and leans back on it to rest a bit. To lazily relax while she pokes through the standing case’s bottles and tinctures. “Corneo did what bottomfeeders always do. The dirty work that clean hands won’t.”

If what she says is true, Madam M isn’t sure death is good enough for him. A man who conspires to destroy an eighth of a city doesn’t deserve to live, but it sounds like his death was too clean. Too quick.

Madam M pops open her fan, and shakes it in front of her, for the air is suddenly stifling. “If what you say is true, Donna Lockhart, what stops Shinra from storming the castle, so to speak, and cleaning up the muck that might tell tales?”

“Shinra is my problem to deal with. What I need from you, and the other members of the Trio, is to continue about the Wall Market’s business, as if nothing has changed. To everyone but us, Corneo still gets his brides. Still controls the Market. Still gets his kickbacks.”

“And what does my silence buy? I could no doubt become the Mistress of Wall Market if you were to be turned in.”

“You could do that, and hope for the best.” Donna Lockhart shifts her legs a little, so that one long, muscled leg is revealed under the folds of the kimono. “Or you could serve a woman who will never demand you service her, while greedy hands take more than you wish. You could help topple an empire and never be suspected.”

Topple an empire. She speaks big, pretty words, doesn’t she? Madam M doesn’t know what it is about this woman, this Donna Lockhart, that is so compelling. Her beauty, for certain. Her appearance and demeanor that makes Madam M want to comfort her, to protect her. Her smile that simply asks for your faith and rewards you for it. And still there’s an opportunity here. One shot.

Madam M steps closer, fanning herself more. “You would never force me to service you, but would you deny me the pleasure of it?” She reaches out to the thigh high stocking, hooks a finger inside the elastic band at the top, and stares into Donna Lockhart’s eyes. The Donna’s considerable chest heaves slightly with an intake of breath, but she doesn’t stop Madam M.

“I think you are a fascinating creature, Donna Lockhart. But you’re no crime lord with your pouty eyes. Not yet. Would you like to play the role, while we’re alone?”

Donna Lockhart breaks the gaze first to look down at the finger in her stocking, and Madam M snaps the fan shut and grabs her by the chin in one smooth motion. Pulls her eyes back up.

“Stand up, my Donna, and tell me what you desire.”

The new Donna of Wall Market nods, and stands to her full height in front of Madam M. “Beg? I want you to beg to service me, Madam M.” She almost squirms as she says it.

Madam M smiles, and drops the closed fan to the case with all the oils. “Of course, Donna Lockhart. Nothing would please me more.”

She reaches for the woman’s kimono, releasing the bow that holds it in place, pressing the fabric back and over her shoulders so that it pools at her feet. Underneath it all, Donna Lockhart has a black, lacy bra and underwear no doubt acquired from the former Don’s brides, and the stockings all the way up her legs. And damn is this woman fit, with muscles in all the right places, definition anyone would die to trace with a finger. 

She stands before Madam M, cheeks flushing red, struggling not to cover her midriff with her arms, and Madam M reaches for those hesitant arms. Places one hand on her shoulder and taps it. Keeps the other and kisses the calloused palm. Fighter’s hands. The new Donna has more worthiness in one scarred knuckle than Corneo had in his whole body. A woman who fights for what she believes in versus a man who gets what he wants through fear and intimidation. Pity she doesn’t know what’s about to happen.

Donna Lockhart presses down on Madam M’s shoulders when she taps the hand there a second time. Madam M lowers slowly to her knees, playing the obedient servant while taking in the body of this woman, this warrior, as she drops. Madam M does not fancy women, but she plays the part, and admits to herself that this is a gift to any allowed to touch it. Once on her knees in front of Donna Lockhart, she takes the hand she’s holding and forces it to grip the back of her hair.

Madam M says, “No hesitation. No shame. Only a powerful woman assured of her own place in this world, taking what she knows is hers.”

Donna Lockhart forces a chuckle. “This is--this is not what I--”

“Of course not. But it’s good practice. And let me tell you, my Donna, it will be such a pleasure for me not to be faced with that man ever again.”

She reaches out for Donna Lockhart’s stocking again, breathing in the perfume and scent of this woman, and finds it pleasing. A mix of perspiration and concealed desire. The stocking rolls down her leg.

Donna Lockhart leans back against the massage table, biting her lip while tossing her head back. Her cheeks are full on flushed with embarrassment and lust, and Madam M chooses that moment to strike.

The concealed dagger in her voluminous robe slips into a hand, and in an instant she’s on her feet, dagger held at Donna Lockhart’s throat, the woman gasping with surprise at how fast Madam M--

And in that briefest of victories, Donna Lockhart’s hand moves. Madam M’s fingers bend and nearly snap backwards as the dagger clatters to the ground. She cries out at the pain. With the other hand still on Madam M’s head, Donna Lockhart yanks her around, sliding her legs out from under her with a hip roll, pressing the woman to the massage table while Donna Lockhart lets her own momentum carry her on top, cradling Madam M like a lover, gripping her neck like the opposite.

Her flush is now anger, her skin warm and slick against Madam M.

Her one shot, and she blew it. But who could have guessed this Lockhart woman was capable of that speed?

Donna Lockhart leans down into Madam M’s face, breath hot on her cheek. “Consider the lesson learned, Madam M. When you leave here today, if Andrea or Sam catch wind of me before I have my interview, I’ll come for you. Look at me.”

Madam M sighs and looks into Donna Lockhart’s eyes. This is over, even if the Donna doesn’t understand it yet. She may be inexperienced and naive, but she’s got the strength and will to cover it.

She finishes, “You know I can find you, and you know I will.”

Madam M forces a smile. “Never a doubt in my mind, Donna Lockhart. Playing a role, all I was doing, honest.” Donna Lockhart lets the woman go and rolls off her in one fluid motion, all liquid muscle and confidence. 

She says, “There’s no place for honesty anymore.”

Madam M gathers her belongings, and hurries from the room while Donna Lockhart slips the kimono back on over her lingerie. Before she leaves Donna Lockhart’s sight, Madam M would swear the woman’s fingers begin to shake with what just happened. Her attendant, waiting outside, shuffles after her trying to take the folding table and the case, but she’s in too big a hurry. Her one shot to seize control has come and gone, stolen by this stranger, this child of a woman so scared of what just happened that she can’t even hide it seconds after it’s over. 

Donna Lockhart is a warrior despite all that. 

Madam M hurries back to her own domain. To think about what it means to serve a woman like Donna Lockhart. Who has vengeance in her heart, but her heart on her sleeve. How does one serve a woman like that and not end up in the firing squad beside her?

An interesting question. One, Madam M admits, she’s willing to find out.

 

Andrea Rhodea sashays into the office of Don Corneo as if he owns the room. He knows he does not, but anything to get under Corneo’s skin in subtle ways. His demeanor has always bothered the hyper masculine Corneo, but the man lets him alone because the Honeybee Inn is so very profitable, even if half the clientele doesn’t jive with Corneo’s ideas of masculinity.

So long as it rakes in the gil, he’s content to ignore how it comes.

So it is surprising, then, that Andrea Rhodea is not met with the Don, but rather a woman whose face has seen better days, seated in the Don’s oversized chair, looking diminutive and weak. Her attire is formal but ill-fitting and clashes with the royal red of the room. The bosom is too tight for this kimono, her hair is not done up in the traditional style it demands, and all the accessories are missing.

“What bruised petal before me?” Andrea asks, covering his confusion.

“You must be Andrea Rhodea, proprietor of the Honeybee Inn.” She stands and gives him a slight bow, not of deference but still of respect. It’s a little clumsy, though, and he smiles at her while rubbing his chin thoughtfully.

“I’m afraid you have me at a disadvantage, my dear. Where is the Don?”

He thinks he knows. He hardly dares believe it might be true.

She smiles, so slight that it could be the merest hint of a grin, and steps around the desk to approach him. “I’ve heard more about you than the others of the Trio. You can imagine the opinions are not… gracious.”

“Honey, the more I piss off people, the more I normalize it for less radical folk. Let them say what they want.”

“I like that,” the woman says. “Very pragmatic. You know who you are, and how to get and keep what you want. I have a lot of questions for you, Andrea, if you’re willing to share.”

He glances around the office. There are no guards: no Kotch, Scotch, Leslie, or any other nameless goon around. His eyes fall on the interior of the doorway he entered through, and that’s when he notes the shrapnel. The bullet holes. 

The blood soaked through the floorboards.

“So it’s a coup, then, is it?” he asks. “Am I to assume, then, that Corneo is dead?” He adjusts his collar and prepares to sprint for the doors, while maintaining his calm demeanor.

“Only at the top,” she assures him, and now that she’s closer, Andrea can spy the gloves she wears with brass knuckles hiding in the folds of her kimono sleeves. “You may call me Donna Lockhart.”

Her eyes go wide in shock when he laughs uproariously. He nearly doubles over from the strain of trying to breathe through the elation and laughter. “You have done us all a great favor, Donna Lockhart,” he finally says, wiping tears of joy from his eyes. “What I planned for months took you a day, and the shiner is your only payment.”

Her eyes soften when he says all this, but at the last she averts her gaze. Not the confident, cocky Don, but a woman trying her best to take the reins. 

She says, “Sector 7 was the payment, Andrea. I lost my friends, my family, because Corneo helped Shinra do it.”

He had his suspicions and his spies, but never confirmation. He says as much and sighs. “I’m sorry for your loss, Donna. It’s a hard thing, to come up against tyrants and lose.”

“You’re the second person to refer to Corneo as a tyrant. Why serve him?”

“The alternative of the streets, or a bad home life, for my bees and bears is worse than anything he could force upon me. He allowed me to care for them, so long as the payments and the women kept flowing.” He sighs, for he does not like admitting to this.

“I swallowed my pride while he swallowed whiskey. I crammed my anger down while he crammed cake down his throat. Corneo took advantage of everyone he ever met, and I merely seek to protect those who need it most. My Honeybee Inn is going to be what I always wanted it to be, now that he’s gone. Unless you are going to be as he was.”

She shakes her head. “In some ways, Andrea, we must be as you were. You’ll serve the Donna, and the Donna will serve Shinra for promises and get only scraps. But there will be no ‘brides’.”

Andrea lets his guard down a little at that. How the others of the Trio would take this news, or had already, he had no idea. But the relief that flows through him is something he thought he might only feel after Corneo was dealt with, at his hands.

“You’ve done me and mine a great service, Donna Lockhart.” He bows to her, and she nods to him in return. “The women we sent him were never the same when they came back. If they came back. I appreciate that you are suspending this practice.”

She hesitates at that. A Don, or Donna, should never be seen to hesitate, but she’s doing her best. She says, “You will still be sending me girls, and maybe a man or two, but the criteria is going to be different.”

His back stiffens and his hand on his chest flexes at this turn. “Oh?” 

“I’ve taken over a rat’s nest, Andrea. What I need now, is a pack of lions.”

He grins. “Oh. Oh, my dearest Donna Lockhart, I have such wonders of muscle to show you.”

She smiles back at him, and her confidence returns. He offers a hand to her, and she shakes it with firm conviction. Good. Andrea can work with this woman. Everything has changed overnight, and though he had been positioning himself to take over when his own plot against Corneo finally struck, maybe it won’t be necessary at all. He can continue focusing on his bees and bears, while Donna Lockhart builds an army and infiltrates Shinra.

He frowns, looking at her clothing, though. “Tell me, Donna, how much do you hate this outfit?”

She chuckles and grins, flushed. “It’s awful, isn’t it? I’ve been stuck deciding how I want to appear as the Donna, once my presence is known.”

His frown turns to pensive concentration, and then a smile as he decides. “My stylists will come by immediately. They will find what makes Donna Lockhart fearsome, feared, fabulous.”

A new dawn under a new Donna. He can certainly work with this, if she is even half the woman he thinks she is.

 

Chocobo Sam admits to a little nervousness. He’s been on edge ever since he sent Miss Tifa into Corneo’s den. She was a sweet girl, and pretty as a peach. But with her entire Sector destroyed just hours after she vanished inside, he’s feeling a little guilty. Does she even know? Did she have family? Kids? She’s young for that, but some aren’t more’n kids when they have ‘em. There’s refugees, sure, but what are the odds any of her people got out in time?

Bad, and he only plays the long odds when he’s feeling froggy and has gil to burn. So it is with some trepidation that Sam waves hello to Leslie at the gates, tips his hat, and stops before going inside. With him are two guards he’s never seen before, or rather, he’s never seen them here . He swears they’re honeybees, of all things. 

He grins at the pretty women in combat fatigues, and admits that they do have a little muscle, and spark in their eyes. “Corneo expanding his guards, or punishing Andrea?”

Leslie chuckles. “A fist is a fist, and Corneo loves eye candy.”

“That he does. Speaking of, how’s Miss Tifa?” he asks.

Leslie shifts uncomfortably. “I’m sure you’ll see her inside. Corneo’s been distracted by all this platefall business, and he’s calling everyone in for chats.”

“You don’t have to remind me. Kotch showed up lookin’ even more weasely ‘an usual and demanded a meeting.”

“Kotch has no cool, you know that.”

“Yes, sir, he does. It’s that Scotch what’s always with him keeping it from showing, and I saw him scooting the city.”

“Maybe the boss laid into him, I dunno.”

“Corneo upset about something? I figure he’s plotting ten ways to profit off the platefall, and nine are already underway.”

“Maybe. I’ve been busy training the new guards.”

“Hmm.” He shrugs and heads on in, that feeling of anxiousness growing. Miss Tifa may in fact be the lucky bride who doesn’t command much of his attention, if he’s in a furor to profit. He doesn’t have to like his part in Corneo’s dealings even while handing the girls over. Never sat right with him, but the girls make their own choices and it gives him the freedom to live his life, tinker, and drive the chocobos.  

Inside the mansion, Sam glances around, hoping to find Tifa lounging on a sofa or trying on all these fancy Wutai import dresses. But the bottom floor is emptier than usual. There’s a profound silence to the place.

Silence is trouble where Corneo is involved. The man never stops talking unless he’s eating, and he’s a noisy eater.

Sam looks back outside to where Leslie is speaking to the two women guards, while the doors are closing. “Upstairs?” he calls.

“Office!” Leslie confirms as the doors seal shut, and tomblike silence falls over the room.

Sam swallows his anxiety and goes up the steps, each click of his boots on the steps echoing in the hall. Even the Don’s palace seems to be feeling the weight of the plate collapsing. Surely that’s why it’s so strange in here.

He’s half convinced himself of this when he reaches the office doors upstairs, and knocks gently. To his great relief, Miss Tifa’s voice comes out the other side, cheerful and demure, just like he remembers.

“The boss will see you now.”

He breathes a big, heavy sigh. Everything’s okay, of course it is. Just jitters from the terrorist attack, is all.

He pushes open the big double doors letting into Corneo’s office, glancing around for that bright smile he hopes to see, but there’s no one in the opulent room. No soldiers, no Tifa, no Don at his desk with a glass of whiskey and an eye on the books.

The chair is backwards, though, facing away from the desk. Now that he’s paying attention, Sam freezes as the doors close shut behind him. On the desk, unnoticed while looking for Tifa, is a crumpled head, seeming bashed in by a cinder block or something. 

He gasps as he recognizes the blonde tuft of hair sticking out of the top, and then laughs when he realizes it’s not real. It’s the cartoony plastic head from that awful jukebox the Trio sent him as a gift. 

Corneo loved that thing so much; what could cause him to destroy it?

“Welcome to my mansion,” Miss Tifa’s voice says from behind the chair. Only it’s not the same bright, hopeful, and naive voice from before. There’s an edge to it now. Acid in the vowels.

“Miss Tifa?” he calls. He’s confused. None of this makes sense. He called her feisty, but this is something else.

A smart click sounds from behind the chair as a smartly-dressed Tifa stands up, in a white button-up shirt with a purple waistcoat over it. Tifa’s hair has been shaved on one side, with the rest draped over the other side and hanging loose over her shoulder. In the long side of her hair sticks the yellow flower she wore the day she rode in his carriage, bright and cheerful.

“From now on, Chocobo Sam, you will call me Donna Lockhart.” A flash of motion and a leg kicks out at the desk. The crumpled plastic head of Don Corneo clatters to the ground in front of Sam, and he flinches away from it, despite that it isn’t real.

“What the hell is this?” he asks, dumbfounded. This isn’t Miss Tifa, no way. This isn’t the shy woman in the fancy black kimono. And yet, somehow, it is. Her head turns slightly, so that he can see the anger in her eyes, the healing bruise. 

She says, “Take a seat, Sam. We should discuss your employment.”

Notes:

If the imagery of Madam M and Tifa's encounter feels somewhat familiar, you probably saw a certain #AerTi image on Twitter that completely influenced that scene. Jen Bartel's FFVII Remake sketches are still giving me life.

Next chapter: The fallout from platefall for Avalanche and the refugees from Sector 7. Then Aerith and the Avalanche crew look for Tifa in the Wall Market.

Chapter 6: Picking Up The Pieces

Summary:

Aerith and Barret regroup with Avalanche and Marlene, then head out to Wall Market, intent on finding Tifa.

Notes:

(See the end of the chapter for notes.)

Chapter Text

Earlier

The trek to Sector 5 was cumbersome, but Aerith and Barret made it in the early hours of the new day, as the sun lamps were scheduled to come on. However, they remained dark. Campfires, flashlights, and generator-powered flood lamps dotted the landscape. Helicopters flew in the distance surveying the damage. When the daylight flooded in from the gaping hole of Sector 7, the rest of the Slums remained dark.

Aerith and Barret found Marlene. They found Wedge, and Biggs, and Jessie, too. They found precious little else. The Leaf House in Sector 5 had become a refugee center. Biggs was injured trying to work his way up to help, and Jessie had a few scrapes and cuts she claimed were gained from the desperate parachute jump they made from the Pillar in the moments before it tumbled. Aerith can’t believe they’ve made it, but maybe Barret is right: Jessie’s got a lot of lives.

Barret’s reunion with Marlene was exhausting for both of them. Aerith offered to put them up in her house deeper into Sector 5, where real sun intruded and her garden still flourished. Where Barret talked a big game on the way here, running through contingencies for when he found Avalanche again, it all went away once he scooped his daughter back up into his arms. They fell asleep upstairs, and Aerith sits at the kitchen table now, hands holding a warm cup of dandelion tea while her mother stands behind her, fusses over her. The quaint little kitchen is comforting in its cramped space.

Elmyra says, “This is all so much, Aerith,” as she combs her fingers through Aerith’s mussed hair, working out the soot and tangles. Aerith’s favorite dress is all but ruined.

“You’re lucky you couldn’t hear the screams, Mom. It was so awful.”

Elmyra hugs Aerith, sniffing back tears. “I can only imagine, with all those poor innocent people having no idea what was happening.”

Aerith shakes her head. “That was bad, but I meant the planet.” Her heart aches. “I think I need to tell the big guy and his team what I am.”

Elmyra sighs and reaches a hand out to Aerith, takes a seat next to her and squeezes her hand for comfort. “You’ve just run away from that danger, dear. Are you sure you want to entrust these strangers?”

Aerith nods. Their tactics may be questionable, but their motives are pure. “These strangers want what’s best for the planet. They’ve been hurt by the damage Shinra’s done to it. Barret also may have overheard the Turks bring up the Ancients in reference to me.”

Elmyra’s shoulders slump and she squeezes Aerith’s hand again. “It’s always Turks with you, isn’t it?”

“Sometimes it’s those wraiths. And every once in a while a thug with a switchblade and a death wish.”

Elmyra snorts laughter. “You’ve never been shy of a fight, that’s for sure. What do you plan to do? You can’t stay here for long; Tseng will surely come looking for you again.”

Aerith shakes her head, frowning. “Barret was talking about finding their friend over in Wall Market. I saw her in passing on my way into Sector 7, and I’m worried about her.”

Elmyra’s smile widens. “Saw her in passing and you’re worried? Must have been something special.”

Aerith’s face grows hot, and then she feels bad for being called out. “I can’t help what I feel, Mom. It’s not just the pretty ones, but the ones with kind souls. I can feel them a mile away, and Tifa is something special, all right.”

“Tifa, huh?”

“I don’t know. We’ll figure it out. I did kinda join their group?”

Elmyra sighs her longsuffering sigh. “My daughter, the ecological activist.”

“They’re calling us terrorists, but the destruction they caused in coverup is worse than anything Avalanche could hope to do. And that isn’t even starting in on what they’re doing with their reactors.”

“Just be careful, whatever you do. Shinra isn’t exactly hiding their evil mustaches at this point.”

“You should have heard the Shinra lady on the news talk about them. She practically cackled. All ‘KYA HA HA’ like a crow or something.” Now THAT woman had been severe and drop dead gorgeous, but so cruel as to be a non-starter.

Aerith sips her tea and adds a little bit of honey. “Apparently Tifa knew the man who fell through my church. They all did, but Tifa was childhood friends with him.” Aerith thinks about him. Cloud Strife. A strong name. What would it do to Tifa when she finds out he is gone?

“That’s a hard thing, but everyone lost people after today. I guess I’m lucky, in that.”

“Yeah, you can’t get rid of me that easily, Mom.”

Elmyra smiles as she stands again. She smooths Aerith’s hair from her face and kisses her forehead. Instantly Aerith feels calmer. Mothers are magic like that. Elmyra says, “You should get some rest if you’re going to join a rebellion and save the princess in the castle.”

 

The sun lamps come back on sometime during mid-day of the second day post-platefall. They’ve been in a bit of a holding pattern because the avenues are too clogged to travel, and travel between Sectors was limited for the first day due to heightened tensions and worry that more attacks would happen. Even Aerith’s secret shortcuts are either broken or crowded.

But with the sun lamps and the lifting of travel restrictions, Barret hugs his daughter and leaves her in the care of Elmyra, then joins Aerith on the path back to the Leaf House. Marlene waves until they pass out of sight over the bridge, and Barret sighs once they’re gone.

Aerith has on a green blouse to match her eyes, with a light, brown skirt that doesn’t hang too low, and black leggings underneath. Something feminine as she prefers, but still more utilitarian than her favorite, ruined, dress. Jessie took Aerith’s gardening trousers, anyway, complaining that her hips weren’t wide enough for Aerith’s clothing. 

Aerith says, “Marlene’s going to be okay here, big guy.”

Barret shakes his head. “I know it. Your mom’s a good sort and Marlene’s going to have so much fun chasin’ butterflies and shit. I just don’t know when we’ll be back this way.”

“We will, though. Never fear, fearless leader.”

He clears his throat and shrugs. “I’m the one s’posed to be speechifying the troops. We will be back, and with stories of glory and toppling governments.”

“That’s right! Damn the man.”

Barret chuckles and Aerith smiles. They reach the Leaf House and Sector 5, which is abuzz with activity. People looking for loved ones, shelter, work, food. Some sense of purpose in this mad world. Wedge is without his bandana or his regular neighborhood watch gear, wearing instead some old faded clothing, keeping an eye on the Leaf House and the old folks’ home next door, both being used to house anyone who isn’t hurt too bad. 

Barret slaps him on the shoulder as they arrive, and grimaces. “Anything to report?”

Wedge shakes his head, rubbing his shoulder, then hands Barret a big cloth, practically a sheet. “We gotta ditch anything that gives us away. The red bandanas and your gun-arm especially.”

“I’m not throwing this damn thing away.” Barret clutches the sheet and his gun-arm in his one free hand, protective of his weapon.

“Ditch or hide, that’s what the sheet is for,” Wedge says, his gravelly voice tired. “Biggs is still recovering, and Jessie’s out sourcing supplies.”

Barret nods, wrapping the sheet around his weapon like a big sling. It doesn’t do a perfect job of hiding it, but it’ll do for now. He says, “Good to keep her occupied. I got my family out; you and Biggs didn’t have much in the way of people. Our girl lost a lot last night.”

Wedge says to Aerith, “Her parents were on the upper plate of Sector 7, and she had half a dozen roommates down here who were all like sisters to her.”

Aerith frowns. So much loss. “Should we give her time to grieve?”

Barret says, “She’s ready to move forward. We all are, no matter what.” Aerith nods and waves to one of the Leaf House kids, and hands over some medicinal herbs she brought from her garden. Every little bit helps right now. The girl runs back inside the Leaf House excitedly with her small parcel, and Aerith smiles. 

Barret continues, “Any of the others show up yet?”

Wedge hesitates, then says, “Not so far, boss. I’m sure someone will show up, though.”

“Yeah, no doubt,” Barret says. Aerith can feel the tension of these pleasant lies in the air. They know better. “Meantime I think we need to put an ear to the ground and go collect Tifa. It’s already been two days since she left and she’s gotta be losing her shit. She’s maybe worse than Jessie on Sector 7; pillar of the community and all. She’ll want to know some of us made it out.”

Wedge nods. “I hear the road to Wall Market’s crowded, but not impassable anymore. If Shinra soldiers are looking for us, we definitely need to stay low profile, though.”

“Tell you what,” Barret says, rubbing the whiskers on his chin. “Run some recon out there, see if you can’t figure out what’s going on. When Jessie shows back up, and if Biggs is up for it, we’ll be along. Anyone know a place to meet up in Sector 6? I uh, never been.”

Wedge smiles sheepishly and avoids Aerith’s knowing gaze. “There’s a restaurant just off the main drag, counter-style and serves diner food,” he says. “I’ll go there once I’m done asking around and wait for you.”

“Sounds like a plan,” Barret says, offering his hand to Wedge. They clasp at the forearm and Wedge jogs off. Barret looks at Aerith and shrugs. “I’m sure you got people to check on here, too. Come on.” They head inside the Leaf House, which is very packed, and Aerith breaks off from Barret to check on the refugees. He disappears upstairs, where she knows Biggs is resting.

The kids and the displaced from Sector 7 are subdued, but it seems like most of the people who made it out this far were warned early enough to evacuate. Whole families together, some keepsakes and cherished memories gathered up before they fled. As much as Aerith loves her place, she knows it is just that: a place. Hopefully they know it, too. These families are in shock, but Aerith can feel that they’re going to be okay. 

Within half an hour, Jessie comes strolling back in, bags under her eyes but smiling. She’s managed to clean up a little and has braided her hair in a tight coil. Aerith spares a moment to think that Jessie fills out the pants better than she claimed, and Jessie drops a satchel to a table before dropping herself into a chair next to it, sighing deeply.

“Can’t believe the prices people are charging,” Jessie complains, dumping out some basic supplies and organizing it all. “Supply and demand shouldn’t really be a thing during a tragic event.”

Aerith brings Jessie a glass of water, and sits down at the table with her while she slurps it down. Together they sort the food staples, medical supplies, and ammunition for their guns. Jessie pulls a small pouch from her side and drops an orb of blue materia into Aerith’s hands. 

“Figure you might be able to make use of this, the way you fought with it up on th-the tower.” Her voice hitches slightly as she brings up the tower, but she smiles uncertainly and goes back to sorting.

Aerith holds the new materia in her hands and feels something curious. The blue materia feels strange compared to the green varieties she has been using: it almost draws itself towards the green orbs of materia in her pouch, like it wants to be a part of it. Most curious.

Aerith brings her staff over and slots the materia into one of the two receptacles. She chooses the windy materia from her pouch and slots it into the second spot. They almost hum together. Aerith can use the green materia outside of a weapon, which isn’t something she thinks most people can do, but she wonders suddenly if there are new ways to employ it. To combine it? She knows a little about materia, but this is new to her.

She says, “I have a lot of materia at this point, we could have done without if there were other supplies that were more necessary.”

“Nonsense. We got more clips, you get more magic pew pew. Now where’s the boss? How soon are we moving out?” In answer, Barret’s heavy boots come trouncing down the steps and Jessie hops up excitedly. 

Barret says, “We’re going after Tifa; Jessie, you up for a trip to Wall Market?”

“Right as riches, boss.” She salutes, then thinks better of it halfway through and it ends awkwardly. “Guess we’re gonna have to avoid doing stuff like that, huh?”

“For the moment.”

“I see Wedge found you with the expert disguise,” Jessie says, nodding at Barret’s covered gun-arm.

“It’ll do in a pinch. Carbuncle, you ready to set out?”

It takes a moment for Aerith to realize he’s talking to her. “I don’t get to skip the crappy nickname phase of being the green recruit?”

Barret grins. “No one gets to skip that phase. We got to calling Cloud ‘Stamp’, you know, after that cute dog Shinra uses.”

Aerith good-naturedly huffs and stands up. “I guess I’m ready, then.”

Jessie gathers the various supplies back up, handing some ammunition to Barret as she stuffs it all back into the pack, better organized now. “I’m gonna go see Biggs real quick, I’ll meet you outside?”

“Make it snappy.”

“Aye aye, Boss.” Jessie disappears up the steps while Aerith and Barret step outside. More of the Leaf House orphans surround Aerith, chattering excitedly, and then when Barret shoos them away with a mean face and a meaner growl, Aerith scowls at him.

“What?”

“You have a daughter and you’re going to stand there and pretend like that wasn’t super mean?”

“We’re on task, Carbuncle. No time for playing big sister anymore.”

“Says you.”

“Says the mission.” He harrumphs and they fall into unpleasant silence while waiting for Jessie. She comes down after another minute or two, still looking tired but energized after speaking with her friend. Aerith’s pretty sure they’re just friends, the way Jessie talked about Cloud.

“All set, Barret,” Jessie says, giving a wink and a nod to Aerith as she passes by. “We meeting Wedge out there?”

“Yup. I guess he knows the Sector.”

Jessie smiles. “Of course he does. Good food, pretty girls, cheap drinks. What’s not to like?”

Jessie comes on a bit strong, but Aerith likes the woman all the same. They could be friendly rivals, if their circumstances were less serious.

The trip to Sector 6 and the Wall Market takes longer than it should. There’s new debris in the paths, people everywhere milling about. There’s the occasional Shinra patrol that they have to sidestep, and every time they wait for them to pass by, Barret’s fist clenches and his teeth grind with frustration that he can’t just knock their heads in right then and there. But he contains himself, and they move on.

They even see some of the other community leaders from Sector 7, whom Jessie informs Aerith are named Marle and Wymer, organizing survivors and coordinating supplies donated by the other undercity sectors. Barret simply waves at them from afar as they move through the little refugee camp, and Marle nods and smiles at them as they pass on by. 

Barret says, “We can swing back through after we find Tifa, see if anyone else made it out.”

Jessie frowns as they leave the camp behind. “I thought maybe I’d see one of my roommates.”

“We’ll look for ‘em, Jess. Bigger fish to fry right now.”

“I know. Tifa’s the priority.”

Aerith places a consoling hand on Jessie’s shoulder, and Jessie smiles sadly at her, squeezes the hand. “Barret gave you a good nickname.” Aerith blushes slightly, but is pleased.

He grunts. “Yeah, yeah, I always know just what to say. Now let’s keep it movin’.”

They make it to Sector 6 as the sun lamps dim for another night, and the smoggy sky showing through the hole in the plate goes to sunset. A trip that should take an hour took half the day, and now they’re staring at another night wondering where their friend is, if she’s okay.

Not her friend, Aerith reminds herself. You don’t even know her.

Though the sun lamps only came on today, and power has been spotty in general the last couple days, the Wall Market is a disgusting display of neon opulence. Though the streets are busy with regular denizens and refugees, the general air of the place is that of disturbed nonchalance. Business goes on.

And, telling enough, there is no Shinra presence in Wall Market at all.

“We’re lookin’ for a diner,” Barret says after they get the lay of the land.

Jessie nods. “Right. I know a couple in the area.”

“Oh yeah? You moonlight at the Honeybee Inn?” Aerith teases, and Jessie grins. 

“The honeybees aren’t as fun as the honeybears, believe me.”

“Honey...bears?” Aerith asks. Her mind instantly fills with lewd images of burly, hairy men. Not her type, but she can appreciate all kinds. “I have questions,” she says, and Jessie laughs. It’s good to see her tired eyes share a genuine smile.

“Where’s this diner?” Barret presses onward, ignoring their lusty conversation.

Jessie and Aerith follow along, and though this place has a reputation for being skeezy and manipulative, it kind of seems like a place for people who fell through the cracks of polite society. Interesting hairdos, gritty, grungy clothes, tattoos and piercings. Men dressed as women, women dressed as men. Openly drinking in the streets like every night’s a party, even so soon after a tragedy. No one hating or fighting, at least in the main areas. Its reputation is not earned so much as misunderstood, Aerith thinks.

And yet she knows Don Corneo’s reputation might be wholly separate from the rest of Wall Market. And that’s where Tifa is, in his hands.

It takes a couple restaurants before they find the one Wedge is posted up in, but he grabs the kabobs from his plate and goes outside when they spot him. Barret leads them over to the entrance of an alley, where they can have a bit more private of a chat. 

Wedge says, “I’d ask if you want the good news or bad news first, but there’s really only bad news.” He latches on to a skewer of meat and tears it off the kabob stick, then offers the other skewers of meat and vegetable to the group. Aerith and Jessie each take one gratefully, and it’s a bit gamey, but they haven’t eaten in hours so it’s delicious.

“Out with it,” Barret says.

“I can’t find anything out about Corneo, and the guy who picked Tifa up to bring her here, Chocobo Sam, is currently MIA. He was around after the plate fell, but no one’s seen him since this afternoon.”

Barret slams his gun-arm against the metal siding of the building they’re standing next to, which scares a couple of people smoking in a storefront nearby. “Who gives a damn about the asshole who brought her here?”

Wedge winces. “Sam’s one of the Trio. They pick the girls Don Corneo sees, and he transports them. I figured we could start with the last person we know has seen her?” Barret grunts grudging agreement. 

“The Trio,” Jessie says. “That’s Andrea and Madam M, too.”

“Any reason we shouldn’t just go over and shoot up Corneo’s place, get answers?”

“We’re trying not to draw attention to ourselves,” Aerith reminds him, rapping a knuckle against his metal gun-arm.

“It’s late, anyway,” Jessie says. “We didn’t know it was going to take half the day just to get here.”

Barret scratches the stubble on his chin in thought. “This place looks like it doesn’t sleep, why should we?”

“Because we need to be at our best, and our best was two days and twelve hours ago,” Jessie says. She rubs her tired eyes. “C’mon, Boss. We need to sleep if we’re gonna mount any rescues.”

Wedge interjects, “There’s a hostel down the street that doesn’t ask too many questions.” He hesitates and then blushes. “I used it as a hiding spot in the early days of Avalanche. Might be full with all the refugees around, but might not.”

Aerith nods at him and looks to Barret. He’s the leader; he makes the call. 

Barret says, “Maybe we could get a few hours. But as soon as the lamps are on, or supposed to be on, we’re hauling out and finding our girl.”

“Of course,” Jessie says. “We’re all anxious to find her, too.”

WIth that settled, Wedge leads them to a place they can rest. It takes some dickering with the hostel owner and reshuffling of some people, a little gil and some of their precious foodstuffs, but they negotiate two cramped rooms and retire for the evening. Barret and Wedge take the larger of the rooms; in almost no time, Aerith hears them both snoring. In Aerith and Jessie’s room, the light flickers and the bed looks like it has recently been slept in, but they’re not likely to find anything nicer, or realistically anything at all.

Jessie yawns and offloads her various satchels into a pile on the floor next to the small bed. “I know I said we need to sleep, but if I’m being honest, Carbuncle, I don’t know if I can.”

“Have you slept at all since… well, since it happened?”

Jessie drops to the bed, which creaks, and undoes the laces on her boots. “The bags under my eyes are probably answer enough, but not really. I… I haven’t stopped long enough to sleep.”

“Wedge mentioned that you had roommates, and your parents were on the upper plate.”

“I don’t wanna talk about any of that.”

Aerith delicately sits down on the edge of the bed next to Jessie. The woman is so confident, so sure of herself, and so very broken inside right now. “We don’t have to talk about it, but you need to slow down and rest. And--and if you’re afraid that if you stop, you’ll start to think, I can keep you distracted.”

“You gonna sing me a lullaby?” Jessie asks with a snarky grin.

“Something like that. Have you ever heard the stories of the Ancients?”

Jessie eyes her askance. “Bedtime stories it is.” She leans back and curls up on the bed. “Go on, then. I’m listening.”

Aerith nods and takes a deep breath. “Long ago, before humans knew the powers of the Lifestream, or Mako, or these silly orbs of materia, there was a race of people called the Cetra.”

“That silly materia saved your life,” Jessie says, and Aerith sticks her tongue out at the woman.

“So did a girl with a grenade and a man with a gun for an arm. Now hush. The Cetra were a migratory people, born of the Planet, connected to the Lifestream, and capable of spinning that energy into new life. They traveled the world, constantly in search of a promised land which would signal their journey’s end, and their return to the Planet.”

“That’s not how I heard it growing up,” Jessie says, yawning. “A lot of people thought Midgar was the Promised Land, because the Mako basically just flowed out of the ground.”

“A lot of people don’t know the first thing about planetology, the Lifestream, or humanity’s connection to it.” Aerith smooths her skirt and looks back at Jessie. She’s not asleep, but she’s resting, relaxed, distracted. “Even before the Cetra left the land to rejoin the Planet, some chose to remain behind. Those who stayed gradually lost their connection to the Planet, to the life-giving energy of the Lifestream, and began building monuments to a different kind of progress. Homes. Farms. Buildings to shelter within.”

Jessie yawns, eyes closed, and says, “‘Cause sleeping outside is soooo great.”

“It has its perks. The night sky shows us that we’re not alone. That other planets with other peoples may be out there. That somewhere, in the vast universe, those other people may be thinking about us.”

“Sounds--nice,” Jessie mumbles. Her breathing changes, grows slower, heavier. She drifts off, and Aerith falls to silence, sitting on the edge of the bed. 

They have a lot of work to do, and sometimes that work is caring for those you need to rely on. The strained lines on Jessie’s forehead, around her eyes, begin to slacken as peaceful slumber takes her. 

Aerith whispers, “We Cetra have a gift, connecting you with the Planet your people forgot, reminding you what it means to coexist with the Lifestream. I’m sorry about your parents, and your other losses, Jessie. They’ve returned to the Planet, and maybe, just maybe, they’re here with you now.”

Jessie doesn’t respond, but a phantom breeze ruffles the unbraided part of her hair in front, and a ghost of a smile settles on her lips.

Aerith sighs with the effort of communing with the Planet. She doesn’t always know how to do it, or when it will even respond to her, and in these moments she misses her mother terribly. Her birth mother, a pureblooded Cetra who might have taught her everything she needed to know, if she’d had the chance.

Aerith prays in communion once more before she lays on the floor, wraps a threadbare blanket around her, and rests. Big day tomorrow. She’s going to meet Tifa.

She’s got a good feeling about that.

Notes:

This chapter was originally going to be the entirety of the Wall Market adventure, but it got too big and unwieldy. Instead, the next two chapters will post a couple days apart from this one and each other over the next week. Sorry for the delay in getting this story out there!

Chapter 7: The Trio's Deal

Summary:

In their pursuit of a way in to meet Don Corneo and find Tifa, Aerith and the Avalanche crew meet with one of the Trio, strike a deal, and prepare for combat.

Notes:

(See the end of the chapter for notes.)

Chapter Text

In the morning, Aerith wakes to find that Jessie is already up and out of the room. The hustle and bustle of a mid-day Wall Market greets her, and she can’t believe she slept through the morning.

She cleans up and finds her way outside, looking for Barret, Wedge, or Jessie. Wedge comes back first and greets her with a sandwich and a bottle of juice. “Figured you’d be hungry,” he says, leaning against the wall Aerith is already leaning on. This side street in Wall Market is relatively quiet, but the low hum of activity in the main drag sets Aerith’s imagination running.

Aerith smiles and thanks him as she tears into the basic sandwich. Supplies are low and she feels lucky to have gotten this much. “Where are the others?”

“Those two decided to go scope out Corneo’s mansion, figure out what’s what. I’m sure they’ll be back soon. I also heard rumors that Chocobo Sam popped back up this morning, but I haven’t been able to track him down yet.”

“So we might have something, and we might have nothing,” Aerith confirms. She sighs as she drinks the juice, some mixed berry blend that tastes too artificial, but she’s not complaining. “So you know Wall Market pretty well, huh?”

He gulps visibly and blushes. “I mostly come for the food and the music.”

“I think I’d spend my time taking in the sights,” Aerith hints, and he glances at her, unsure. “A pretty person is a pretty person, Wedge, and there’s no shame in admiring the goods if they’re on display for it.”

“Really? You’re not gonna, like, get me to admit I go to the Honeybee Inn and then make fun of me for it?”

“Make fun? Before this adventure’s over, I expect you to introduce me to the prettiest ones.”

“I don’t really know that much about the men…”

“So you can point out the bees instead of the bears. I’m not picky. At least, not in that way.”

Wedge grins now. “You’re something else, Carbuncle.”

She groans good-naturedly at the nickname. “Life’s too short not to live it out loud,” she says, nudging him playfully with a shoulder.

Getting the okay from Aerith, Wedge loosens up and his voice cracks a little more as he animatedly talks. “Okay, so there’s this one, she wears glasses and keeps her hair in a kind of poof on top of her head. She’s only a performer on stage, but she’s real nice at the bar after.”

“Aw, Wedge has a crush?” Aerith teases, and his face goes red again. “You and Biggs have boys’ nights out this way?”

“Nah, Biggs is too stressed all the time for a relaxing night out. He’ll drink with the crew, but otherwise he’s making plans, and contingencies for the plans, and backups for the contingencies for the plans. It’s a whole cycle with that guy.”

“Must be driving him crazy to be stuck in recovery.”

“He’s all right. A little downtime won’t kill him, and he’ll be back up and running at full speed before you know it.”

Barret and Jessie appear in the narrow side street’s entrance. Barret stalks forward with frustration in his bearing, while Jessie casually strolls, looking much refreshed after the last couple days of too little sleep and too much worry.

Barret scoffs once they gather together. “This place is bullshit.”

Jessie grins. “He’s just mad they wouldn’t let us in to see Don Corneo.”

“They told me I ain’t pretty enough.” He bangs his still-covered gun-arm against the building. “My gun’s plenty gorgeous.”

Jessie laughs. “That isn’t the only thing they said and you know it, Boss.”

“They said we gotta get approval to meet the boss, and he only lets in people who meet his specifications. And that comes from the Trio.”

“And?” Jessie prods him.

He hesitates. “I might make the cut if I clean up a bit.”

“Did you ask about Tifa?” Wedge asks.

Barret shakes his head. “They were tight-lipped. I brought up her name and the whiny little brat shut up quick. I think something bad’s happened to her, but Jessie talked me down from just shooting up the place.”

“Because if Don Corneo’s as dangerous as he sounds, we’re not about to just waltz in to his stronghold and make demands,” Jessie reminds him, and he shrugs. 

“Yeah, yeah. If I’m not allowed to go knockin’ skulls, I might need to go blow off some steam at that arena we saw on the way over. Looked like they were setting up for something tonight. Wedge, you have any luck on your end?”

Wedge shakes his head now. “Andrea over at the Honeybee Inn is hard to get a meeting with. Chocobo Sam is apparently back this morning, but I haven’t been able to find him. And the third member of the Trio, this Madam M, shut the door in my face when I asked about getting a meet with Don Corneo.”

“She say anything else?” Barret asks.

“Not to come back until I have someone worth her time.”

“Auditioning like Tifa did? Gross.” Jessie’s face turns up in a sour expression. “But if it gets a foot in the door, I’ll show a little ankle.”

“Me too,” Aerith says. “Maybe between us, she’ll find someone ‘worth her time’ and we’ll have a place to start.”

“I’m not taking off my clothes for some mobster underling,” Barret says, but Aerith thinks he will, if it gets them closer to Tifa, to restoring the team, to getting revenge on Shinra.

So they agree and Wedge leads them to the northern part of Wall Market, where Madam M’s massage parlor prominently rests on the main drag. It’s too early in the day for much activity in the area, especially for post-disaster nearby, but it’s doing a steady business all the same. 

“What’s the plan?” Jessie asks as they near the parlor.

Wedge says, “She’ll recognize me, and since I don’t meet the Don’s picky requirements, what if I act as a broker for the rest of you?”

“They call that a pimp,” Barret says.

Wedge balks. “I--”

“He’s messing with you, buddy,” Jessie says. “We know what we’re about. Go on, lead with the pretty one first.”

Aerith instantly knows what Jessie means by that, and Wedge glances between the two women nervously. Jessie smirks and leans in. “Well? Go on.”

“Uhhh…” He sweats and Aerith sticks her tongue out at both of them.

She says, “Don’t torture the poor guy. I caught a glimpse of Tifa in that chocobo cart the other day. Between us, Jessie’s the closer in body type.”

“Excuse me,” Jessie says, indignant. “Nobody’s got that body but Tifa.”

“I mean you’re a bit more fit. You’ve got muscles as well as a knockout look.”

Jessie’s face flushes at the compliment, and she nods. “Sure. Let me get dolled up and we’ll do this.”

Jessie disappears into another shop nearby, and Barret crosses his one real arm across his chest, holding his gun-arm hidden in the sling. “Never seen that girl in makeup before.”

“She’ll probably knock your socks off,” Aerith says, grinning. “She used to be an actress, right? Didn’t you ever see her perform?”

“Not on any big stage anywhere,” Wedge says. “Just the stuff she did in the slums to kill time between missions.”

Aerith smiles as Jessie’s head pops back out of the shop. Her hair has been let down and she’s applied some basic foundation and color to soften the hard lines of her face. She does in fact look pretty even slightly dolled up. Aerith whispers, “Well, put on a show for her now. She’ll appreciate it even if she doesn’t say so.”

Aerith nods at the woman as she steps out of the shop, glances back inside the door as it closes, shrugs, and comes back to the group. She’s got on a skirt instead of the trousers she had on a few minutes prior. “Well, how do I look? Good enough to get the attention of a mobster?”

“Good enough to work at the Honeybee Inn,” Wedge says; Barret just grunts approvingly. Jessie laughs and socks Wedge in the arm. 

She says, “The guy in that shop was kind of a creep. He let me use his restroom, but I think he was hoping to take a peek.”

“Wouldn’t surprise me around here,” Barret says. “Come on, let’s do this. Tifa’s waitin’.”

The group nods, and Wedge re-approaches the door to Madam M’s massage parlor. It swings open as he nears it, and a very lovely woman a decade or more Aerith’s senior, somewhere in her late thirties no doubt, smiles at the lot of them. She’s the kind of woman who knows she’s gorgeous and uses it to her advantage. She’s also the kind of woman who knows she’s past her prime for the line of work she’s in, and has become the Matron. The Madam.

Her voice is seductive, dusky, inviting. “Well, well, my boy, you don’t waste any time. Please, come in, all of you, let me take a look.”

Wedge ushers the ladies through, and Barret follows with a wary eye. Madam M gives him an appreciative eye as well, and he grunts as the door closes them into inviting warmth and soft light. 

Madam M continues, “Go on, introduce them.” She holds a folding fan up to her face and lightly wafts it, waiting.

Wedge clears his throat and holds a hand out to Jessie. “This is Miss Jessica Strawberry.”

Jessie cuts a glare at him for the too similar fake name before smiling graciously and inclining her head towards the woman. “Pleasure to meet you, Madam M.”

“Mm,” the Madam says, “You look a little uncomfortable, dear. Tell me, are you more inclined to trousers than skirts?”

“Yes, pants are easier to work in.”

“And you have some muscle definition… You’re not the traditional offering I’d send to the Don, by any stretch, but Sam was always right when he chose the spunky ones. Are you spirited, Jessica?”

“I’d prefer Jessie, if that helps.”

Madam M nods. “Yes, that fits your whole… look. Hm. Maybe. Proceed with the large angry man next, please.”

Barret’s mouth opens in anger, but Wedge talks over him. “This is Mr. Horus Holtz.”

These fake names are something else, far too close for Jessie, and far too different for Barret. Aerith wonders what Wedge will say when it’s her turn.

“Good to meet you,” Barret says, inclining his head like Jessie did, only he fumbles it a bit and runs his hand over his head. “I’m not good with the niceties.”

Madam M smiles at him. “With your muscles the size of my torso, I don’t imagine you have to be, Mr. Holtz. You’re not precisely what I think of when I think of the… boss’s appetites, but he’s mercurial. You look like a bodyguard more than a body man, though.”

“I’m nobody’s body anything,” Barret says, grunting when Wedge elbows his side to play nice. Aerith nearly giggles. 

“No, you definitely are not. I might have to send you to someone else, though.” She glances back at Wedge, and Aerith suddenly sees an interest in her eyes that wasn’t there before. Who is that glance for? She says, “And now the waif, if you please.”

“Waif?” Aerith says, scoffing.

“It’s a compliment, believe me, dear.” Aerith settles her anger, only slightly mollified.

Wedge says, “This is Miss Aer-- Aeris.” Aerith rolls her eyes. Great cover names.

Madam M walks around Aerith, examining her. “You don’t really have the body for this line of work, you know?” Aerith opens her mouth to protest, but Madam M steps forward and presses the now-folded fan into her back, while grabbing above her chest with her other hand. “Perhaps it’s a matter of posture .” She adjusts Aerith’s stance, digs a sandaled foot under Aerith’s oversized work boots to force her up on the frontal arches of her feet, as if she is wearing heels.

“Perhaps I was wrong,” Madam M says, while Aerith balances in this unnatural posture. Jessie whistles appreciatively, and Aerith checks herself in the mirror on the wall. She blushes at herself in this provocative pose, emphasizing her feminine assets, and then spoils it by losing her balance and dropping back to her usual stance.

“Well, you certainly could have something, with some practice,” Madam M says dismissively. “Oh, but what to do.”

She sighs to herself and looks between the three offerings, then walks behind her little counter. Another guest leaves from behind a curtain, looking gobsmacked and happy, and someone else enters from outside, entering the curtain the previous guest exited, as if on a schedule. Madam M examines them all again and huffs in annoyance.

“I suppose I could send the spunky one. Jessie, wasn’t it?”

Jessie grins broadly and Aerith feels… not disappointment, really. But something like it. “Yes, ma’am,” Jessie says.

“Very good. But I can’t let you go up there looking… like this. Do you have the funds to make this young lady into something truly ravishing?”

Oh. Well, shit. The panic in everyone’s eyes tells the tale well enough. “I won’t send in a drowned slum rat and call it a poodle. No offense, dear, your slum chic is fun, but it won’t impress anyone powerful. Yes, I think I have just the way to accentuate your gifts.”

“How much will it cost?” Wedge asks after Barret nudges him.

“Oh, probably more than you’ve seen your entire life,” Madam M says dismissively. “But I have a solution for that, as well. There’s a tournament at the fighting arena in a couple hours. You, big man, Mr. Holtz?”

“Uh huh.”

“You look like you’d fit right in on the sands of the pit. I’ll withdraw my usual contenders for the night and enter you instead. You win, I sponsor the girl and set her up with all the accoutrement she will need to win the Don’s… heart.”

Ugh. Aerith nearly gags out loud for effect, but she reins it in. “I’ll go with him,” she says instead. 

“You?” Madam M asks, incredulous. “You’re barely fit for a distraction.”

Aerith holds up her staff, concentrates on the materia within, and strikes the carpeted floor. A small whirlwind whips out of the staff, ruffling hair, clothing, knocking a drapery off the wall. Madam M holds her fan to her face in shock, then grins at Aerith.

“Oh my, aren’t we full of hidden depths? Yes, very well. I’ll enter you, too.”

“I can fight,” Jessie offers, looking sad to be left out of the fun.

Madam M thinks and nods. “Yes, I think that will do nicely. So long as you don’t maim your pretty face, knowing if you can handle yourself will be worthwhile.”

Wedge opens his mouth to also offer to join the arena, but Madam M holds her fan up to his lips and silences him. “You will remain here. I have… another service for you.”

“What?” he asks in his raspy voice, though it squeaks a little with surprise.

Madam M reaches out to the nervous man and takes his hand in her delicate fingers. “Consider yourself collateral.” To Aerith and the others she says, “I will treat your handler with utmost respect and care, believe me. Now go. I’ll send word you’re on your way and you can make me proud. If you lose, well, best you don’t come begging.”

“Please don’t lose,” Wedge says.

“Buncha thugs in a pit?” Barret says, grinning. “Uh. Does the government show up to these underground fights?”

“Not in any capacity that will find you behind bars, I assure you.” She glances at his arm in the sling. “That isn’t going to cause any problems in the ring?”

“I’ll make do, Madam M. C’mon ladies, let’s go punch some bad guys.”

Barret sounds far too pleased with himself as he leaves the massage parlor. He casts a last glance back at Wedge and says, “Keep the lady entertained, yeah?”

“Oh, we’ll find something to occupy our hands,” Madam M says as the door shuts behind them all. Aerith shares a quizzical look with Jessie before they both chuckle and grin.

“He might not be the Don’s type, but someone has a use for little old Wedge,” Jessie jokes, and Barret barks an order from down the street.

“Shake your legs, we got a mission!”

It doesn’t take long for them to get to the arena, and after they confirm themselves as Madam M’s contestants--Horus Holtz, Aeris the Carbuncle, and just Strawberry--Barret calls them over to a corner of the big auditorium.

He says, “Okay, do either of you know what kinda nonsense this place throws out?”

Aerith shakes her head. “I didn’t actually know this was here.”

Jessie says, “Thugs, thieves, monsters, maybe a mech or two? Junkyard scrap piloted by junkyard scrap. I bet I can blow it all up with a couple well-placed explosives.”

“We should go in prepared, all the same,” Barret says, running his hand over the sheet-covered gun-arm. “Jessie, with me. Carbuncle, you stick right here. I’m gonna go find something that’ll be a little less high profile than ‘man with a gun for an arm’.”

“Sure thing, Horus.” Aerith grins at the sour face Barret gives her. “What, if we’re gonna have fake names, I’m damn sure gonna use them. Up top, Strawberry!” She throws Jessie a high five opportunity, and Jessie slaps the hand with gusto.

Barret shakes his head. “At least you’re in good spirits,” he mutters. “But seriously, stay put. We’ll be back before the first bout. Ain’t gonna let our Carbuncle fight alone.”

Aerith nods this time, and waits all of thirty seconds for them to be gone before poking her head out of the doors to the street. To her left is where they came from, and the sounds of excited gym guys working out. Across from the fighting arena is a bar of some sort, barely busy at this mid-afternoon hour, though there’s a lot of people hanging around. Refugees from Sector 7, she thinks. 

And to her right is a set of golden stairs that lead up, and then another set of stairs. Beyond that, a pagoda mansion leers above the rest of Wall Market, opulent in red and gold. This is the only other place in all of the underplate she has seen plants growing naturally, but even here the shrubs and bushes have an unhealthy grayish pallor to them. Somewhere in that strange mansion is Don Corneo, doing Planet knows what to Tifa. Beyond Don Corneo’s mansion is the open sky where the plate fell in. The open sky.

Aerith shudders. She’s always had a bit of an issue with the wide open sky. In theory, it’s a good thing. It makes plants grow, it feels warm on the skin, it contributes to the life cycle of every living thing on the planet at some level. And yet she has always felt disconnected from it. That it was other, alien. Not of the Planet. 

Not like Aerith is. Not like her people, the Cetra.

She shakes herself free of this thought and goes back inside to wait. They’ll win this tournament, get Madam M paid for services rendered, and get Jessie inside the mansion to find Tifa. It’s not a good plan, but it’s the only one that’s presented itself without causing a commotion they don’t want to cause.

As she steps back inside the arena auditorium, she hears an older man’s voice with an unfamiliar accent. “Now hold on a minute, Madam M didn’t say nothin’ about changing the roster.”

The event organizer he’s talking to says, “Yes, sir, it was a last minute replacement. If you’d like to sub in for your entry, you may do so as well. Andrea has opted to leave his entrants the same.”

The man, wearing a rancher style hat Aerith has only ever seen once before, and a fancy red leather vest over his white shirt, is Chocobo Sam. She saw him briefly driving the chocobo cart that carried Tifa to Wall Market, and she approaches him now.

As Sam is telling the organizer that he’ll stick with his usual tonight, he catches sight of Aerith watching him. “Thanks, mack,” he says to the organizer, “Let’s get a drink after the tournament, yeah?” The organizer smiles and nods. Sam approaches Aerith now and says, “Not polite to stare at strangers, Miss…?”

She remembers her slightly fake name just in time. “Aeris. Looks like I’m an opponent tonight.”

“Not of mine, just of my duly appointed representative. You a suit operator? You don’t look like much in a fight.”

“Something like that. You’re Chocobo Sam, right?”

He eyes her up and down and nods. “Well, you’ve introduced yourself, but I feel compelled to ask ‘who’s asking’ all the same. So, Aeris the Carbuncle,” he says, pointedly using the full fake name Barret put down on the organizer’s list, “What’s it to you?”

“Oh, nothing much, to be honest. We’re just trying to get in to see Don Corneo, and we heard only the Trio gets people in.”

“That we do. You got business with the Don? He’s a little hard to reach at the moment.” He’s being slightly cagey, and Aerith isn’t sure why.

“Checking on a friend, and in fact I think you brought her in. Tifa?”

The reaction is instantaneous and then covered just as quickly. “Sure, I remember Miss TIfa,” he says after hiding the shock of her name. “She’s not exactly the Don’s favorite new toy, if you follow my meaning.”

Gross. “But she was okay the last time you saw her?”

“Miss Tifa’s a fighter, she’s fine in there.” That mollifies Aerith a little bit and she’s happy to have something positive to pass on to Barret and Jessie. She intends to press him further, but he continues, “Trying to get in to see the Don, huh? You’re not really the type he goes for, but maybe tastes change. I could sponsor you, if you like.”

“Like you sponsored Tifa?”

“Sure. Probably do her good to see a friend in that place.” He grins. “But let’s make it interesting, huh? You and your pals beat me in the arena, I’ll sponsor you.”

“And if we lose?” Aerith asks.

“Well, Miss ‘the Carbuncle’, I expect you won’t have much in the way of leverage, then, will you?” He rubs his chin thoughtfully and says, “You lose, I’ll take that shiny materia in your weapon there. Deal?” Aerith holds her staff defensively behind her, but nods her head.

“We have an accord, then. Lookin’ real forward to what you do in the arena, Aeris.” 

He says something to the event organizer again, but Aerith can’t make out what it is. He grins at her and vanishes behind a VIP door, and Aerith hopes she’s made the right choice here. It would be good to get two of them inside Don Corneo’s mansion in case the place is really terrible. The time for the Corneo Cup tournament starts to close in, and Aerith pops her head out, worried that maybe she really would have to go out there and fight alone, but Barret and Jessie come strolling back up the main drag, and Jessie waves when she sees Aerith. Jessie’s got her trousers and some padded armor over a dark green shirt. Barret has also tied a dark green bandana around the new device on his gun-arm. Or rather, what used to be a gun. Now it’s a freaking buzz-saw.

When they get near enough, Aerith says, “We almost look like a team with all this green.” Her own blouse is near enough to the shade they found.

“Yeah, well, Jessie made a point that green is for the planet,” Barret says.

Aerith nods approvingly. “And I have about a thousand questions for that death sentence on your arm. I hope it’s got a safety or something.”

“I needed something I could fight with, and another gun wasn’t gonna cut it.”

“And if you don’t slice open your leg or side, I’ll be amazed,” Jessie says, sighing heavily. “Once he saw it, there was no talking him out of it.”

“Now we’ve got brute strength and armor shredding, magic, and bullets.” He nods to himself. “Whatever they throw at us, we’ll have a counter.”

“Good as anything, I guess,” Aerith says. “Listen.” She recounts the meetup with Chocobo Sam, how Tifa is apparently okay inside the mansion, and the deal she struck with him to be sponsored by him if they win. “I hope that’s okay? I was trying to help.”

Barret shakes his head. “I don’t like changing the plan before the plan’s really begun, but I don’t see that it hurts anything. It’s real nice to know she’s okay in there, though. I been punching myself about wasting all this time; now it’s not so bad.”

The organizer calls over to them. “Tournament’s about to begin. You’re up first, against the Thuggish Riot.”

“The who?” Jessie asks as the organizer points them to the contestant elevator behind him.

“Local ruffians. Enter every tournament, first to lose every time.”

“I don’t mind a cakewalk,” Barret says. “Any rules we should know about?”

They step onto the elevator and the organizer shakes his head. “If you hurt anyone important--well, don’t hurt anyone important.”

“Or we’re disqualified?” Aerith asks. 

“To put it mildly.” He runs a finger across his throat as the elevator doors close.

“Great,” Jessie says in the sudden silence before the elevator begins its descent. “What if we have to fight someone important?”

Barret scoffs as the lift moves downwards. “Ain’t no one gonna be in that pit with us but thugs, mercenaries, and ex-military.”

Aerith nods. “Like us, they’ll have proxies doing their fighting for them.”

The elevator comes to a stop and they step out into a large hall, with grandiose double doors tall and wide enough to fit a train through. There are several smaller doors along the path, with various levels of pomp and circumstance attached to them. Madam M’s assigned room is decorated lavishly with flowers and assorted gift baskets filled with food and drink. 

Another person calls them over to the large arena doors, though, and the moment hits Aerith. They’re going into organized combat with almost no prior knowledge of who they’re going to face. Thuggish Riot first. 

“Wait for the announcer,” the man says in front of the doors. “This everyone? No battle suits? No mech armor? I’ll bet on you for the first round. The Riot crew’s just the opening act, no one really loses against them.”

“You best keep your card full of this team,” Barret says, “‘Cause we ain’t leaving here without a gold medal.”

The man snorts laughter. “If we gave medals, you still wouldn’t get the gold. I heard Sam’s gonna test out his new toys tonight.”

Chocobo Sam. The rat. What kind of toys did the man have? 

“Toys break,” Jessie says, giving Aerith and Barret a thumbs up. They return the gesture.

“I like your confidence. I hope you keep it.”

The low hum of the crowd beyond these doors quiets. A booming voice shouts from the speaker system, “Ladies and not-so-gentle men, thank you all for coming to another Corneo Cup!” Applause and yells greet this and Aerith rolls her shoulders, limbering up for what’s about to come. Jessie hops up and down, psyching herself up and adjusting the holster and bandolier for her weapons and ammo. Barret yanks a cord on his buzz-saw, which roars to life before sputtering to an idle position, the blades of the saw vibrating gently with anticipation. He grins viciously.

The voice continues once the crowd volume lowers again. “I am your announcer for this evening’s festivities, Kotch! Sadly, my compatriot Scotch has moved on to bigger and better things, but rest assured, we’ll keep everything else the same! For tonight’s Corneo Cup, we have some returning champs, some new toys, some old favorites, and maybe even some. New. Blood.”

This last is met with applause and laughter, and Aerith wonders what the joke is. New blood must not do well.

Kotch continues, “First up, welcome back to the arena those underdogs with the underbite, those little thugs who could, the record holders for most losses in a row, Thuggish Riot!”

Kotch is very good at vamping the crowd, and doors open elsewhere to major applause and cheers as what sounds like a whole gang of ruffians takes to the arena floor. Engines rev. Fire roars. Guns bang, causing Aerith to jump. 

“How many are there in the Thuggish Riot?” she asks the event handler on this side of the doors.

“Varies week to week, sounds like they got a good dozen out there today, though. Still cocky?”

“It could be two dozen and we’ll still be walking out with the W,” Barret says. His confidence, his swagger, bolsters Aerith. It’s crazy to think they won’t just get swarmed and overwhelmed, but if he thinks they’ll be fine, then damn sure they’ll be fine.

Once the crowd dies down, Kotch says, “There are so many of you tonight! Let’s hope our next contestants, our newwwww blood, can withstand the fury!” Invoking “new blood” again causes the crowd to scream and laugh. Kotch continues, “We don’t have much info on them, but representing the lovely Madam M in the arena tonight, we have a deadly trio! With names like this, how deadly can they be? Let’s give a great big Corneo Cup welcome to the newest of blood: Horus Holtz, Aeris the Carbuncle, and Strawberry!”

Unseen mechanisms slide into place, and the big double doors begin to swing open. The crowd boos as spotlights shine through the opening doors, blinding them momentarily as they walk through. They enter into chaos. The arena is massive, covered in sand and half a dozen thugs in leather jackets and spikes. Tattoos and piercings. One has a pistol. The others have spiked wood, steel rebar, a chunk of concrete. Scavenged weapons all. Beyond them, revving motorcycle engines and spraying sand with tires, three more thugs wielding chains and nets. And behind those three, a hulking figure of a man. Not as wide as Barret, but certainly a little taller. 

Ten in total. The trio of Aerith, Jessie, and Barret step out beyond the doors, which swing shut behind them with a chunk and click of locking metal. Aerith whispers, “I hope you have a plan.”

Jessie shrugs. “My plans involve fuses and throwing things.”

Before they can continue, Kotch yells, “Let’s hope their bite is bigger than their bark, or we might see an upset with the Thuggish Riot moving on to the second round for, well, the first time all year! Let. The. Rampage. BEGIN!”

All is lost in bedlam and sound. The motorcycles rev their engines and speed off around the outside of the arena. They’re certainly showmen, Aerith thinks.

Jessie pulls the pin on a small grenade and hucks it at the center of the six goons advancing on them. They scatter, but it doesn’t explode. Instead, it shoots out smoke, filling the center of the arena. They begin stumbling out of the opaque smoke, coughing and laughing, but that’s all the hesitation the three of them need.

Barret charges in, buzz-saw whining, and cuts right through the rebar weapon one of them carries, then kicks out at his chest, knocking him prone. Jessie draws her pistol and fires at the one aiming his own gun down on her. Metal spangs off metal and the gun in his hand goes flying. She wastes no time and sprints into the melee as another thug comes out, holding a chunk of concrete. He swings at her, and she rolls under it, punching at the back of the man’s knee as she goes. He drops into a crouch and then a second guy collides with him, thrown by Barret. They collapse into a pile.

Aerith holds her staff out in front of her. She’s not entirely sure what this materia combination is going to do, but two of the thugs advance on her, one with steel rebar and one with a piece of jagged wood with railroad spikes sticking out of it. She swings the staff in a large arc to force them to keep their distance. She’s not thinking about activating the materia, but when she strikes out, a wall of wind follows the arc, buffeting them both and knocking them back. Aerith grins.and holds out her staff, daring them to come for her.

They look at each other, spread out even more, and charge. Aerith backs away, nearly getting sideswiped by one of the motorcycles in her haste to retreat, and thinks about other things she might be able to do with this wind materia in her staff.

She holds the weapon like a sword and concentrates on the materia this time, swings out with it, imagining the arc of her strikes as blades of wind. The air pressure changes as the air around her sucks into itself, becomes sharp as a knife, and strikes one of the thugs across the chest, cutting his shirt and skin. The other closes in while the first falls back in surprise, clutching his bleeding chest. Jessie fortunately leaps onto the other thug’s back and boxes his ears, then cuffs him just above the neck with her pistol so that he falls unconscious to the ground. She winks at Aerith and turns back to the threat.

The regular thugs now dealt with, the motorcycle crew spins their tires and rushes in, while the big guy in the corner yells triumphantly and charges towards Barret.

Barret holds out his buzz-saw like he’s going to shoot, then scoffs when he remembers it’s not a gun right now. The motorcycles swarm around them, keeping them contained, and they back up next to each other while the big guy approaches.

“Fun times,” Jessie says.

“We’re still alive, ain’t we?” Barret replies.

“For how much longer?” Aerith asks.

“Long as we got a chance to see our girl again. Gryah! ” Barrel growls as a motorcycle comes a bit too close. He jukes toward the machine and throws his buzz-saw out towards its tire. Scream of metal meets scream of man as the buzz-saw eats through the tire and then the frame. The man flies off the machine, collides with the wall of the arena, and falls still.

The other two motorcycles match up with the big guy and they rush in. Jessie lobs another grenade, which goes wide and misses. Aerith reaches into her pouch and pulls out the lightning materia, then concentrates on the motorcycle bearing down on her. A bolt of electric blue arcs out of her hand and into the engine, igniting it and shorting it out. The man tips the bike and they crash to the sand. 

The grenade that Aerith thought Jessie missed with goes off, and instead of a normal explosion or a puff of smoke, the air around the grenade warps and sucks in on itself. It’s close enough to the other motorcycle still that it yanks the bike backwards, pulling the guy off as the bike flips backwards and crunches into a ball. The man looks at what was almost him and crabwalks back to the big guy, who roars and engages in melee with Barret.

Aerith yells, “What the hell was that?” as she pops her guy across his mildly electrocuted face with the staff, knocking him out.

“Gravity well!” Jessie calls back, “A Jessie Special!”

The fight between Barret and the massive thug is a slugfest. Barret swings out with his regular fist, and the man doesn’t even try to dodge or block. He takes the fist with a slight grunt and throws his own fist into Barret’s chin, which staggers him back a little, but he grins and takes it. 

Barret roars, “Hell yeah! Let’s do this!” and throws another massive swing. Aerith and Jessie hang back, wary of the last smaller thug watching this play out on the other side of the arena. 

Punch after punch, neither man giving in. Aerith winces with each swing against Barret’s face or chest, but nothing seems to stop him. A man on a mission. Driven to complete through the pain.

Aerith says to Jessie, “Should we help? I feel bad.”

“Nah, it’s a point of pride now. If we help him stop the big guy, we’ll never hear the end of him sulking.”

“Seems ridiculous. We still have more fights after this.”

“I never said it made sense.” Jessie shrugs. “We can go kick the hell out of the little guy?”

“Sounds like a plan.” They stalk forward, moving around Barret and the thug as their punches slow and their exhaustion mounts. Before Jessie and Aerith take more than a few steps on the other side, Barret winds up one last massive swing, an uppercut, and the big thug’s jaw cracks as he flies up and away, only to land on the little thug, where they both roll over each other, unconscious.

And the fight is over, just like that.

The crowd erupts in screams and cheers, which is the first time Aerith has heard them since the fight began. Focusing on not dying can do that, she supposes. Images of Barret, Jessie, and Aerith flash across large screens, with their fake names. Kotch is partway through his aftermatch announcements when the doors open back up and the three of them are free to head out and wait for their next match.

Kotch says, “I gotta say, I really didn’t expect much from these three, but that’ll teach me to question Madam M’s judgment, huh? Let’s give a big round of applause for Horus, Strawberry, and the Carbuncle!”

More applause follows them out. Barret bleeds freely from the nose but he’s got a big grin as he waves at the crowd, cycles up his buzz-saw for good measure, and the big doors shut behind them.

One fight down. One step closer to their goal. 

One less obstacle between them and Tifa.

Notes:

Next chapter: A frightful fight, a fateful meeting.
"Chapter 8 - Reunion" will post in a few days!

Chapter 8: Reunion

Summary:

Aerith, Jessie, and Barret fight something hellish in the Corneo Cup, all in an effort to find their way in to Don Corneo's palace to find Tifa.

Tifa and Aerith meet, at long last.

Notes:

(See the end of the chapter for notes.)

Chapter Text

“Okay, hold on,” Aerith says, digging in her satchel for the curative materia. “Just. Let’s go into Madam M’s room and let me do something about this. You’re a mess.”

Barret winces but lets himself be dragged towards the room. “You should see the other guy.”

Jessie thumps his buzz-saw arm. “You only get to say that if we weren’t there!”

“Were y’all there? I didn’t notice.” But he smiles at them. It was an easy fight, despite it all. “Those Thuggish Riot fools really weren’t nothin’, were they?”

Aerith gets him settled into a bench seat at a table while Jessie gets a towel and wets it down. “It’s likely going to get harder from here,” Aerith says, “so we need to rest up while we can and take care of this whole thing. I’m pretty sure your nose is broken.”

“Wouldn’t be the first time,” he says. Jessie cleans him up against his protestations, and Aerith holds the materia up to his face. “Whoa, hold on now, don’t need you burning my beard off.”

She deadpan stares him down. “This’ll help, just sit still.” He does, and Jessie stands back once his face has been cleaned up.

She concentrates on the materia, and that familiar green cooling sensation radiates out from the orb, from her hand, and she directs it into Barret.

“That tickles,” he says.

“I can probably make it hurt, if you prefer,” Aerith threatens, and he quiets down.

“Don’t mess with the nurse,” Jessie says. “Everyone knows that.”

After a few seconds of channeling this healing energy, she pants and wipes sweat from her face as she drops onto the bench next to Barret. He sits up and feels the tender flesh around his nose, the puffed up cheeks, and grins.

“Don’t hurt now. Too bad Cloud never showed us how to use that stuff.”

Aerith is drained from helping Barret, even more so than from the fight. She says, “Do you have anything we can attach some to? There’s more here than I can use myself in a single fight.”

Barret shrugs and holds up the steel bracer on his arm. “This thing can take one, but last time I tried to put it in, it damn near froze my arm off.”

Jessie says, “My normal gear had room for one, but we left it behind to remain incognito.” She shrugs as she sits down to check over her pistol. “I got my fancy grenades, though, so it’s whatever.”

Aerith nods. “Well, here, let’s see if we can’t find you something that likes you more than the cold one, Horus .” Aerith reaches her hand into the satchel, withdrawing several green materia. The fire, ice, lightning, and a poison one she hasn’t had time to test yet.

“Why you talkin’ about ‘em like they got feelings?” he asks, flicking the fire one, which rolls across the table before Aerith stops it.

“Materia is just another form that comes from the planet. Is it so hard to believe it might have a personality? A preference?”

Barret scoffs. “Just crystallized Mako.”

“Maybe. Maybe not. Here, let’s try this one.” She holds out the fire materia and he takes it in his big palm. Where Aerith can hold one in the palm of her hand, Barret’s meaty fist is large enough to get a second in there, if he was careful.

“So I just shove it in, yeah? Awful big for it to fit in this tiny slot.”

“It’s a little more complicated than that, but essentially.” Aerith grabs her staff and concentrates on the wind materia, so that it slides free from its socket. It almost seems to grow larger as it plops out and into Aerith’s hand. “I don’t know the exact way it works, but the materia interfaces with the tech inside, and draws some of its power into the weapon, or armor, or whatever. Shinra’s gotten very good at channeling it into their robots for laser weapons.”

“Damn right they have,” Barret says. He holds the fire materia up close to the socket on his bracer, and for a moment it seems like nothing is going to happen. Then it pops into place, and tiny circuitry around the bracer glows a steady green.

Then the whole contraption begins to glow red-hot and he seethes. “See what I mean? Damn stuff hates me.” He manages to extract the materia again before it can hurt him.

Aerith purses her lips in thought. “Maybe there’s something wrong with your bracer?”

“This thing is fine. It’s materia that’s broken.” He sulks, covering the bracer protectively. 

Jessie says, “I’ve checked it out before, nothing’s wrong with the electronics or anything.”

“Hmm,” Aerith says, biting her lower lip in concentration. “Well, what if we just try the rest and see what’s up?”

Barret shrugs. “If my arm turns into lightning or something, I’m blaming you.”

“You’ll be fine. Probably.” Aerith reaches for the lightning materia, then thinks better of it, and instead hands him the one that gives her queasy feelings. “Try this one.”

“Which one’s this? Acid?” Barret holds it up to inspect it.

“I think it’s poison? You should know pretty quick if it’s gonna do the same thing.”

He eyes her askance, but slots the materia into place all the same. Nothing happens for a moment, and he examines his arm thoughtfully. “I don’t feel any different.” Then immediately his eyes droops and he says, “Oh, wait, I think I’m gonna throw up.” He reaches for the materia, and it slides out as he pants, recovering.

“That was the worst one. I feel like I just had alcohol poisoning or something.”

Aerith has another idea, though. “Okay, one sec.” She reaches up to the bow in her hair and extracts the little ball of white materia she carries with her everywhere.

“What’s this one? Never seen white before,” Jessie says as Barret reaches out to take it.

“I don’t like bein’ a guinea pig, Carbuncle.”

“This one came from my mother. I’ve never been able to make it do anything.”

“Huh.” Barret holds it in his grip. “This one’s… warm. Not hot, but like… inviting?”

Aerith smiles. “I always thought of it as welcoming, too.”

He slots it into his bracer, and clenches his teeth, waiting for it to do whatever it’s going to do. And Aerith also tenses up. What if this reveals what it’s for after all these years? Her heart pounds and she waits.

And waits.

“This one really doesn’t feel like anything,” Barret says. “Except tingly, like that inviting warmth is inside me now.” He smiles, and then frowns. “I don’t like it. Can we take it out?”

“Well, concentrate on activating the materia first,” Aerith says. “Think about hitting the training dummy in the corner.”

Barret stands up and holds his arm out, face scrunching up in concentration. Nothing happens, and he shrugs. “Least this one’s not trying to kill me.”

An announcement over the intercom blares out, “Madam M’s contestants, next round is beginning. Proceed to the arena doors. Forfeiture in three minutes.”

“Damn,” Barret says, sliding the white materia out and handing it back to Aerith. “They must be churning through the fights.”

Aerith eyes her staff, with the blue materia and the windy materia. If the white materia truly does something, will that bring it out? “Sorry we couldn’t solve your materia issue, Barret. You guys go ahead, I’ll catch up in a sec.”

Jessie nods, shoveling all the materia back into Aerith’s satchel and taking a final drink of water. “Don’t be late; kind of everything is counting on it.”

“I’ll be there.” She stands there, waiting for them to leave the room, and then she swaps the white materia for the wind that’s already in her staff. Immediately she feels that welcoming warmth, but nothing else. She holds the staff in both hands, concentrating all her will into the white materia. Feels that warmth that reminds her of her mother. 

And nothing happens.

Nothing, that is, except the shadow creatures appear before her. They haven’t been around for a while, and she falls backwards in surprise as one hovers over the table where the staff is.

The white materia shoots out of the staff and clunks against the table before rolling onto the ground. Aerith scoops it up and holds it protectively while several of the wraiths swirl around her in what she can only call angry. 

“What do you want from me?” she calls, but once she’s no longer focusing on using the white materia, the shadows dissipate. She stares at the white materia once they’ve gone. Why would the shadows show up when she is trying to use that materia? 

She sighs and places it back inside the bow in her hair, grabs her staff and inserts the fire materia alongside the blue one this time, and rushes out to meet her companions.

“I was just about to send Jessie back in for ya,” Barret says, “Everythin’ good?”

“Just changing up my kit. I’m ready. Who are we facing this time, do we know?”

Jessie says, “Organizer says it’s semi-finals. Not much of a tournament, if you ask me, but this one’s against Andrea’s usual. He only laughed when I asked what that meant.”

“Lovely.”

“Don’t matter. We smacked down the thugs, we’ll knock the block off whatever this other Trio guy can throw at us.”

Aerith and Jessie nod. The next event begins with Kotch announcing Andrea’s houndmaster and his guard hounds, whatever those are. She hopes they are real dogs and not some kind of mechanical thing. The audience cheers for them, even louder than any of the other announcements, and Aerith figures they must be fan favorites.

Their announcement comes through, and it seems like Kotch has settled on calling them Horus, Strawberry, and the Carbuncle as their shorthand. The guy at the door says, “You did good last time, but I think I’m gonna bet on the dogs. They don’t really lose.”

“Your money to throw away,” Barret says, “We’re goin’ all the way.”

The doors open as they are announced, and they step out into the now-familiar arena to cheers and boos, scattered applause. They’ve made an impression, but Andrea’s houndmaster is clearly popular. He’s a handsome, tall, dark-skinned man with a vicious grin and safari clothing, as if he’s stepped out of one of those Corel Desert adventures on TV. Arrayed around him are half a dozen large hounds, midnight black--like panthers. Three are the size of large mastiffs, and three are more like lions.

Aerith doesn’t want to hurt animals, but these dogs are clearly trained killers and it’s going to take ruthlessness to get through this. No mercy for the houndmaster who uses innocent creatures as weapons of war, though. She’ll cry over the dogs later.

Kotch vamps the crowd some more, and the fight begins.

It is blessedly short. Barret knocks the houndmaster out despite two of the creatures latching on to him with their fangs. One has latched on to his leg, and the other swings from his buzz-saw arm, dangerously close to the spinning blades. Jessie drops a stun grenade into the center of the three big ones. They snarl and back away, but the damage is done and they drop one by one.

Aerith singes one of them with a well-placed ball of fire, enough to warn him but not enough to kill. She pelts the sands in front of the dogs with fire, scorching it into glassy slag. With the houndmaster knocked out, the dogs don’t have a direction, and the remaining ones are tranquilized or knocked out in less than a minute. 

The fight ends, with Aerith panting and on the point of tears. Barret bleeds openly from new wounds on his leg. Jessie retches in the corner and wipes her mouth, probably from the smell of scorched dog hair and flesh. Kotch comes back over the speakers, “I can hardly believe it! The hounds and their master, deftly defeated in ninety seconds! That might be a record from our very surprising new contestants! Give it up once more for Horus, Strawberry, and the Carbuncle!”

There are cheers and boos as they leave the arena, Barret limping. Aerith doesn’t feel good about this fight at all, and when the organizer on the other side of the door curses at them for winning, she sets a little fireball under his feet. He falls backward, patting out the flames on his melting boots. No permanent damage, but he got a good scare.

“Bad luck to bet against the Carbuncle,” Barret says, but without humor. They go into Madam M’s contestant room and sit down.

“That was rough,” Jessie says.

“We’ve had to kill some hounds against Shinra before,” Barret says. “But you’re right. This is different.”

Aerith quietly sets about curing Barret’s wounds. They’re deep punctures in his legs, and they weep blood while she concentrates, but after a few minutes of intense and exhausting healing, the wounds have sealed over. They’re not perfectly fine. This materia can’t undo damage, only accelerate healing, and she feels pretty much spent for now.

“Glad no one else got hurt,” she says, panting and downing some kind of energy drink from the in-room vending machine. “I don’t think I could heal someone else right now.”

“What do you think we’re up against next?” Jessie asks. “I don’t think I can fight more animals, not even Mako mutants if they’re crazy enough to have them.”

Aerith shakes her head. “I don’t know what he’s got, but if we’re up against Chocobo Sam next, people keep referring to his new toys. Could be guns. Could be… armored chocobos, for all we know.”

“I ain’t killing chocobos, for damn sure,” Barret says. 

Jessie nods. “Yeah, that’s not anything anybody wants.”

Aerith frowns. “I think the better question is, ‘Do we think Sam is evil enough to use chocobos that way?’” 

“He gives women to that scumbag Don Corneo,” Barret says. “But I really don’t know.”

They aren’t given long to rest or talk, as the intercom comes back on, calling for them. Three minute mark.

“Already?” Aerith complains. “We just got done fighting.” She stands up, but her body aches and she feels sluggish. All that healing for Barret has taken it out of her.

“If last time was the semi-finals,” Jessie says, “this should be it. We beat them and we win. Madam M sends me along, and Chocobo Sam gives you the go-ahead.”

Barret claps Aerith on the shoulder. “You got one more in you, Carbuncle?”

“Maybe if I hang back for the first minute or so.” She stretches and jumps up and down to get her blood pumping. “I’m sure adrenaline will kick in when we go out there and see what horrors Sam has in store for us.”

Barret chuckles. “That’s the spirit. We’ll be done with this part before you know it.”

Aerith thinks about people calling them Sam’s new toys. She thinks about the absolutely massive doors. The lightning would seem to be the logical choice, if he’s got some kind of machine. And yet he’s got chocobos. He’s a farmer of sorts. She makes a last minute materia switch, a long shot bet. They head out and the same guy Aerith burned the shoes of is standing there, glaring at them.

“I could have you kicked out for assaulting me, you know.”

“I could make it worth getting kicked out,” Aerith says.

The guy cringes back, but chooses instead to smile. “No, I think I’m gonna bet on you this time. Even after that last upset, you three are long odds to beat Chocobo Sam.”

“What’s he got out there?” Jessie asks, adjusting her grenades. She’s running low after two fights.

“You’re about to find out.”

Kotch comes blasting out of the speaker systems, “After a night of surprises and upsets, are you ready for your final bout of the evening?” The cheering crowd amplifies. “First, our challengers. They showed up and wowed us against Thuggish Riot, and then absolutely blew us away with a record-breaking destruction of Andrea’s Hounds--don’t worry, they’re all fine, folks. But now they’ll face their toughest opponent yet. And I have been assured that what you’re used to seeing from Chocobo Sam is nothing like what’s gonna walk through that door in a minute.”

SIlence falls over the crowd and Kotch continues, “Representing Madam M in the arena tonight, welcome back Horus, Strawberry, and the Carbuncle!” The doors open once again and the three fighters walk out to cheers, jeers, boos, catcalls. It’s deafening. Kotch says, “And would you believe me if I told you Strawberry’s NOT the cute one?”

A live feed of Jessie’s face appears on the monitors, along with Strawberry, and she huffs good-naturedly. This elicits a new series of cheers for them, and Aerith grins. That was mean, but this Kotch certainly knows how to hype a crowd.

Kotch says, “With the highest win record to date, Chocobo Sam has decided that tonight’s the night he unveils his newest combatant. This ain’t no junky sweeper or jury-rigged cutter, no sirree. Put your hands together for the--hold on, am I reading this right?” The doors open while he’s trying to figure out if whatever he’s looking at is a mistake, and only darkness is on the other side.

Two lights appear, high up, maybe fifteen feet. Like the soft candle flame of eyes. A whine begins to ramp up, and it isn’t until it becomes a roar that Aerith recognizes it for what it is. Flames roil off the back of whatever this is, lighting up the silhouette of this thing.

And it’s a confusing sight.

It rockets out of the doors, revealing what appears to be an animatronic house . Metal arms with clamps on the ends. Treads for it to move around. It’s like a tank in the shape of an angry home. It’s absurd and it’s coming right at them.

Aerith throws herself to the right while Barret and Jessie dodge left. It rushes through the space they just occupied and crashes against the arena wall beyond them, its large rocket turbines fizzling from its jet engine charge.

Kotch suddenly yells, “Holy shit, it is! Ladies and gentlemen, Sam’s outdone himself again, because this is the wildest thing I’ve ever seen! Good luck, fighters, because you’re up against the Heeeeeeell Hooooooooouse!”

“You gotta be fuckin’ kidding me!” Barret yells while they regroup. “It’s a house?”

Jessie shrugs. “I wanna be surprised, but honestly, why not?”

Aerith stares at her incredulously while the Hell House rotates, clacking and whistling. This thing is heaving and shaking like some kind of living machine, and Aerith gets a very bad feeling from it.

She says, “Whatever it is, I think it’s also alive somehow.”

Barret spits on the sand. “They say get your house in order, but this is a little ridiculous.”

Jessie snorts laughter, but Aerith doesn’t think it’s funny. “We have to put it out of its misery. Whatever Sam did to that thing, it’s an abomination.”

“Yeah, yeah, we’ll strip its walls bare. Any idea how to even fight the damn thing?”

Aerith holds her staff up. “I have an idea. You can probably slow it down with that buzz-saw. Jessie, if that thing’s windows are its eyes, maybe you can blind it with a smoke grenade?”

“Good a plan as any. Here it comes!” Barret charges at the front of the house while its arms clank and spin and its tread drags it forward. Without its rockets propelling it, it is slower, but could still overtake them if they aren’t careful. 

Barret tries to flank the house so he can attack the treads, but it manages to shuffle fast enough to match his speed. Jessie takes aim at the windows and shoots them out, which only makes flame boil out of them like the fires of a furnace. Aerith wishes suddenly she had put the ice materia in her weapon, but no time in the middle of a fight.

With its window-eyes shot out, it still seems perfectly capable of tracking their every move. Barret jukes around the thing, but it swats him away with one of its metallic pincers. He grunts when he lands and rolls a bit. Then the treads malform into skittering spider legs and dance around for a moment before launching it up into the sky. It comes down where Barret landed, and he just barely rolls free of it before it crashes down, spraying sand everywhere.

Barret manages to get to his feet and swing out the buzz-saw at one of the legs, chewing through the metal and disabling some of its mobility. The crazy house lowers down, almost protectively, and Barret starts to run back in before Aerith hears something wind up inside it. Something combustible.

“Get clear!” she yells. Barret stops and jogs backwards away from it while Jessie comes up next to Aerith. 

“What’s the actual plan?” Jessie shouts while the house spins in place, spewing flame in every direction. They can feel the heat from here, and Barret covers his eyes, but they’re safe for the moment.

Aerith says, “Well, a house has an inside, right? Its windows are broken, the door flaps open and shut. Shouldn’t be too hard to get a proper grenade in there.”

“I like where your mind’s at, Carbuncle. I got one left, though, so we gotta make it count.”

Barret backs up to them now while the house slows and its flamethrower gutters and dies. “I seen a lot of weird in my time, but this is definitely up there. What’s next?”

“Next is Jessie blows this thing to pieces. We’re the bait and she’ll get the grenade inside.” Aerith nods at the other two and they nod back. 

The house’s door opens suddenly, and a little green something pops out of it, rolls, and then stands up, brandishing a wicked-looking knife. The creature is smooth and dark green, wearing a tiny brown cloak and carrying a small lantern in its other hand. Big yellow eyes train on Jessie and it begins to shuffle toward her.

“Well what the hell is that?” she asks.

“The things that live in the house?” Aerith suggests. It swings its knife threateningly, but it is exceedingly slow and Aerith isn’t sure they should worry about it.

“Plan don’t change,” Barret says. “Avoid the little guy, blow up the house.”

In the moment they’re not looking at the little green creature, though, it vanished. Aerith glances around, sees it step out of a rip of nothingness behind Jessie, silent as the grave, and raise the knife to her back.

Aerith throws herself at Jessie, pushing her to safety and nearly taking the knife in her chest. She falls backwards from it, and the little creature looks confused that it didn’t hit anything. Jessie pulls Aerith back and to her feet, and the little guy starts shuffling forward towards Jessie again.

“Sneaky little guy, huh?” Jessie says.

“Uh, the house is doing a thing again,” Barret says, but before they can register what it’s doing, the house plants itself firmly in the sand, opens its door, and a sucking whirlwind of sound hits them. Barret holds himself steady against it, but Aerith and Jessie struggle out in the open. Jessie loses her footing first, and tumbles back toward the house, crying out. Barret manages to grab onto her and hold her stable, but Aerith isn’t so lucky.

She slips first, digging her staff into the sand, which only causes her to lose balance faster when it doesn’t catch on anything. She feels herself first lose the ground before getting sucked toward the house. Her fingers barely miss Jessie’s as they pass, and Aerith has a brief moment to see inside the house before she is ripped through the doorway and tumbles to a mess of sticky, viscous fluid. This is not a proper house, but some kind of mouth? Where did the little green guy come from, then? She doesn’t have time to figure that out as the walls accordion around her, press against her, and she drops her staff. 

They smash into her, almost like the house is chewing, and she cries out at the pummeling pain as this thing tries to crush her into a fine paste. But the inner walls of this creature avoid something entirely. Her staff. Her staff with the long shot materia inside it. 

The poisonous materia.

She grabs the staff from the undulating ground and waves it around. Everywhere the end of the staff draws near, the walls press back from it. She grins and looks for a throat, finds the dark heart of nothingness farther within this strange creature, and uses all her strength to shove the staff into the soft mass. It immediately recoils, and gags, but the damage is done. The poison spreads inside this creature.

She tries to pull the staff free, but is instead ejected in a cacophony of sound back onto the sand, where the door slams shut and it backs away from her, almost whimpering.

Jessie shouts, “I told you she wasn’t dead!” as Barret crushes the little green monster under his fist, and kicks the body away, lifeless. 

“I never said she was!” But the relief in both their eyes is telling enough. They thought she was gone for sure.

Hell, Aerith thought she was done for.

She lost her staff in the process, though. The house backs into a corner of the arena, its smoke and flames green and guttering, its metal pincers swiping weakly in front of it. The thing might not be dying, but it sure isn’t having a good time.

“What’d you do to it?” Jessie asks.

“That blue materia came in handy, I guess. It’s sucking on a poison pill right now.”

Barret laughs as they regroup. “The little guy packs a punch.” He turns and the giant knife sticks out of Barret’s shoulder while he winces. “Ain’t no pulling it out yet, then I’ll just be bleedin’.”

Aeirth sucks in a breath at how painful that looks, but he’s holding up well.

The Hell House is not looking so hale, though. It sputters green flame, its door flapping open and shut with each concussive blast of air, as if it’s coughing. Finally, after several agonizing seconds of this, the door slams open and her staff flies out of it, coming to rest in the sand in front of it.

Jessie doesn’t waste any time, and pulls the pin on her last grenade. “Better finish this thing off before it rallies, yeah?”

But the door closes once more and it drags itself away from the three of them. Already it’s beginning to look stronger, and Aerith isn’t sure what they’ll need to do to get it to open back up.

Aerith instead grabs inside her satchel, fishing for the wind materia. “Get ready!” she yells, charging at the house as its green flames turn bright red and orange again. Barret gives chase, and Jessie follows behind, ready with the grenade. 

The house, angry and growing stronger now that it’s not actively being poisoned from within, opens its mouth again. Not to suck anything in, or throw any creatures out, but to expel a roiling cloud of flame bearing down on them.

Aerith concentrates, holding the wind materia out like a talisman against evil, and presses with all her will against the flames and the hot gust of air charging at her.

Barret backs her up as she nearly loses her balance and falls. He buffets her against the onrushing fury of wind as she fights against the torrent with her materia and her willpower. A sustained blast of air whooshes from her hand, erratically waving around as she struggles to keep it focused. If she loses her aim, or the creature manages to redouble its own efforts, this could end very quickly and very badly.

But she yells, “Throw the damn bomb!” and Jessie doesn’t hesitate. The grenade arcs over Barret and Aerith’s heads, coming down inside the vortex of wind Aerith is pushing towards the wall of flame. She yells, pushing with everything she has, willing the materia to amp up like she managed with the lightning during the Turks fight on the pillar. And it responds in kind. 

The grenade, mere seconds from exploding, twists and turns in the whirlwind that suddenly becomes a tornado, spinning out of control and rushing out to meet the Hell House’s flames. The grenade vanishes inside the swirling winds, and the tornado envelops the house, tearing it to shreds from the outside. 

Then the grenade explodes, sending viscous blood and house shrapnel flying. Aerith covers her eyes as she lets the tornado go. Barret protects her with his body and they wait out the carnage.

The Hell House whines and boils in its death throes, but with the fire and the wind dying down, all that remains is a creature that never should have been, returning to the planet where Aerith hopes it might finally be at peace.

It slumps and settles into a pile of rubble and death. All is silent in the arena.

Then Kotch’s voice says, “Ladies and gentlemen, your winners of the Corneo Cup! Look at them, stunned it’s over, and who can blame them! They just fought a house! The Hell House!”

The rest is lost in applause and cheers. Aerith takes a moment to catch her breath, then waves gaily to the crowd, high fives Jessie and Barret before remembering that Barret has a knife sticking out of his back. She rushes them from the arena to tend his wounds, content to listen to the crowd cheering their victory.

Once they have healed up, cleaned up, and Jessie pockets the weird creature’s butcher’s knife for herself, Chocobo Sam shows up at Madam M’s room. “Reckon I underestimated you lot,” he says. “You did for my newest toy what I thought might take months.”

Aerith glares at him. “You’re lucky we had a deal, because otherwise I might be making you choke on a poison staff right now. Whatever you did to that thing was horrible. Nothing deserves that kind of torment.”

He scoffs, and then when it looks like he’s about to argue, he hesitates. “Maybe you’re right, Aeris. I’m surely not gonna belabor the point after you just beat me, anyway. Deal’s a deal, as they say.”

Aerith, only a little mollified by his admission that she might be right, nods. “I don’t suppose you’ve got any fancy clothing I can change into?”

He grins. “Now that certainly wasn’t part of the deal,” he drawls, “but I have a notion what’s gonna tickle the Don tonight, so I’ll have something sent over. You’re in for a strange night, folks.” He tips his hat politely, turns, and then stops. “Almost forgot. Big man, the other member of the Trio, Andrea, has requested a meeting.”

“Just me?” Barret asks.

“He said to send along the brute. I don’t question our good Andrea, so maybe you better shake a leg over to the Honeybee Inn, introduce yourself.”

Barret considers, rolling his shoulder from what little bit of healing Aerith was able to provide. “He say why?” 

“Just that you’ve caught his eye. I expect you’ll be better off for taking the meeting. Andrea’s not like the rest of us scoundrels. Heart of gold and all that. You’ll be fine, big fella.”

He takes his leave, then, and Barret grumbles. “Guess I should go, huh?”

“Might be worth it for the resistance,” Jessie says. “I should probably get back to Madam M and whatever she’s doing to Wedge, so she can doll me up.”

Aerith nods. “I’d go with, but I guess I should wait here for whatever outfit Chocobo Sam sends me.”

“Okay,” Barret says, standing up and clearing his throat. “Y’all best get prepared to go into this Don Corneo’s place and find Tifa. I’ll go meet this Andrea, and we can get situated before you head in, yeah?”

They agree, and Aerith waves them away. She’s tired, but the good kind of tired where her body is taxed and ready to turn in for the night. She expects she’ll sleep well despite all the craziness going on these days. And soon enough, she’s going to help find Tifa, rescue her if necessary, and kill this curiosity she’s built up around the woman. She’s just another pretty face, so why is Aerith so nervous suddenly? Maybe it has to do with Cloud. With having to witness her learn her childhood friend is dead.

Whatever the case, she is nervous, but excited.

Her outfit arrives from Sam, and she eyes it curiously. Not exactly something a woman would wear to entice a mob boss, and she wonders if Sam is playing games with her. His own little revenge for losing.

But she doesn’t have anything else to put on, so she gets all cleaned up, dressed up, and heads out to meet Barret and Jessie, to see whatever she’s going to see in the night ahead.

*****

Donna Lockhart paces in the room that used to be Don Corneo’s. The room itself has been stripped down, sanitized, and rebuilt to look a little more respectable. Everything has been so crazy since she took over, she’s scarcely had time to breathe. This is the first night she’s told the Trio they can send her new people, with certain expectations on what they should look like and what attributes she’s interested in.

She doesn’t know who, if anyone, the Trio might send. She only knows that if they do send someone, and they don’t do something silly like try to kill her, this will be very good indeed. Part one of her rough plan needs warm bodies.

Would Barret approve of something like this? Of infiltration, deception, murder? She can’t really think like that. Barret didn’t approve of a lot of things, and now he’s dead, along with the rest of their shard of Avalanche and Sector 7. Tifa holds out a secret hope that maybe Cloud is alive out there, that he’ll somehow find out she’s here, that he’ll come and make everything better. Be the mercenary he’s supposed to be. Fulfill the promise he made to her all those years ago.

A knock at her chamber doors startles her. She clears her throat and says, “Enter.”

Leslie steps inside. “The Trio’s sent a full docket tonight. I saw them at the Corneo Cup earlier; they’re pretty legit.”

“Anything I should know about them?” Tifa asks.

Leslie shakes his head. “Just their stage names. They were going by Horus, Strawberry, and the Carbuncle, but they were good. Two were cute, too, if that matters.”

“What curious names,” she says. “But fighters, all of them?”

Leslie shakes his head. “Two were more traditional, looked like they were familiar with covert operations. The third, Carbuncle, she was slinging a lot of magic around. Materia’s not the easiest thing to come by, and she wasn’t hurting for it.”

Interesting. And she just now realizes that Cloud had all their materia when he fell from the reactor catwalks. That would have been useful going forward. She makes a mental note to acquire some.

“When will they be here?” she asks.

“They’re standing outside in the gardens, getting ready to come in. Are you ready?”

She takes a deep breath and nods. “Did Corneo have them perform or anything before choosing?”

“When there was more than one, he’d line them up and treat them like cattle. Sometimes he’d ask them to prove their worth, which I think you can figure out.”

Ugh. She curls her lip in disgust and cracks her knuckles under her fingerless gloves. She’s not used to the way these clothes restrict her in some ways and provide additional freedom of movement in others, but she doesn’t need a lot of flexibility to punch a fool. “Okay, bring them to the office. I’ll make sure they know what they’re in for when they see me.”

“Of course, Donna.” Leslie bows and leaves the room. This is it. Tifa checks herself in the mirror, questioning literally every decision she’s made up to this point. This artifice. This ridiculous mob boss outfit. She misses her suspenders and tank top, her combat shorts. Like everything else in Sector 7, buried in rubble no doubt.

She leaves her double doors open and listens for the approach of these three mystery guests. These three hopeful recruits to something they have no idea about. They think they’re here to spend an evening with Don Corneo while Tifa’s interested in soldiers and spies.

She picks up the yellow flower that has still not begun to wilt. This precious reminder that is now all she has of the spiky-headed boy who came back into her life. She fits the stem into her hair and adjusts the collar on her shirt, straightens her purple waistcoat, and waits.

It doesn’t take long for these strangers to filter in, led by Leslie. She listens out of sight for them to be placed, and then takes another deep breath, psyching herself up. She knows how to talk, how to walk, how to act, and how to be hard. Some she learned through instruction, some through hard-won experience.

She lets the heels of her new ass-kicking boots click pointedly as she steps forward, four paces, so that she is framed in the doorway, before she turns to these people.

And everything goes to hell the moment she’s visible. A familiar, spunky voice says, “Whoa! Tifa?!”

Tifa’s head snaps to the voice, heart ready to burst out of her chest. It’s her. It’s Jessie. In a bright red dress with divided skirts and a lot of room for pockets. She looks unusual in something flashy, but Tifa can immediately tell these garments can be fought in. 

To Jessie’s left is--she almost laughs at the absurdity--Barret in a sailor’s outfit, white with blue trim, and form-fitting with a jaunty little sailor’s cap. He’s handsome, but currently lacking his gun-arm altogether, which makes him seem diminished somewhat. But it’s him. It’s her. 

There’s another girl with them, but Tifa doesn’t know her. Has no eyes for anyone but her friends. When they see her, they run to her. Her guards hold up guns at them, and Tifa has to yell at them to wait. A tense moment passes where Barret and Jessie stare uncomprehending at what’s happening.

“Everyone out,” she says. “Everyone but the new blood.”

“You sure, Donna Lockhart?” Leslie asks, hesitating. The other new soldiers in her little army hesitate, waiting for her confirmation.

“Now. Everyone. Out.”

Guns lower. Everyone but Jessie, Barret, and the new girl retreat. Tifa’s heart bursts with repressed grief and joy, and she lets it all out the moment the doors close and they’re alone. She pulls the two into a hug, and for a long time it’s just the three of them, standing in Barret’s oversized embrace. Their ridiculous outfits forgotten. Their shared misery at Platefall. Everything that could be wrong is shoved away, for these precious moments.

When she realizes that not everyone is lost. All hope isn’t dead. 

When she finally lets them go, she sniffs back tears and presses back from them. “What are you wearing?” she asks Barret.

“That pretty boy Andrea said I had to wear something that made me look good, strong, and above all, handsome.”

“That sounds like him. And you do.” Her eyes widen. “What about--”

“Marlene’s fine. So are Biggs and Wedge. Some of the other Sector 7 folks.”

“A whole lot more didn’t make it,” Jessie says. “Marle and Wymer did, but yeah. Buncha missing people.”

“I’m so sorry, Jessie. I couldn’t get free the night it happened. I knew about it, but I couldn’t do anything.”

Barret clenches his fist. “So that’s what his goons were snoopin’ around for? To hand us over to Shinra on a silver platter?”

Tifa nods. “I took care of him, though. For everything he’s done to so many people.” The hard look in her eyes throws them off, no doubt, but she can’t help how she feels. How she shows it now. She’s Donna Lockhart.

“No shit?” Barret asks. “I’m sorry you had to go through it. We got out here as soon as we could.”

“I know you did. I--” She swallows the lump in her throat. “I didn’t even look for you. I just assumed you didn’t make it because there was no time to warn anyone.” A new hope flourishes. “And Cloud? Did you ever connect with him?”

Barret and Jessie share a glance. Tifa looks between the two of them, shaking her head. “Really? You found his--his body?” She grips the chairback at her desk to hold herself steady. 

“Not so much us,” Jessie says, “but maybe Aerith can tell it better.”

Aerith. Tifa shoots a glance over at the woman doing her best to be a wallflower in this delicate moment, of friends reuniting. Her outfit is glamorous, not made for a warrior in hiding, or a suit of prestige. It’s a soft purple dress with a dark green shawl. Almost ceremonial rather than attractive. And, she notes, it seems to match Tifa’s colors. Which of the Trio chose this woman, she wonders?

“You saw Cloud?” she asks, stepping towards the stranger.

Aerith nods, then shakes her head. “Only briefly. He--well, he fell through my church.”

Church. Fell through a church. No one lives through that. And yet. “He’s a SOLDIER. He’s lived through worse.”

Aerith takes a tentative step forward. “I’m sorry, Tifa. He was dead when the Turks carried his body away.”

“Turks.” Tifa doesn’t understand, but latches on to that detail instead of contemplating the other part of what this girl said. “Why were Turks there?”

“It’s a long story, but they recognized a SOLDIER when they saw his eyes, and took his body when they left.”

So that’s it, then. Dead. Tifa’s found her friends, but the one who truly mattered, the one who made it all seem possible that they could come out the other side… he’s gone.

And Tifa feels strangely calm. She looks at this woman, this stranger, who intersected with their lives and came in contact with Cloud ever so briefly. And that connection was strong enough to send her searching for others. To find Barret, and Avalanche. And Tifa herself.

She sighs. “It’s good to meet you, Aerith.”

Tifa holds out a hand to Aerith, and Aerith goes to shake it, but something almost seems to push her forward, to throw her off balance. Tifa thinks she sees some kind of shadow in the moment Aerith falters, then the shadow is gone. Aerith trips and stumbles into Tifa, and Tifa catches her with an arm around the back, as of dancers performing a dip. Aerith blushes, and reaches up to the yellow flower in Tifa’s hair, plucks it free. Tifa reaches her free hand up to stop her from taking Cloud’s flower, and grips her hand between them.

Aerith says, “So you’re the girl Cloud gave the flower to. It’s a surprise and a pleasure to meet you, Tifa Lockhart, Donna of the Wall Market.”

Notes:

Only took 8 chapters for Aerith and Tifa to meet! I'm so sorry, lol, it was supposed to happen sooner, but I'm a slow-burn jerk, apparently.

Now that they've met, Tifa and Aerith get to know each other; Tifa gets on-the-job training as Donna Lockhart; and the girls agree to a favor for Tifa's lieutenant, Leslie.

Also side note: I know the Elemental materia doesn't work with the Poison materia in either the remake or the original, but I made an executive decision and went with it! Consider the Elemental materia as a combination of "Elemental" and "Added Effect" from the original game.

Chapter 9: Donna Lockhart meets the Carbuncle

Summary:

Tifa, AKA Donna Lockhart, having reconnected with her Avalanche companions, updates them on her plans as the boss of Wall Market, while getting to know this stranger, Aerith.

Later, Leslie calls on Tifa to help him track down the former Don Corneo in the sewers, and they delve into the depths with Jessie and Aerith along for the ride.

Notes:

(See the end of the chapter for notes.)

Chapter Text

After that unexpected reunion and even more unexpected moment of intimacy with Aerith, Donna Lockhart retires to what used to be the “entertaining” room for the Don’s castoffs. Jessie and Barret join her, and Aerith excuses herself to gather up Wedge. It will be good to see him, as well, and she hopes that Biggs can make his way over soon.

They take seats while one of Andrea’s people serves chilled drinks. Barret merely takes the bottle while Jessie and Tifa accept glasses. Once the servant departs, Tifa’s demeanor changes, relaxes. Barret and Jessie wear the clothing the Trio prepared for them, and Barret looks refined but wholly out of place in a military uniform, yet diminished without his gun-arm. Tifa knows that’s unfair. He’s ruthless and sufficient with or without.

“There’s a whole-ass story waiting to be told here,” Barret says, taking a big slug of wine, “and I don’t think there’s enough booze in the slums to do it justice.”

Tifa grimaces. “You’re not entirely wrong. But to answer the most obvious question: Don Corneo used his thugs to gather intel on a ‘man with a gun arm’. I learned from some of his people that Cloud took the first wave out while we were celebrating and preparing for the Sector 5 mission the night before.”

“Huh. Didn’t even know about that,” Jessie says. “I guess that explains why he looked a little put out when we went on our night ride.”

“Night ride?” Tifa asks. They swap stories, catch up, tell all the tales that need to be told. 

“This Roche guy that Cloud fought sounds intense,” Barret says. “I knew SOLDIER was tough; hell, I kinda thought Cloud was a little punk, honestly. Guess if you’re in SOLDIER, you’re for real, huh?”

Tifa shares her side of the story, and she’s surprised at her own calmness, her own detachment. She’s spent so much time since Platefall ignoring it all, pressing it away, that it almost seems like an event that happened to someone else. To a Tifa that died with the rest of her people in Sector 7. Donna Lockhart sips her wine as they talk and she outlines what she has in mind.

“Avalanche is dead, huh?” Barret says after she’s done. “We had gone a little rogue, I’ll admit. You have another name in mind for us?”

Tifa grins, a hard grin. A grin she isn’t used to giving, and yet it’s beginning to feel just right. The Donna is unrelenting and cruel in her quest for justice. For vengeance. 

She says, “I do. We’re still out to protect the planet, and the planet has other weapons. Instead of an Avalanche from without, we shall be the volcano that explodes from within, destroying them inside out. An Eruption.”

Silence covers them all and Donna Lockhart sips her wine in the quiet, letting her new demeanor soak into them. Barret was the leader of their little movement before, but now they’ll be a different kind of freedom force. Now they’ll infiltrate and destroy Shinra from within. For the planet. For Sector 7. For everyone who ever suffered under their rule.

“Damn, girl,” Barret says finally. “I ain’t really got anything else to say. Just damn.”

“I’ll drink to that,” Jessie says, holding her wine glass up and clinking it against Tifa’s and then against Barret’s bottle. 

“So tell me a little about this new girl,” Tifa says after they drink a little more. She has a fuzzy feeling in her gut and she isn’t sure if it’s the woman or the wine. 

“Carbuncle,” Jessie says, a little tipsy. “She just kinda came outta nowhere lugging Cloud’s pack and telling tall tales. Sorry,” she says, eyes widening at Tifa’s tightening fist on her wine glass. “We’ve had a week to live with it, but I guess it’s only been like half an hour for you.”

“You’re fine.” She idly runs a finger along the yellow Reunion flower that Aerith stuck back in her hair after their awkward meeting. Not Cloud’s flower, now. Even that has been taken from her. Aerith’s flower. The fuzzy feeling in her gut tightens and sours. This woman, who just fell in with all her people and had an entire adventure without her, without Cloud.

She says, “Really, it’s fine. Cloud and I were honestly barely more than acquaintances back in the day. Having him here was nice, but it wasn’t like we were childhood sweethearts.” That isn’t strictly true. But the ease with which she says it feels comforting. A comforting lie.

“Well, I miss him. That spiky head, the way he started to soften around us, his shoulders popping when he swung that sword.” Jessie hiccups a little and her face flushes more than just the wine would cause. “This is good wine.”

Tifa smiles. “Tonight we can drink as much as we want. Donna Lockhart is only a name to be feared by her enemies.”

Jessie finishes her glass and sets it aside, though. “Aerith came asking about another SOLDIER she knew once, what was his name, Barret?”

“Zack something.”

That name shoots a lightning bolt down Tifa’s spine and she sits ramrod straight, clutching at Barret’s flesh-and-blood arm. “Zack Fair?”

“Ow, yeah, damn, what the hell?” He pulls his arm free. “That sounds right. Don’t tell me you knew the guy somehow.”

She sits back. What are the odds? The other SOLDIER that came to Nibelheim all those years ago… the one she witnessed being cut down. Dead along with Sephiroth. She closes her eyes against the memories of her town burning. Of wondering where Cloud was at the end, if not there, holding up his end of the promise. Of that moment when she thought she did see him, as she lost consciousness. To be there for her. But he wasn’t. For years she thought about him, tried to look him up, figure out what happened to him, but it wasn’t until he appeared in the city that she allowed herself to think of him in terms of the boy she used to know. Of the man he had become. Of the promise he was intent on keeping, it turned out.

And yet.

A mystery.

Tifa sets her wine glass down. She needs to talk to Aerith some more, to find out how she knew Zack.

“I need a promise from you two. From all of the Avalanche crew,” she says.

Barret nods. “Sure, anything.”

“Go with this new persona. Don’t question me in front of the guards. I told you what I had to do to get at Don Corneo, but you don’t really know. They do. Some of them saw it firsthand. I need that to follow me like a shadow, do you understand?”

Jessie’s eyes well with tears, but she nods. “I don’t think you need to tell any of us twice--Donna Lockhart. But when we’re alone, can I still call you sis and hug you?”

Tifa smiles at that. Jessie’s so strong in all the ways one can see, and so very broken in the ways one can’t. She nods and Jessie pulls her into a hug that lasts a good long time, that breaks a little of that gangster veneer Tifa’s built up.

She clears her throat finally and Jessie lets her go. There’s a knock at the door, and Tifa reclines, holds her wine glass back up as if in the middle of a toast. “Enter!” she calls.

The doors open and Kotch lets Wedge and Aerith through. Wedge stares at Tifa with uncomprehending eyes and then says, “No way,” in that raspy voice. 

“Good to see you again, Wedge. Kotch, that will be all for the evening.”

“Yes, Donna. Um--” He hesitates, looking at all the faces that knew his new boss before, that would know he served Don Corneo willingly, that he was probably garbage worth tossing on the midden heap.

Tifa clears her throat. “Say what’s on your mind, Kotch.”

“It’s just--I know you’re friends of the boss,” Kotch says, primarily to Barret, who scoffs at him. Barret takes a parcel from Wedge and begins reattaching his gun-arm. Good to see something back to normal. “I want you all to know I didn’t like the Don, and I’m truly sorry about what happened to Sector 7.”

“Kotch,” Tifa says, and he shuts up. “You’ve proven yourself to me. You don’t have to convince them. Isn’t that right, Barret?”

Barret looks about to argue, then catches her face and nods. “If the boss vouches, we’re good. Kotch, right? You’re the guy singing our praises in the arena.”

“That’s right.” He swallows visibly and grins. “Hope I did you all justice.”

“You did all right,” Jessie says.

Kotch nods and takes his leave. Aerith sits down between Barret and Jessie, while Wedge can’t take his eyes off Tifa. 

“Wedge, man, chill,” Barret says, and Wedge catches himself. 

“Uh, sorry. It’s just--wow, Tifa. Carbuncle told me you were all mob-bossed up but I didn’t really know what to expect.”

Tifa smiles kindly. Poor Wedge is out of his depth here, but he’s a good man. Now Tifa needs to speak with Aerith, and she would prefer to do this part alone. “Now you know,” she says to Wedge. “I’ll have rooms prepared for you. It’s been a long day and a long night, and I’m sure you’re all tired. I heard about your exploits in the arena. Aeris the Carbuncle did things with materia no one had ever seen.”

Aerith blushes and grins. “It was Cloud’s materia. I just pointed it at the bad guys. And dogs. And houses.”

Houses. What strangeness had Tifa inherited with Chocobo Sam? “I’d like to hear more about your time with him,” Tifa says. “Would you care to join me for a drink on the balcony while I have Kotch settle the rest of you in?”

Aerith agrees, and the rest nod, Barret most of all seeming to sense that Tifa wants to have a private chat. “Yeah, I mean I did get stabbed by a little goblin thing. Could do with some rest. Maybe a little more of this booze.”

“I’ll have some sent to you.” Tifa stands, and everyone else does the same. She asked them all to pay deference and go along with the ruse, but it surprises her that they’re doing it now when no one who needs to see it is around. She really has changed, and they sense it. They know it. 

She’s Donna Lockhart now. The Tifa they knew died the night the plate fell, as surely as if she was in Sector 7.

She directs her soldiers and servants to lead away her friends, and holds a hand out to direct Aerith towards a different direction. “The view from the balcony is quite nice, I hear.”

“Haven’t checked it out yourself yet?” Aerith asks, stepping up beside her as Tifa falls in stride with the woman. 

“Leslie told me it’s where Corneo watched the--well, you know.”

“Can’t face it,” Aerith says, and Tifa glares at her. “I mean I don’t know if I could. I don’t know what I’d do if Sector 5 got destroyed. If my mother--” She falls silent, and they walk in an uncomfortable quiet, up a set of stairs to a third floor, and Tifa slides open the balcony door. Outside is one of Andrea’s recruited honeybees on sentry duty, and she nods at Tifa before departing. Tifa holds the door for Aerith, and the woman steps through.

Tifa slides the balcony door shut behind her, and hesitates. She’s afraid to turn and look. To see the devastation firsthand. She hates that she has this inside her. 

Aerith says, “I like the sky at night,” which distracts Tifa, and she almost hates the woman for being so glib. Tifa turns sharply at her words, and Aerith is pointing up at the hole where the upper plate of Sector 7 used to be. Used to be. Her fist tightens and her knuckles crack. 

Aerith keeps talking. “It’s like a blanket wrapping itself around us. Glittering with precious stones. It’s comforting, don’t you think?”

“I know what you’re doing,” Tifa says.

“What am I doing?”

Tifa strides up next to Aerith, sighs, and stares at the night sky. “What’s wrong with the sky during the day?” she asks instead of answering.

Aerith shrugs, as if warding herself from a cold wind. “It’s a lot of emptiness. I prefer a roof over my head, a flower in my garden, and a burbling stream reminding me that I’m tied to the planet. That we’re all tied to it.”

“Poetic,” Tifa says. “I admit I can’t really get the measure of you. You met Cloud, you randomly joined a freedom fighting group, and you came on a rescue mission when you don’t even know me.”

Aerith shrugs again, this time glancing at Tifa with a shy smile. “I follow my heart when my mind can’t decide.”

“And your heart led you to chase a dead man?”

“He was alive the first time,” Aerith says, and then bites back a hissed intake of breath. “Sorry, that probably makes me sound like a jerk.”

“You were interested in him from a chance meeting?” Tifa asks.

Aerith nods. “Those eyes, and that sword. And he was the first person to convince me I wasn’t crazy.”

“How’s that?”

Aerith’s head shakes. “He saw me and helped me without knowing what was after me, and that’s rare enough in this city.”

Tifa notes she didn’t explain, but lets that go. “And you gave him a flower.” Tifa runs a finger along the petals of the yellow flower in her hair. It should have begun wilting days ago.

“I did. You know, in some cultures it means--”

“Reunion,” Tifa finishes for her. “I don’t think Cloud knew that when he gave it to me.” She looks away from Aerith, away from these emotions, and up at the sky again. And slowly she drops her gaze to the wreckage, seen in shadow and silhouette, of her former home. Her grip tightens and tenses on the balcony railing, but she forces herself to look. To keep eyes open and let all that pain fuel her. To build that eruption.

Aerith’s fingers curl over Tifa’s, and Tifa freezes, denying her instinct to fight, to elbow this woman in the chest, steal her breath, drop her off the balcony. To be touched without permission after what Corneo planned to do… She yanks her hands away from the railing and Aerith gasps in surprise at the sudden, violent motion.

“Sorry, Tifa,” she says. That just won’t do. Not for a stranger.

“You can call me Donna Lockhart. Just because you’ve cozied up to my friends and made nice with Cloud, that doesn’t make us pals.”

Aerith’s eyes widen, with shock or hurt, maybe both. “No, of course not. I just thought--”

“Let’s talk about Zack Fair,” Tifa interrupts, and Aerith blinks rapidly against the pivot in conversation. It was unexpected, but not surprised?

Aerith says, “And here I thought I was going to have to ask you about him.”

“So you were looking into Cloud because of Zack,” Tifa accuses. 

“I told Barret and the others as much.” Aerith leans against the balcony and sighs. “But they didn’t know him. So how do you?”

“Did.” There’s a certain amount of pleasure in this, Tifa thinks. An eye for an eye, or something. Aerith told Tifa about Cloud’s death, and unless she missed her mark with Aerith, Tifa just told Aerith about Zack’s death. 

“Officially he was declared dead a few years ago,” Aerith says. Tifa watches her, and there is a certain tightness in the lines of her face. A long held breath waiting to be released. What was Zack Fair to Aerith? “Do you know how it happened? There was never an official word from Shinra.”

Tifa takes a deep breath, flashes of fire glinting off the sharpest steel in her mind. “That’s not a story I’m ready to tell. Sephiroth killed him, though, on the mission that saw my hometown destroyed.” My friends and family murdered, she doesn’t say.

That tightness in the admittedly nice lines of Aerith’s face grows even more at mention of Sephiroth. “Oh. Him,” she says.

“Did you know the hero of legend as well? You get around, Carbuncle.”

Aerith’s face sours into a grimace. “If you want to be called Donna Lockhart, you can earn the privilege of calling me that.”

“You didn’t answer the question.”

Aerith shakes her head no. “I never met him, but to hear Zack talk of the man, he was invincible. Immortal. A man above all others.”

“What was Zack to you?” Tifa asks.

“An overture from Shinra. A babysitter.”

“Something to do with why the Turks were at your church when Cloud fell through it?”

Aerith nods. “And now we reach the story I’m not ready to talk about.”

Tifa chuckles slightly. “Fair enough. The way you say his name, I guess it wasn’t just a bodyguard for long.”

“No.” A secret smile spreads over Aerith’s lips, crinkling the corners of her eyes. Memories of a first love? Has to be. 

“You don’t seem heartbroken over the news,” Tifa says.

She shakes her head. “You could say I have a sense about these things. I said my goodbyes to him long ago.”

“Do you know what he was doing on a mission with Sephiroth when he was mostly babysitting you before that?”

Aerith shakes her head no, glancing back down to the ruins of Sector 7. “It was pretty abrupt, to be honest.”

So close to something resembling answers, to connecting dots that long desire to stay unmoored. Tifa sighs and says, “So, Aerith, you’re one of the rebels now.”

“So it would seem, Donna Lockhart.” 

“Your skill with Cloud’s materia is impressive, or so I hear.”

Aerith shakes her head dismissively. “I just have a sense about the essence contained inside.”

“Barret said you treat it like it has feelings.”

“Doesn’t it? It’s connected to the Planet, made of its purest form of energy. If all life springs from the Lifestream, is it so hard to believe that materia has a life of its own?”

Tifa doesn’t know how to answer that, but she does know something about the former Don’s treasures that piques her interest with this woman. “Would you wait here a moment?”

Aerith nods, unsure, and Tifa closes the balcony door behind her, summons one of her guards and has him return with a glowing red orb after a couple of minutes. She steps back outside and holds the materia up to Aerith, whose brilliant green eyes reflect the shadowed light of this precious item.

“Do you know what it means when it’s red?” she asks, and Aerith shakes her head, reaching a tentative hand out to the orb. Tifa holds it out to her and places it in her cupped palms, then holds the sides of her hands so they’re both cupping the materia. “The only note Corneo had was that it brought fortune and luck to those who possessed it, which sounds more like a sales pitch than anything real.”

“Can’t you feel it?” Aerith asks, and Tifa frowns. She doesn’t feel anything. “It has a presence. It’s so strong, I can’t believe you feel nothing.”

Aerith steps in closer, pulling their hands up between them, and manipulates the red orb and Tifa’s hands so that Tifa holds the orb and Aerith cups Tifa’s hands. Tifa doesn’t fight this intimate contact. She’s too curious. 

Aerith says, “Concentrate on the materia. Let it breathe into you as you breathe into it.”

“Like… actually breathe on it?” Tifa asks, confused. She had asked Cloud how to use materia, but they hadn’t had a chance to get into it before the Sector 5 Reactor mission.

Aerith grins and Tifa fights the rising red in her cheeks and neck. “I don’t know what’s metaphor and what’s literal with this stuff.”

Aerith says, “Just… breathe slowly. Feel the pulse of the magic. Feel it inside you.”

Tifa concentrates, tries to follow the directions of this very strange woman. This woman who is suddenly standing very close, whose eyes almost glow with anticipation, whose heartbeat Tifa can feel thumping through her hands cupping Tifa’s. And that’s when she feels it: a separate pulse emanating from the red materia, almost like a wave hello. Tifa gasps.

“You feel it now,” Aerith says, not a question.

“I feel--I feel him .” It’s alive, this red materia. It’s even got a name. Tifa laughs. She can’t help it, and the tension of the moment breaks. “It feels a little like fate, doesn’t it?”

“Maybe it does,” Aerith says. “If you believe in that sort of thing.”

Tifa’s hands drop away, leaving the Carbuncle materia in Aerith the Carbuncle’s hands. “I suppose you might be crazy to think fate exists, because that means Sector 7 could never be saved.”

Aerith doesn’t respond to this. She holds the materia closer to her chest now, protectively. “Thank you for this. I’ll make good use of it.”

“For the resistance,” Tifa replies.

Aerith shakes her head no. “For Donna Lockhart.” And the impish grin says more than words ever could. Tifa excuses herself--leaving that smile on the balcony--and goes to her room. She’s frustrated, annoyed, and not a little bit flustered by Aerith and the way she looks at Tifa. The woman is a nuisance, who sees too much but knows too little. Who runs headlong into danger for people she barely knows. Who has connections to Tifa and her past through two different SOLDIERs.

And whose eyes ask for more than her lips will say. Why does Tifa’s heart beat so furiously inside her chest at the thought?

*****

Tifa is still distracted the next day, listening to Leslie’s reports on the day-to-day goings-on of the Wall Market. It takes him clearing his throat to gain her full attention, and she sits up in startlement, covering that she was clearly not listening with all her mind.

“You were saying, Leslie?” she asks.

He frowns. “I was saying that I think I’ve found the path through the sewer to Corneo’s hideout. The destruction from Platefall blocked off all the routes I knew about, and it’s taken a few days of clearing rubble, reinforcing old shortcuts, and what I think we can charitably call hands-on training for the honeybee recruits against the big rats and bats down there. But I think we have a viable path to find Corneo’s bolthole, to see if we can find him after all.”

Tifa sighs. She knew this day would come sooner or later, that Leslie calls in his favor for deciding to serve her. She had hoped it would be on a timeline of weeks, not days. But she made an agreement with him, and this mob boss keeps her word.

“Do you want more guards to investigate the place?” she asks.

He shakes his head no again. “If his big old pet is down there, I don’t think you want to send just anyone. Not unless you’re fine with starting over with several more new recruits.”

“You think they can’t handle one creature?” Tifa asks. She stands and paces, thinking about all that she could be doing instead of humoring Leslie, chasing a ghost she already killed. Planning her revenge against Shinra. Plotting to infiltrate and kill the Turks for their hand in Platefall. A flash of green eyes and a flick of long brown hair. 

Leslie continues, “I think you underestimate this thing. If it’s down there, it will fight and it will kill anyone who isn’t prepared. I’d suggest your old friends, especially the big guy, if you can spare them.”

Tifa scoffs. “I sent Barret and Wedge back to Sector 5 to coordinate with our other member. They’re likely to be gone a couple days.” She thinks about it. “Jessie would probably be fine to spare. She’s looking over Corneo’s maps and files, trying to find a way into Shinra. Blowing something up will be good for her, I’m sure.”

“What about the other one?” Leslie asks. “Aerith. Her materia use was something else. I’ve seen people use it in combat, but nothing like what she’s pulled off.”

Aerith. Tifa clears her throat. “She’s a bit dainty to go tromping through the muck.”

“And what about you, boss?” Leslie asks.

Tifa pauses in her pacing to glance at Leslie, who has the good sense to look down and scratch at the back of his head in embarrassment.

“No, I guess that would be ridiculous.”

“It’s not. I made a deal with you that I would help you when you had a lead. This is the lead and I’m not about to go back on my word. I need your knowledge more than I need your loyalty, but I hope to buy both.”

Leslie smiles. “Honesty is a good look on a mob boss. I’m not really much for fighting, but I can guide you down there.”

“Do I have anything scheduled for today?” Tifa asks.

“Just meetings with the Trio this afternoon. Daily business. Nothing we can’t push for a mission.”

Tifa nods. “It’s settled, then. Ask Jessie if she’s keen to use a grenade or three, and bring Aerith if you see her on the way.”

Leslie bows to Tifa. “Right away, Donna.” He leaves the room to find her compatriots, and Tifa heads into her personal room behind her office, activates the trap door that leads into the sewers, and changes into something that can get ruined. The waistcoat and breeches are a strong look, and she can fight if she needs to in them, but if she’s going into real danger, she needs her full freedom of movement.

So she puts on the training armaments she had procured from Andrea’s gym with its interesting clientele. A white tank top like her old outfit, but lined in a purple that matches her mob boss look. She slides on the forest green shorts and the combat boots, and hooks the suspenders into the new combat kilt she had Andrea design for her. It’s not exactly her old outfit, but it’ll do. 

She looks for a bangle among the Don’s belongings that has a materia slot. If Aerith comes along, maybe they’ll have time to test it. She slides the padded gauntlet up her non-dominant left arm, adjusts the gaudy gold bangle with its two materia slots she found tucked away in the Don’s jewelry box, and slides her fingers into her customized razor knuckles, retracting the blades for now.

Leslie knocks on her chamber doors and she opens them to reveal Jessie, Aerith, and himself. Aerith lugs Cloud’s pack with all its curatives and materia, and carries an ornate staff glowing with blue and green materia. She wears a simple pink dress with a fashionable leather jacket over it, some deep red coloring to offset the garish pink. Tifa recognizes the dress from the Don’s stockpile, some conquest of a night that he kept as a trophy. The disgusting man. She half hopes he’s alive so she can kill him again.

Jessie has fully reconnected with her old look, only instead of the red Neighborhood Watch / Avalanche colors, she has instead adopted the green and purple of Donna Lockhart. Of Eruption. Her new breastplate shines and she has a bandolier full of explosive pain to match the pistols holstered at her hips.

“Good to see you kitted out,” Tifa says, admiring them both. To Aerith she says, “We’re heading into a fight, most likely. Will the dress slow you down?”

Aerith shakes her head no. “I’ll be fine, Donna Lockhart. Someone has guns, and Jessie brought two pistols.” Tifa fights the flush of her face at that terrible compliment, and turns away towards the gaping hole in the floor.

“Well, just don’t slow us down if we get into trouble. Leslie, do we need anything else before we head in?”

“I don’t think so, boss.”

“Good. Jessie, want to do the honors of heading in first?”

Jessie grins and nods. “First in has the most fun, haven’t you heard?”

She doesn’t wait for the answer, though. She practically skips to the ladder and disappears down the hole, complaining of the smell the whole way. “What kind of idiot keeps a stinkhole in their bedroom?” is the last one Tifa hears before her voice fades away. How far down is this sewer?

“Me next,” Aerith says, but before she approaches the ladder, she reaches into Cloud’s pack and withdraws a green orb of materia, then cups her staff between her shoulder and neck so that it rests there. “I see your bangle can take materia. Do you want to try some?”

Tifa nods, and Aerith holds her free hand out to her. Tifa holds her bangle up, and Aerith grasps it, inserting the materia, where it almost seems to shrink down to fit. These armor bangles are so weird. Tifa goes to pull her wrist back and examine it, but Aerith holds the grip and tuts at her.

“Not yet.” She grabs her staff now and slides the blue materia out of it, and slots it into the other free slot in Tifa’s bangle. The blue and green glows meld together into a solid teal that casts its glow over the entire bangle, and Tifa immediately feels it doing… something.

“What is this?” she asks.

“I’m not entirely sure,” Aerith says, “But hey, we’ll find out! The green is fire and the blue kind of supports it? Makes it work passively. We’ll see when we get there.”

Not at all assured, Tifa smiles at the gesture and examines this magical addition to her kit. The brief lesson Aerith gave her the night before, on how to connect with materia, lets her feel the warmth from the fire orb, feel it waiting to activate. To spread and scorch. The blue one doesn’t feel like anything.

Aerith stands at the ladder, now, and mock salutes. She has a bangle on her right wrist as well, similar to the one Tifa wears, only silver instead of gaudy gold, but it glows a soft red from the Carbuncle materia she’s inserted into it. This day is going to be very interesting, Tifa thinks.

Aerith descends the ladder, and Leslie follows her down. Tifa takes one last breath of fresh air before following her people into the depths. Into a contract of loyalty and luck.

And she regrets it immediately. They all gag at first as they get to the bottom, as the permeating stench of old rot and waste surrounds them. Leslie’s throat lurches but he doesn’t throw up; Jessie is not so lucky, and her breakfast splatters the worn-smooth stone at her feet.

“Ugh, what a terrible thing humans are, to make this much bad smell and then put it all in one place,” she says, spitting and wiping her mouth.

“It’s not so bad,” Aerith says, and Tifa glares at her. Aerith grins, but Tifa can tell she’s struggling, the same as all of them.

Tifa glances around in the dim light from the flashlights Leslie passes out. More than the stench of people’s waste, this particular chamber has a wet skin closeness about it, which has faded somewhat but still keeps its musty aura. 

“This was where the Don’s pet lived?” Tifa asks.

“Yeah,” Leslie says, “But as you can see, there’s been something of a breach.” His flashlight arcs over to a large break in a wall, where light flickers from outside, the proper lighting of tunnels not properly maintained, let alone all the damage from a whole sector falling in on it. “Not sure if that happened during Platefall or after you threw the Don down here, but the beast is gone.”

It’s an impressive hole, and Tifa hopes that whatever this creature is, it doesn’t show back up looking for a fight. Leslie may not have been exaggerating its danger, after all.

“Well, only one thing to do in a situation like this,” Jessie says, “and that’s forge ahead. What are we looking for down here? I believe I was promised explosions.”

Tifa hides her chuckle, but Aerith does not. They approach the hole in the sewer wall with caution, and Leslie hangs back, directing from beside Tifa while Aerith and Jessie take point.

Jessie leads Aerith out, pistol drawn, and Tifa says, “If Corneo survived, he’s got a hideaway down here. Leslie’s looking for information only the Don had.”

“Or has,” he says.

“We think he’s still alive?” Aerith says, doubt in her eyes.

Tifa’s fists clench into knuckles and the blades pop out from the motion, as designed. Wicked razors that will help her end fights faster, when needed. “For his sake, he better not defy those odds.”

“You don’t get to be the mob boss of a place like the Wall Market if you’re easy to kill,” Jessie says. “Just saying.”

Aerith says, “I’m glad we’re all so sure the slimy snake is still… slithering around. The metaphor broke down pretty quick.” Tifa grimaces at the poor joke. 

The tunnels of the sewers have certainly seen better days. The lights flicker on and off, a constant struggle to remain in operation. Leslie leads them down several long tunnels: some they have to climb over debris, others they can walk through because of the previous clearing work her people did. There’s even a place where the channel gates malfunction and keep opening and closing, providing an endless rush of water that would sweep them off their feet if they tried to cross to the other side. Leslie leads them to a corner of this chamber, indicating that there’s a path through broken chunks of the wall, but they’ll have to crawl through some unsavory stuff, to proceed.

Tifa runs her flashlight across the rushing water and the gap between this side of the sewer walkway and the one they’re trying to get to. Debris--large, flat, and probably good for floating--sits in a pile, and Tifa has an idea.

“How long will that take to crawl through?” she asks.

Leslie considers. “Probably about ten minutes to get through, navigate the wreckage on the other side, and get across back to here.”

“Okay, what if we could stop the channel gate from malfunctioning?” Her flashlight lands on the controls on the other side of the rushing water. “It would either block the water and we could walk through, or it would open fully and fill up so we could use something to float across, right?”

“Yeah, but how are we getting over--”

Tifa doesn’t wait. She gauges the distance and sprints the few feet she has on this side, launching herself across the channel, landing smoothly on the other side as she jogs to a stop before colliding with the wall.

Aerith claps at the display, and Tifa dusts herself off. “Give me a moment,” she calls, feeling good that she gets to exercise her abilities.

She investigates the control console, but it’s sparking dangerously and she’s afraid to touch it. “I might not be able to do anything with this!” she yells back. Then she remembers that Cloud had materia that could make lightning. Lightning is power and this thing could be overloaded.

“Aerith, you have that lightning materia?”

“Sure, you want me to electrocute everyone?”

“I want you to hit this control mechanism and see if you can short it out.”

Aerith’s eyes squint and she says, “It’s kind of far away. You might want to back up.”

Tifa does as directed and nods to the group on the other side. Aerith holds a green orb out in her palm, directing it at the controls. A brilliant white flash with a crackling sizzle erupts from her hand, sparking out across the water and diffusing slightly as it grabs at everything in its path. But it strikes the console, and Tifa covers her eyes as the spark catches the console on fire, and it whirs up violently for a second as it overloads, and then falls still. The gate, in its half-open position, allows the water to equalize. 

Aerith nods at the job done, and Jessie claps her on the back in congratulations. Tifa waves her approval and watches what the water does. A useful woman, for certain.

The water, unfortunately, equalizes at about half the height of the channel. Wherever the water is supposed to go seems to be blocked up or broken, slowing its draining away. They could swim through the now-stagnant wastewater, or attempt to crawl onto the debris Tifa investigates now. 

Only they don’t have the chance for further discussion as some kind of angry burble sounds from the other side of the open gate, and several large aquatic monsters, like giant humanoid frogs with tridents, jettison into the open space, growling their burbling anger at the party.

“Heads up, time to fight!” Tifa calls. Her yell alerts the creatures to her all alone on her side of the channel, and she grins as they leap from the water to land all around her, backing her into a corner. She activates the razor knuckles and charges at the creatures while she’s dimly aware that Jessie and Aerith are mounting a ranged offense on the other side of the channel.

The one she charges at leaps backwards into the water, anticipating her movement, and she has to drop back from the other two lancing their tridents out at her. She deflects with her razor knuckles and twists away from the first, then bends back as the second one pierces the air where her chest was a fraction of a second ago. 

She grabs the trident and yanks, pulling the creature off-balance and lifting her back into a defensive stance, where she pistons out a kick at the creature’s knee, snapping the leg at an awkward angle. It drops, burbling out a pained cry, and she roundhouse kicks it into its companion before they can recover. Several more swarm out from under the gate, joining the action and the other one as it also leaps back up to engage. Two of them drop under the water, preparing to dive out, but suddenly the surface of the wastewater freezes over. Tifa glances at Aerith and the woman winks at her across the channel, then has to dance back as another of the creatures bounds up and shoots some kind of water jet from its mouth at the place she was just standing. 

Two others leap onto Jessie and Aerith’s side while Leslie retreats to safety, and another one hops out onto Tifa’s side, putting it at three creatures on each side. The third one on Tifa’s side is not holding a trident, but some kind of murky, moss-covered staff, and begins chanting in its burbling language. These are not people, but they’re also not mindless monsters. Something else, something corrupt.

But Tifa can’t hold back if she hopes to survive this.

The wizard frog gathers energies from the staff, and just like Aerith, an elemental force rockets from its body, a torrent of flame that Tifa can’t hope to dodge. She throws her arms across her face and waits for agony and death, but the flames gutter and die as they ripple across her. The bangle with the fire materia in it, with the teal coloring because of that other blue one, pulses gently. Tifa grins. Aerith made her fireproof, and the creature looks confused that he’s not halfway to roast human.

Tifa doesn’t give it a chance to try again. Across the channel, Jessie and Aerith fight back to back, swinging staff and shooting pistols. One of Jessie’s grenades goes off, knocking one of the creatures back into a wall to kill it. Tifa rushes at the wizard frog, punching so that the razor knuckles slice across its skin, shredding it and putting it out of commission. Green ichor splashes out and over her face, hot and righteous. Her left blades get caught in its ribcage and she lifts her leg up, piston kicking it off the blade and into the frozen water below. It cracks the thin skein of ice as it plummets into the water. The other two recover and charge at Tifa. 

In a moment of inspiration, she concentrates on her fire materia, the way Aerith taught her the night before. A small orb of fire ejects out of her palms, not enough to do any harm, and she curses under her breath as the creatures tackle her. One gets a grazing strike across the leg with a trident, biting painfully into her calf, while the other’s horrible breath washes over her face, trying to bite her. She roars angrily and kicks one off, tries to rake her razor knuckles across the face of the other, but it wisely shoves itself away from her, only to get a jolt of lightning in its backside from across the channel. It drops dead at Tifa’s feet.

Aerith gives Tifa a thumbs up and swings her staff at the last one on their side, bonking it across the back of the head as it charges at Jessie.

Tifa kicks off from the ground to a standing position, taking stock of her side. Only the one left, and it looks like it regrets its decision now. Well, Tifa thinks, should have thought about that before. She retracts the blades on her knuckles and pummels the creature, forcing it back. Left cross, right hook. The trident falls away and Tifa kicks it into the water. She knows this thing is out of the fight already, but she keeps it up. Each meaty thwack against the creature’s face or chest is one less hurt it can put on someone else someday. One less victim. 

No more victims, only the punished.

She rears back as the creature staggers, unable to put up a defense at all anymore. And she drives her fist so hard into its chest that she hears its ribs crack as it flies backwards, smashing into the wall. Tifa doesn’t stop, though. She cries out wordlessly as the momentum from her rocket punch carries her forward. She leaps at the creature, boot planting firmly into its stomach as it collides with the wall a second time on the way down. Dust and debris puff out around it as it drops, lays motionless.

She pants her victory, wipes sweat, and turns to see her companions watching in horror at the brutality. The remaining creatures in the water scatter.  

“No mercy,” she calls out. “Now how about you freeze this water again so you can get across?”

Notes:

The second half of the sewer adventure to come in a day or two! Tifa and Aerith may not be totally getting along, but they'll get there, eventually, right?

Chapter 10: Chasing Shadows

Summary:

Donna Lockhart, Aerith, Jessie, and Leslie find their way to Don Corneo's secret sewer hideout, and everything goes wrong immediately.

Chapter Text

Tifa waits for Aerith to comply, and after a few seconds, Aerith shakes herself out of her horrified expression and holds out her staff. The magic is slow to come this time, and Aerith visibly shakes. Maybe she’s not built for this after all. Tifa cleans herself up as best she can while she waits.

When Jessie, Aerith, and Leslie finally make it across, Tifa’s breathing has slowed to normal. “I bet we don’t run into any more trouble on the way,” she says. “These creatures tend to respond to strength.”

Jessie shakes her head. “Whatever you say, Donna Lockhart.” 

“I didn’t know you were capable of… that,” Aerith says.

“Now you do. Let’s get moving. Leslie?”

Leslie says nothing, and points to a pile of rubble. “If we can clear that a bit, the tunnels to Corneo’s hideout are just through there.”

“You could have said that while I was waiting over here.”

He hesitates. “I don’t presume to give the boss menial labor.”

Tifa grunts. “We’re all fighters down here. Even the waif.”

Aerith huffs in frustration. “Why does everyone keep calling me that?”

Jessie laughs. The tension from Tifa’s anger and violence has passed. She claps Aerith on the back jovially. “I’ll bet the boss means it just the same as the Madam. A compliment, right, Ti--Donna?”

Instead of answering, Tifa asks, “Aerith, a quick word while these two work on the wall?”

Aerith nods, unsure, and they walk a distance away. Tifa turns to her and holds up her bangle. “I’m sorry you don’t like my methods, but I do have to thank you. This completely stopped that fireball.”

Aerith frowns and forces a smile. Tifa doesn’t need the woman to like her, but she’s disappointed all the same. Aerith says, “To be honest, I wasn’t entirely sure what it would do. It’s not how I used it yesterday.”

“Well, it worked today. Cloud continues to help, doesn’t he?”

“Actually, we have the Raspberry to thank for the blue materia.” Aerith gestures at Jessie, who is arguing with Leslie over the pile of rubble, swinging a grenade around. Tifa grins. Everything looks like a demolition project when all you have are explosives.

“She’s quite the reliable girl. You two seem to have made fast friends,” Tifa says. She tries to mask the jealousy in her voice, but it comes out a little all the same.

Aerith shrugs. “She’s not really the ‘acquaintance’ type, is she? Every emotion cranked to max at all times.”

Tifa nods. “More or less. Can you show me how to do this fire thing? I tried it in the fight and it just fizzled.”

Aerith shakes her head. “You did better than Barret. Something’s wrong with his bracer, I think.” Tifa remembers Cloud trying to explain materia to him and nearly freezing his arm off. “It might just take some practice, but not when we’re in the middle of a desperate fight.”

“Desperate? We didn’t even get hurt.”

“Jessie’s got a scratch and I see some blood trickling down your leg. We need to handle these when we see them. Infection is almost certain in a sewer like this.” Aerith pulls another green orb from the satchel, holds it up to Tifa. “I can heal that, if you don’t mind.”

“I don’t.” Instead of finding a place to sit down, Tifa merely extends her leg upwards, holds onto it with one hand, and balances on the other foot. Her leg sticks up at an unnatural angle, calf flexed and exposed so that Aerith can see it better, and the woman doesn’t even hide the gaze up and down Tifa’s body. Tifa doesn’t need a translator for that look: hungry appreciation. Not that dissimilar to the way that Don Corneo looked at her. Tifa clears her throat while Aerith stares, and then Aerith blushes slightly before setting to work on using the curative materia.

A tickling coolness extends out of Aerith’s fingers and into the cut. She has a vague sense that she’s felt this before, but can’t recall where. The wound seals up and Aerith wipes the drying blood away. Tifa stares at it for a moment, runs a finger along the scar tissue, where it is sensitive to the touch. Just like the real thing. “Huh. I kinda thought it wouldn’t leave a mark.”

“It can’t undo damage, only accelerate the healing process. And um, sorry for staring.”

Tifa lowers her leg slowly and shrugs. “My former line of work had me pretty immune to the lusty looks.” She crosses her arms in front of her chest and betrays no hint of a smile. “Not usually from the pretty girls, though.”

Aerith’s face reddens slightly. “Hmm. I won’t do it again, without permission.”

Tifa catches the way she says that. Mercurial and passionate. Disapproving of her methods, but appreciative of her looks. No wonder Cloud attracted her attention so quickly. She frowns at that thought and waves an arm over to where Jessie and Leslie have settled on some manner of dangerous plan.

“We should probably stop them from bringing the rest of the sewer down on us,” Tifa says.

Aerith nods. “You’re the boss, boss.” Why does “boss” sound like “honey” from this girl’s lips? And why doesn’t Tifa hate it despite how they’re barely getting along?

“Hold up,” Tifa says, “I see you planting explosive charges everywhere.”

Jessie grins as she stands up and wipes her hands clean of the muck from the ground. “Yep! Just about ready to cause some fireworks.”

“Isn’t this gonna collapse the tunnels even more?” Aerith asks. “I like my head head-shaped, and not pancake-shaped, thanks.”

Leslie groans. “That’s what I said!”

“You didn’t say it as fun as she did,” Jessie teases. Leslie scoffs and stalks away. Jessie cocks an eyebrow at him and shrugs. “Why don’t any of the men like it when I flirt?”

“Poor taste,” Aerith suggests. “Look at that hat.” Jessie giggles, but Tifa shakes her head.

“We’re down here to find a lead on his fiancee, one of the Don’s ‘brides’ from a while back.”

Jessie’s eyes widen and then turn sad. “Oh. Well now I’m just a jerk, huh?”

“Never a jerk, Jessie,” Tifa says, squeezing Jessie’s shoulder. “If you’re sure this won’t kill us all, go ahead and blow the charges once we get to safety.”

Jessie shrugs, eyes on Leslie standing as far from the explosive charges as he can get on this side of things. “There’s a lot of structural weakness I can’t account for, but if we go far enough back, we should be fine. Most of the damage is done, after all.”

Tifa nods, gestures for them all to retreat. The water is still frozen, and they cross back over, into the tunnel, and take cover. Jessie grins at them all, presses the detonator and all is lost in cacophony and debris for a few seconds. The sewer walls rumble but hold, and out of pure reaction, Tifa throws a quick hand out to steady Aerith when she nearly topples in surprise.

The woman gasps but smiles when she doesn’t fall over. She reaches a hand up to where Tifa grips her shoulder, and Tifa pulls her hand back quickly. Aerith covers the motion by dusting herself off and says, “I’ve been around way too many explosions this week.”

Jessie slaps her playfully on the back as the dust settles and the shifting stones subside. “Should have called me the Demolisher in the arena, huh?”

“No kidding.”

Leslie shakes his head at them all. “Is it safe to go out there?”

Tifa nods at them to investigate, and they discover a room that now has debris everywhere, breaking up the frozen water where it tumbled down. But the path Leslie described is open. The way forward. The end of this mission so that Tifa can go back to planning against Shinra.

“Let’s keep going,” she says, and they fall in, cross the water, and pick their way cautiously through the opening, careful not to touch the walls or disturb anything, lest they cause another collapse.

And once Jessie is on the other side, she laughs, a sprightly thing. “Check it out, boss.”

Tifa follows her gaze, seeing first the long tunnels, mostly unbroken and in full operation, extending both directions. At the end of this hall, a stylized cartoon dog with an army helmet grins at them from the wall. It’s old, scratched, faded.

Stamp.

“Was this an old Avalanche route?” Tifa asks, smiling. Stamp. A mean name to give to Cloud, but she admits it was apt. 

Jessie says, “Must have been. Wedge could tell us for certain, he was familiar with the other cells.”

“Probably hasn’t been since Corneo took over a few years ago,” Leslie says. 

Tifa shrugs. “Sounds like Corneo was flipping on Avalanche cells long before we came into the picture.”

Jessie nods. “No wonder we couldn’t make any progress with criminal undergrounds undermining us.”

“It was always an uphill battle,” Tifa says. “And now they’re far bolder than ever before.” Tifa keeps wondering if maybe they’ll find something about Don Corneo that makes him make sense or humanizes him, but all they keep finding is proof that he was irredeemable. Tifa finds herself hoping the spineless man is still alive so she can finish him off properly.

Aerith says, “If he’s still down here, somehow, he probably knows we’re coming, right?”

“Explosions tend to announce that, yeah,” Jessie says.

“Then we should hurry,” Tifa says, and Leslie leads them along the tunnels until they reach a small, unassuming blue door that looks like it was probably a service entrance at some point.

“I think this is it,” Leslie says. He tries the crossbar but the door doesn’t open. “Yeah, locked. Okay, I have keys. If he’s in here, he might let me approach him alone. If I can get some info out of him before whatever you do, that would be ideal.” He begins trying the keys on a large keyring. Administrators are the most dangerous person to have betray you, it turns out.

Tifa nods. Down the tunnel and around a corner is an alcove that looks like it was a small break area with an old vending machine, a table, and some folding chairs. All moldy and dusty from disuse. The tunnel continues on for a while beyond that until there is more wreckage farther on, blocking them. But there is another door at the far end, also locked. 

Tifa says, “Jessie, Aerith, situate yourselves down the hall. If he’s in there and he tries to run, you might be able to stop him. Do not give him any mercy. He deserves none of it.”

“I’ll kneecap him if I have to,” Jessie says grimly, and Aerith merely nods, lips pursed together in an unreadable expression that Tifa thinks might be disapproval. But fuck her if she thinks he’s worth keeping alive. 

“No mercy, Aerith,” she reiterates, and the woman turns away, waving a hand dismissively while her long braid whips behind her.

“I heard you the first time. He won’t get away, Donna .” Tifa doesn’t like how Aerith says her title, but there’s no time to make an example. Not when Corneo might be alive.

The lock clicks as the other two women get into position. Leslie holds a finger to his lips for silence and eases the door open, steps inside, and closes the door behind him. Tifa has a desperately paranoid moment where she expects the door to lock, for Leslie’s true loyalty to show through, but after a couple of seconds, the door eases back open and he waves a hand through. Tifa comes in after him, and now he locks the door behind her. One less avenue for Corneo to run easily.

This is a small antechamber, packed to the stone roof with more draperies and crates, many of them Wutai in style. The Don was a hoarder even worse than Tifa thought. Another door on the other side of this small chamber is cracked open, light shining through it.

Leslie whispers, “I think he’s here. I don’t know how he lived through his pet or how he got here after the tunnels were collapsed, but I’ll be damned if I don’t think I hear him in there rummaging around.”

Tifa says, “You go in, you try to get him to trust you, and find out what you can. If it goes south, I’ll come in and subdue him.”

“Not kill him, right?”

“Not at first. We had a deal, and if he can tell you where your fiancee is, you deserve to know.” Tifa doesn’t have the heart to tell him that she’s pretty sure the former Don fed them to his “pet” down here.

Leslie nods. “Okay, I’m going in.”

He approaches the door and eases it open. Tifa stands on the other side of the door, hidden from view as he steps through and leaves it cracked open.

“Don Corneo?” he calls. “Are you here, Don? It’s Leslie. I finally got free and came to check on you.”

Tifa can see through the crack in the door that it’s a large space, probably designed as flooding overflow, but has been used recently to continue storing the Don’s ill-gotten treasures. Barrels and paintings, crates and clothing: a regular smorgasbord of expensive items litter the area. Leslie walks around some stacked-up crates, lost from her sight.

And then she hears a voice. That weasely, husky voice that sends chills down her spine and tenses up every muscle in her body starting with her fists.

“Leslie? My boy, it’s good to see you. It would have been better a week ago when the bitch tossed me down the chute.”

“I had to play the role or she’d have killed me, too, Don,” Leslie says. “But we’ve taken control of your mansion and have her strapped back down, guarded constantly.”

A delighted laugh comes from Don Corneo and he says, “Ohhhhoho, you don’t say? I told that silly little slum ditch I’d take care of her, and now I still get to. I was down here working out a way to get a message to Shinra, to let them know what had happened.”

Tifa wants to end this man. She can’t believe he lived through the choking and the fall. But she waits. Give Leslie time to learn where his fiancee is, if he can.

“Well, now you don’t have to. We’ve had to keep Scotch off her while we looked for you, but she’s there, and we can go back any time.”

There’s silence for a few seconds, and Tifa’s already tensed muscles practically vibrate as she waits to hear his response. Then Corneo says, “Did you come down here alone?”

“No, Don, your men are in the tunnel outside. I wasn’t sure what I’d find in here, so I left them outside in case it was bad.”

“Hm, yes, probably wise. I’m a little ripe and it wouldn’t do for them all to see me like this.”

“Don…” Leslie says, “Since I’ve found you, would it be fair to ask where my fiancee is? Where did you send her?”

Silence again for several seconds, and then Don Corneo grunts as a loud thud sounds from inside. Leslie cries out and another thud follows. Tifa doesn’t wait. She pulls the door open and rushes in, only to see Don Corneo--red robes tattered and stained--grin at her from another doorway on the far end of the chamber. His neck is bruised and swollen even a week later, but he’s alive and well. He points a big golden pistol at her and fires.

Tifa throws herself to safety behind a crate as the bullet spangs off the stone behind her while the door slams. Tifa moves to chase, but more bullets come flying through the metal door, peppering everywhere around Tifa’s cover. She holds off, hating to trust Aerith and Jessie with capturing him, but she can’t give chase if he’s waiting to shoot her. That reckless maneuver worked once, but she’s pretty sure he won’t miss a second time if he’s got time to aim the gun at her.

The shooting stops and Tifa stands, ready to sprint again, but a loud roar and rumble throws her off-balance. She follows the sound into the upper reaches of this chamber, and screams as a shadow descends.

*****

Aerith stands at the ready outside the second door they found, staff held in front of her defensively, waiting for something to happen. She’s angry at herself for how she feels about Tifa despite seeing how violent Tifa’s willing to be. Unnecessarily brutal. If Don Corneo is alive, she’s pretty sure Tifa is going to cremate him while he’s alive, and Aerith can’t stomach that.

A shout, gunfire, and Aerith’s adrenaline spikes instantly. She holds the staff up high as she hears shuffling on the other side of the door, and prepares to swing. The door bursts open and a shabby, smelly man barrels out of the room and into her before she can react. Their eyes meet for the briefest moment as his go from panic to lust and back to panic. Aerith falls backwards, and he rips the staff from her grasp, then turns and darts down the tunnel. Towards Jessie.

Aerith scrambles to her feet, rubbing her backside as she gives chase. This has to be Corneo, doesn’t it? Suddenly all her misgivings about Tifa and what she intends to do to him are gone. He can’t get away, because that would upset Tifa, and she wants nothing more than to keep Tifa happy. 

He makes it past the break area, then rounds the corner and vanishes from sight. More gunfire ensues, most likely Jessie and Corneo standing off. Aerith, without her staff and unwilling to use the elemental materia at her disposal just yet, rushes forward. She grabs the first thing she sees from the break area and keeps running, checks the corner where Corneo disappeared, and finds him huddled behind a small alcove, firing blindly towards Jessie, who fires back.

Jessie clocks Aerith at the corner, and stops firing. Aerith runs forward as Corneo is distracted by the ceasefire, peeking out to see if he killed Jessie. Aerith yells, “Hey asshole!” and swings the folding chair over her head, driving it into his face as he turns with wide, panicked eyes. She’s not a soldier, but she knows never to leave an enemy at her back. Which means Corneo must have decided she was too scrawny to be a problem. Serves him right.

He collapses to the ground, gun and staff clattering harmlessly away. Aerith pants and drops the chair on his unconscious, slumped form on the ground, giving a thumbs up to Jessie.

But before they can celebrate their victory, Tifa cries out from the other room, while a horrific roar shakes all the stone and pierces their ears painfully. Jessie waves to Aerith and Aerith scoops up her staff, kicks Don Corneo in the side for good measure, and joins Jessie rushing to help Tifa.

Hopefully Don Corneo stays knocked out long enough for them to come back and secure him.

Jessie hits the door, where it doesn’t budge. “Oh, shit, they locked it behind them. Cover your ears.”

Aerith does as directed as Jessie points her pistol at the locking mechanism, then fires several times to break it open. It releases its lock and they rush inside, through a smaller chamber chock full of boxes and draperies, and gasp at what they find at the other door.

Tifa is at the center of a large chamber while a giant bluish-green monster, ragged skin and pig face, smashes fists larger than her against the ground. Tifa dodges left and right, avoiding the strikes, but there are giant metal shackles with loose chains arounds its massive wrists, and he swings these at her, knocking her back dangerously close to the edge of the room, where it drops off into rushing water.

With a brief second to react, Aerith rushes to Tifa and stops her from pinwheeling backwards any farther, while Jessie grabs Leslie’s unconscious body and drags him to safety out of the room. Tifa spares a quick glance for Aerith, nods her thanks, and they stand side-by-side ready for whatever the beast does next. The creature rears back, its horns glowing an ominous white, while its tail with a spiked end like a morning star swings about wildly, knocking crates and clothing all over the place. 

One of the large crates slides over to the door Jessie just pulled Leslie through, blocking it off. Another flies over to the edge, crashing into pieces against the wall before tumbling into the rushing water. Several smaller creatures dart out of the water at this disturbance, little lizard pig things like the big one in front of them, only about a third the size of the women. The creature’s spawn? They hiss and snarl and run around, picking up broken boards and shrapnel from the room to wield as weapons before rushing forward. 

“Deal with the little ones!” Tifa whispers as she charges back at the monster. The beast swipes a giant fist and Tifa leaps over it, uses it as a platform to leap higher and roundhouse kick the creature’s face, which spins it in place while Tifa lands underneath it, rolls back up into an offensive posture, and slides her razor knuckles out before tearing into the creature’s leg. It roars and kicks out, then leaps backwards, one leg shredded and weeping a dark, ugly blood. 

Aerith dodges away from one of the little ones, then swings her staff out at it, knocking it into the water while another leaps at her back, biting at her neck. She cries out from the teeth sinking into the flesh of her neck and shoulder, and bats the creature with her staff as best she can while getting an eye on the rest of the little monsters closing in. The creature falls from her back after a well-placed thwack, and she nearly drops in relief. With no time to recover or react, Aerith watches Tifa duck under a massive tail swipe, barely avoiding the wicked spikes before the big beast rears back and swings a giant fist at her. Tifa throws up her hands to block, but there’s no blocking this creature’s strikes. She goes flying backwards, twists in the air and slides into a crouched landing, her razor knuckles sparking off the stone as she stops and clutches at her forearms with anger and agony in her nearly-red eyes. 

Aerith concentrates on her materia, raises her staff, and jolts of lightning arc out towards three of the little ones. The first one squeals as it simply falls over dead with the scent of ozone and scorched pig flesh, while the other two leap to safety. The one she knocked into the water leaps back out, going for her throat, but she ducks and kicks at the creature as it lands. Her kicks aren’t as powerful as Tifa’s by a long stretch, but she manages to throttle it and knock it into one of the others that her lightning missed.

The big monster drops into a crouch, while its horns glow and it prepares to charge. Aerith yells, “Look out!” but the beast isn’t paying attention to Tifa anymore. Not after Aerith murdered one of its children. Tifa curses and sprints, but the big beast takes one large leap forward as it charges at Aerith. She is not expecting this massive beast to move so quickly, and she doesn’t have time to jump out of the way or try to stagger it with magic. She holds up her staff in a futile, warding gesture as it bears down, horns ready to impale her. 

And just as it is about to skewer her, Tifa’s feet smash into the beast’s head, throwing it off just enough that Aerith jumps free, and uses that moment to try and poison the beast, to slow it down and give them an edge like the Hell House fight. But the green, noxious materia wafts over the beast without effect, and it merely shakes its head of dizziness while Tifa and Aerith back up together.

“This isn’t going super great,” Aerith says while Tifa punches a little beast away without much effort.

“It was supposed to be focused on me!” Tifa hisses. “I could have dodged that charge.”

Aerith shrugs. “Sure you could. I don’t like seeing people turned into hood ornaments, though. What’s the plan now?”

Tifa laughs at the hood ornaments comment despite the seriousness of their situation, and then her face goes grim and serious again. “Maybe you should run.”

“Like hell!”

“Find Jessie and I’ll finish this.” Aerith opens her mouth to argue, but the beast recovers and roars again, a piercing rumble that takes Aerith and Tifa to their knees clutching their ears. And then… something else happens. The rumble continues after its roar fades, and the creature’s horns pulse and glow brighter. 

The small beasts scatter and dive back into the water, while the big monster leaps up to a side channel, and Aerith would swear it’s laughing the way its throat ululates. The rumble grows stronger, and then suddenly geysers of sewer water come gushing out of pipes high in the walls, flooding the room with fast-rushing waves. 

“Not fair, he controls water, too!” Aerith yells over the rushing torrents. The two women stand back-to-back, not sure what to do, but Tifa grabs Aerith by her wounded shoulder, yanking her backwards.

Aerith cries out in pain, but there’s no time for anything else. Tifa yells, “Jump when I say jump!” as they run for one of the last remaining crates in the room. Aerith can’t do anything but nod, winded and hurt.

Tifa sprints ahead slightly and yells “Jump!” as they near the crate, which is taller than the two of them combined, and Aerith sees Tifa’s eyes, hard but resolute. Sees her hands planted to boost her. Aerith chooses to trust Tifa in that moment, and she leaps.

Tifa’s hands move faster than Aerith can even see, and she locks her knees as Tifa boosts her into the air, jumping again off Tifa’s hands for maximum upwards momentum. Aerith flies up, weightless and flailing, hair streaming out behind her as she screams and lands roughly on the top of the crate just as the rushing water slams into the wood and sends it spinning. Aerith nearly loses her hold on the crate while it careers towards the water, and the geysers continue to shoot water everywhere.

“Tifa!” Aerith yells, not knowing what happened to the woman who just rescued her. Then a loud k’thunk sounds from behind her and she glances back to see Tifa’s head pop up above the edge of the crate, grinning. One of her razor knuckles is dug into the side of the crate, and she rides the side while it spins and smashes into a wall. This crate is sturdier than the others, and it doesn’t splinter and fall apart, only cracks a little. Aerith loses her balance and collides with the stone wall, nearly falling off the crate, but she struggles to her feet and yells, “Get clear of the water!”

She holds her staff high, concentrating on the materia inside, and prays for that surge of extra strength she’s been able to call on before. While Tifa vaults over the side of the crate to stand beside Aerith, lightning ripples and arcs along the staff before it fires out in all directions, a web of deadly electricity, scattering out across the room and all the rushing water.

Screams echo over the geysers as Aerith channels the pure energy of the planet through this materia. She realizes she’s screaming, but she’s not alone. The wails of the little beasts join her in a terrible chorus as they’re all electrocuted. They jitter and seize on the surface of the water while the geysers subside, and the water slowly lowers as it drains away.

Aerith’s channeled lightning slows to a trickle, and her legs weaken as she drops. Tifa catches her, though, steadies her. Holds her upright and smiles that vicious smile.

“You’ve done it now, the mother’s pissed,” she says, pointing up at the enraged monster yelling in some guttural tongue while the water slowly lowers around them.

“Yeah, well,” Aerith says, panting, “I didn’t know it was bring your kids to work day.”

Tifa snorts laughter, but their moment of levity doesn’t last long. With the lightning and the water gone, the beast beats its fists against its chest and roars.

“Time to move,” Tifa says, lifting Aerith with a little effort into a princess carry. Aerith is too weak to protest or fight it--if she even wanted to--and she merely clings to Tifa with a rush of heat to her face as the fighter hops from the crate at the same moment the beast leaps back down, coming down on top of the crate as Tifa and Aerith land safely a few feet away. The crate shatters into pieces, gold and silver objects flinging every which way from inside it. The only object that remains unbroken in this chamber is the crate that blocks off Jessie and Leslie. Too bad the rushing water didn’t dislodge it.

Tifa whispers, “Stand behind me, if you can. I’ll keep it occupied.” She releases Aerith, and Aerith tries to stand on her own as Tifa moves away to put distance between them. The sudden absence of Tifa nearby, close and warm, pressed against her, drives Aerith’s fatigue deeper. She manages, barely, to hold herself upright. The only thing standing between her and a grim fate at this moment is an angry mob boss hellbent on vengeance, and Aerith suddenly likes her chances.

The red materia pulses and glows in Aerith’s bangle. She doesn’t know if she can manage anything else at this moment, but if she can help, she will. She concentrates on the Carbuncle materia, willing it to come out, to protect Tifa. To do whatever it is that it does, if only it will save this woman in front of her. This nightmare of anger who chooses to protect others.

A little white creature spins out of the bangle, cute and furry like some kind of fox, but with a shining red jewel in its large forehead. It lands next to Aerith, twists and coils around her legs like a cat. Aerith collapses to her knees as this little creature, this Carbuncle, radiates out magic. It pulses and tingles with a slight red glow.

The monster recovers from its leap and spins to find Aerith. Its tail flails wildly as it charges at her. It swipes at Tifa as it comes, trying to simply knock her from the path, but Tifa stands her ground. She plants her feet into a defensive posture, and rears back with her razor knuckle for one momentous punch. And that would be futile against such a monster, if not for the energy that radiates out of the little fox. Tifa’s punch connects with the creature’s chest as it barrels over her, shoving her back. The collision almost sends out shockwaves. The energy radiating out of Carbuncle rebuffs that momentum, fills Tifa with renewed vigor, and lets her stop the beast in its tracks in one massive, skidding halt. Its chest bleeds with a surface wound from the blades still sticking out of its muscle, broken off from Tifa’s knuckles.

It roars its frustration and rears back to pummel Tifa with its giant fists, but Tifa doesn’t wait. She crouches down, unknowingly empowered by the light of this Carbuncle, and launches upward with her other razored fist held high. This bladed uppercut connects with the beast under its chin, and explodes with renewed force. Both the beast and Tifa launch higher, harder, propelled by the augmentation of this little fox beast Aerith summoned. The monster smashes against the ceiling of this chamber, its horns shattering on impact, Tifa’s fist driving deep into the creature’s soft neck and up into its brain.

It is dead before it falls, but fall it does. Tifa kicks off the beast and lands in a crouch with mere moments before it will follow. Her impact cracks the stone, but the Carbuncle energy radiates off of her, protecting her. She leaps for Aerith in the split second before the beast collides with the ground, and they roll to safety while it topples and slumps to the ground, cracks the stone underneath, debris from the ceiling raining down all around them.

And for the space of a breath, all is calm, all is quiet. Aerith heaves exhausted breath, staring into Tifa’s amazed eyes. Then an explosion rips out of the last remaining crate, sending more shards of wood and decorative Wutai furniture flying.

Aerith and Tifa cover each other while the debris rains down. Aerith’s body is on top of Tifa’s, and they can’t do much more than shelter and wait for it to stop.

When it’s over, Aerith glances around. Jessie comes running out of the room, gun drawn, grenade at the ready. She stops dead in her tracks when she sees the dead beast and the rubble, the little bodies of the floating creatures scattered around, and the absolute wreck of the room.

“All okay?” Jessie asks, coming over to the pair of them. 

Tifa says, “I’ll live if Carbuncle here gets off me.” Aerith blushes as she realizes they’re chest to chest, and rolls off the woman.

Soot, sweat, blood, and gore cover both women, but they’re alive. Aerith says, “I guess you’ve earned the right to call me that.”

“You used the Carbuncle materia, didn’t you?” Tifa asks.

“I don’t know what you’re talking about. You punched that monster into the ceiling all by yourself.” She grins, though, and Tifa smiles back. Aerith looks around the room for the little fox, but it appears to have done its duty and fled. The red materia glows dully, spent, from within her silver bangle. Will it come back over time? She has no idea. She whispers thanks to it all the same.

“This is a hell of a scene,” Jessie says, surveying the wreckage and the dead animal. “And phew, this guy reeks.” Despite that, Jessie climbs on top of the beast and looks around. “Sorry I missed it, must have been a hell of a fight.”

“Next time, I’ll go for the unconscious dude,” Aerith says, then gasps. “Did Corneo--”

“Gone by the time I got Leslie situated. Leslie’s okay, but Corneo got away. Sorry about that.”

Tifa sighs, but shakes her head and says, “We had more pressing matters.”

Aerith stands up and begins wringing water from her dress. Though they avoided the worst of the torrential geysers, the stone floor is soaked. Her whole body aches, and the wounds in her neck and shoulder cry for attention, but she couldn’t do anything about it immediately anyway, as weak as she is. 

She says, “I hit him really hard, but I guess all that padding around his brain must be good for something after all.”

Tifa grimaces as she gets to her feet and likewise cleans up a bit. Aerith doesn’t know Tifa well yet, but there’s more than anger in her eyes right now. There’s fear crying for attention, but Tifa shoves it away, shakes her head and sighs. 

“We’ll get him next time, I’m sure. For right now, we should wake Leslie up and see if we can find anything in the other rooms that might indicate where Corneo put his past conquests.”

Aerith nods, but a sudden cracking noise from above catches all their attentions. The ceiling rumbles where the great beast’s horns cracked loose and small stones shake free, before the whole thing begins to tumble.

Aerith yells, “Jessie, it’s coming down!” but when Jessie goes to leap off the great beast, those damnable shadows swarm up out of the ground, buffeting her. Why are they here, suddenly? Helping or hurting, but always causing problems. Jessie falls backwards and out of sight behind the monster as the stones tumble and batter the creature and the surrounding stone. The shadowy wraiths vanish into the ceiling as it tumbles, and the ground cracks greater than before. The whole chamber starts to collapse from the center outwards. Tifa runs forward to save her friend, but Aerith grabs her wrist and pulls her back just before another ceiling stone drops and splinters more of the ground where Tifa was running. They have no choice but to retreat as a hole opens up in the chamber, swallowing the debris, the beast, and Jessie. Water trickles over the edges of this new pit into darkness while Tifa shoves Aerith away, running to the edge of the hole and peering down. 

“Jessie! Can you hear me?” Tifa yells, but there is no answer. Only the hardscrabble sound of rocks tumbling and sliding to a stop in a dark distance down below. Aerith joins Tifa at the edge of the pit, wondering if Jessie could possibly have survived that.

“Did you see that?” Tifa asks. “What were those black things that came out of the ground?”

Aerith’s heart seizes, her chest tightens. “Y-you saw them, too?”

“Hell yes, I saw them! What are they?”

Aerith shakes her head. A curious feeling grips her. There’s not just darkness in that pit, but some kind of soft light from below. The longer Aerith stares at the light within the darkness, the more she feels the urgency of it. It needs something, that darkness. It calls to Aerith with fear and pain. And she’s afraid she must go down into that pit, lest the shadow creatures force her into it anyway.

“We have to go down there,” Aerith says.

“Obviously, we’re going to find Jessie.” Tifa casts around for something that will help them get into the pit, to get to the bottom of it, however deep it is.

“There’s something else,” Aerith says. “I don’t know if Jessie survived that, but I have to go down there no matter what.”

“What are you babbling about, Aerith? Our friend just fell into a pit, and we are going to find her.”

“Yes, that, too.”

“Not ‘too’. I am not losing anyone else, do you understand me?” Tifa grips Aerith by the jacket lapels and pulls her in, stares into her eyes. Tifa’s eyes are angry, desperate, and above all, terrified. Aerith nods.

“We’ll find her, Tifa. We will.” And, she thinks, we’ll find the other thing calling to her. 

She’s so distracted by this that she hardly notices Tifa didn’t take exception to being called by her regular name and not “Donna Lockhart” like she has insisted upon.

Deeper into the earth will they go, to find Jessie and the source of this darkness tugging at Aerith’s very essence. Something terrible has gone on down there. Something only Aerith can correct. Only an Ancient. Only the Cetra.

Chapter 11: The Underground Lab

Summary:

Tifa and Aerith delve deep into the hole left by the Don's pet pig lizard, chasing any hint of Jessie being alive.

Chapters 12 and 13 will post up later this week.

Notes:

(See the end of the chapter for notes.)

Chapter Text

Leslie cranes his neck over the deep, dark hole in the chamber. He holds his head and shakes it, still hurt from the battering Corneo gave him. “Are you sure you’re going down there?”

Tifa’s calmed now that they’ve made the decision to go down, and roused Leslie enough to tell him what they are planning. Tifa doesn’t even bother answering that question, and instead says, “You’re not coming. You should go back to the mansion and get reinforcements. Search the debris and clutter in these other chambers, maybe figure out where Corneo went.”

“Sounds like a plan. How are you getting down there without a rope?”

Aerith says, peering down the opposite side of the hole, “I think I see some stuff we could jump down to. Might not be stable, but the junk piles in the slums are not stable and we use them okay.”

“See? We’re fine,” Tifa says, knowing how crazy it is that they’ll just… leap into this hole and hope for the best. But Tifa knows how fast an injury can lead to death, if untreated. And what a way for Jessie to go, after surviving bombing missions and Platefall. No, if she’s down there, they’ll find her. They’ll help her. 

There’s no other choice. No other outcome Tifa can accept.

Leslie nods. “Well, I hope you don’t die, for what it’s worth. The Wall Market will eat itself alive if a power grab happens where the Trio knows about it.”

Tifa waves that away. “We’re going, and we’ll be safe when we can. And for what it’s worth to you, I hope you find some evidence of Merle.”

“Me too, boss. Good luck.” He holds out his free hand, then retracts it and simply half-bows to her.

Tifa nods back and he retreats. She glances back at Aerith, whose eyes dart around, mapping out a safe path down the hole. Hopefully.

“You ready, Carbuncle?”

“Not really, but let’s do it.”

“Second thoughts?” Tifa walks around the hole and stands beside Aerith, nudging her non-injured shoulder. The other has stopped bleeding from where the little pig lizard bit her, but it looks painful all the same.

Aerith shakes her head. “That would require first thoughts, wouldn’t it?” She smiles, but it’s pained. 

“Why don’t you heal yourself before we go down? You might need that arm, especially as we descend.”

“I don’t want to waste the energy. Might need it for Jessie.”

“Won’t do any good if you’re dead at the bottom. Ever been out of the city?”

Aerith shakes her head. “Only when I was really little and we first came to Midgar. Why?”

“Well, there’s a common saying on those long trips. Take care of yourself before you help others, in case of emergency.”

“Because you can’t help if you’re dead?” Aerith guesses. Tifa nods. “Well… maybe I can do a little. Just enough so I can use it if it comes down to it.”

“Good. I’d hate to lose you.”

Aerith’s lip turns up into a quirky little grin, and Tifa scoffs. “Just… hurry up. Time’s wasting.”

“Aye aye, Donna Lockhart.” It takes about a minute, and Aerith’s stomach grumbles when she’s done, but Tifa watches the wound seal up and scar over, same as her leg had done against the fish monsters.

Tifa reaches a hand out, parting the fabric on Aerith’s shoulder to investigate the bite on both sides, running a finger over the tiny fang marks. Aerith shivers under her touch, and Tifa pulls her hand back sheepishly. “Sorry. I… wanted to make sure it was healed.”

“Uh huh. For what it’s worth,” Aerith says, “you have permission.”

Tifa turns her gaze away from this infuriating woman, and leaps down into the pit rather than face what’s going on inside her heart. Stale air whips past her face as she falls, and she uses her one remaining razor knuckle to slow her descent in the wall of this hole. It’s a mixture of dirt, clay, and stone past the sewer concrete, and her bladed glove easily catches it to slow her fall. She drops the last couple of feet onto the first outcropping of rubble, stabilizing even as the stone and dirt shifts under her. And then she waits.

After several seconds pass without it collapsing under her, Tifa fishes her flashlight out of her pouch and shines it up at the top of the hole, where Aerith stands watching, hands in front of her mouth, holding in a gasp. “Seems safe. Drop down and I’ll catch you!” Her voice echoes and the walls rumble a bit, with dirt and pebbles shifting loose and falling, but everything remains stable enough.

Only Aerith doesn’t simply fling herself into the pit, as Tifa half expects. She crawls over the edge, angling herself so that she’s above Tifa’s outcropping, and fishes around for a ledge she can use to climb down. Tifa’s flashlight searches around to help find that footing, but before Aerith can truly begin to climb down, she lets out a little squeal of terror and simply slips loose, falling through the air. Her staff somehow frees itself and falls away from her body, clattering against the walls as it plummets past Tifa deeper into the hole. 

Tifa’s heart jumps into her throat, and she crouches down for one monumental leap upwards, to catch the girl before she’s falling too fast. Aerith flails wildly, though, and instead of a heroic catch, Tifa collides with the woman in midair, and her butt knocks straight into Tifa’s stomach, whooshing all the air straight out of her in a single “Oof!” of exhalation. They tumble, limbs tangling, and fall roughly in a heap on Tifa’s tiny outcropping. The rubble gives an ungainly cracking lurch, shifting a bit from the wall, but holds.

Aerith is yelling as if they’re still falling, and Tifa struggles to draw breath, extracting herself from the woman. Everything hurts, but nothing seems to be broken. When Aerith finally realizes that they’ve landed safely, she coughs politely and helps disentangle herself.

It’s dark in the pit, the lights from above dim at this layer, and they can only see each other’s silhouettes and faint eyeshine as they stare at each other. Then Aerith chuckles, and starts to laugh. It’s high and sprightly, unrestrained, and to Tifa’s ears a little manic. Her reaction to fear and adrenaline is strange.

The outcropping cracks again, tumbles loose, and the two women clutch at the only thing they can: each other. The rubble beneath them falls, and the women fall with it, clattering and bouncing as it slides down the hole. All is chaos and confusion, and through it all Tifa holds onto Aerith, clutching her close, cradling her protectively, as if that’s going to do any good in their predicament.

The rubble smacks a wall, jarring them, and then slides down a gradual slope of debris at the bottom before coming to rest atop the carcass of the big pig lizard, half-buried under rubble. They wait for something else to go wrong, and Tifa finally releases Aerith, letting the woman sit up, face red and eyes wide.

“Well, I have no idea how we’re getting out of here, but that’s not a ride I’d like to take again,” Aerith says, fishing her staff out of the rubble.

There’s light down here, enough to see by, and they carefully extract themselves from the pile of rubble into a dusty, rusting metal corridor. And stare at the pile of dead pig lizard under all that rubble. 

How could Jessie have possibly lived through that? But no, Tifa won’t entertain that line of thought any further. Jessie’s alive.

“She’s alive,” Aerith says, dusting herself off.

“That’s the spirit. We’ll find her.” 

“No, I mean I can assure you she’s still alive.”

“How? Do you hear her? Jessie!?” Tifa calls out, but only silence and skittering stone answer her.

Aerith shrugs. “I have a sense about these things.”

“And are you going to tell me about this ‘sense’ or do I get to trust you blindly?”

“The second one, for now. We’ve got stories we aren’t ready to share, and this is tied to that.”

“Mystical woman keeps secrets, good to know.” But Tifa nods. She trusts Aerith when she says Jessie is alive. After all, Aerith can feel the life energies of materia when no one else can. Why not people? Whatever’s going on with her, she won’t hesitate to use it.

They turn from the rubble and dead beast, investigating the corridor they’ve found themselves in. It’s old, dusty, with crates and barrels stacked every which way, stamped with an older Shinra logo Tifa remembers from her days in Nibelheim. Long running lights line the walls, flickering occasionally, but still drawing Mako energy after what, a decade of disuse? This place can’t have been inhabited more recently.

Well, not by people, certainly. Creatures, definitely. A skittering noise from farther down the corridor catches Tifa’s attention, and she holds a hand up for silence. The women listen patiently, but the noises do not recur, and Tifa sighs. “Sounds like something’s down here.”

“Oh, there’s a lot down here,” Aerith says cryptically. “Are you okay after that fall?”

Aerith lost her flashlight at some point, so Tifa hands over hers and lets Aerith inspect her quickly, then she does the same for Aerith. Shallow cuts and bruising, nothing deeper. 

“Looks like we got lucky,” Tifa says.

“Let’s hope we keep getting lucky.” Aerith smiles, and then her head cocks to the side a little as if she’s heard something. She walks over to the corridor wall, back by the rubble, and taps her staff against it a few times. It rings out in a tinny echo, which--

“It’s hollow on the other side,” Tifa says, catching on. “Do you think Jessie’s on that side?”

Aerith nods thoughtfully. “Probably. When I said I needed to come down here, it was because I can feel something down here. Something rotten, and hurting. Something the planet doesn’t like.”

“You always talk about the planet.”

“It’s what I know. You punch things, I talk to the earth.”

Tifa stares. “I do more than punch things.”

Aerith shrugs at her. “Sometimes you kick.”

Tifa smiles despite herself. “We can argue about this later, after we find Jessie, and whatever this craziness you’re talking about.”

Aerith nods. “Whatever this is down here, I don’t know if we can really deal with it. Which means Jessie--”

“Jessie’s in real danger alone,” Tifa finishes for her. “Then let’s go.”

They move down the corridor after verifying there’s no way through to the other side where they think Jessie fell out. Tifa takes point with the flashlight, while Aerith holds her staff at the ready. The corridor is long and silent, and Aerith sneezes once when they kick up dust. They check a few of the crates and barrels looking for useful items. Could be curatives, food and water, anything at all. But mostly it’s old junk, technology from a bygone era, Shinra outfits and surplus storage. No weapons. No guns. No cans of food or bottles of water. 

“Makes sense Shinra would take anything really useful when they abandoned this place,” Aerith says. “What do you think it was?”

Tifa shrugs as they walk. Something pings her memory, but she can’t recall it quite yet. “Sure seems like a secret Shinra thing.”

“Like a lab?” Aerith’s voice rises a little as she says this, almost fearful.

“I guess. They had to develop their technology somewhere.”

The skittering noises begin again, all around them. The corridor hasn’t changed much, except the dust isn’t as thick around here. Tifa holds a hand up again for quiet, and Aerith closes her mouth on whatever she’s about to say. There’s a bend in the corridor, and the sound comes from beyond the bend. Tifa creeps forward, flashlight steady on the new sections of the metal hallway as it is revealed, and then a furry flash of eyes darts away deeper into the tunnel.

“Maybe they’ll keep running away,” Tifa says. “Looked like rats anyway. Nothing major.”

“Big rats,” Aerith says. 

“Not like they’re doom rats. We’d really be in trouble then.”

“That wasn’t a doom rat?” Aerith asks suspiciously. “It wasn’t any bigger than the biggest I’ve seen in the slums.”

They keep moving until they find an opening, and Tifa holds her hands out as an example. “Regular rats.” Widens her hands a little so they’re about the size of her waist. “Street and sewer rats.” Widens her hands again as far as they’ll go, more than five feet. “Doom rats.”

“That’s… that’s not real, is it?”

“They’re kind of the alphas,” Tifa says. “They’re rare, but we’ve seen them in the slums. They’re warped by Mako, totally insane. That’s what the Neighborhood Watch was for in Sector 7.”

“Doom rats…” Aerith says, trailing off. “I guess I just thought I’d seen one before, but not if there are rats the size of a big dog out there.”

“Consider yourself lucky. Biggs got bit by one once, and it got infected really fast. He nearly lost the arm.”

Aerith shivers. “No thank you.”

“If we’d had you, or even Cloud, maybe it would have been different. A lot would have been different.”

“The curative materia isn’t a miracle.”

“Isn’t it?” As they walk, it’s apparent that they’re encroaching on rat territory, as nests inside boxes lay abandoned, and the stink of animal den permeates the air.

“It’s a form of energy, like anything the Lifestream does. It creates life, it powers vehicles, it heats our homes. And when it becomes materia, it is serving a purpose.”

“Even the red ones that have names and feel alive?” Tifa asks. 

“Almost especially those.”

“Huh.” She doesn’t really know anything about materia, she’s realizing. There’s a vague memory she has about it, where Zack Fair and Sephiroth talked about it when they discovered a pure crystal of it out in the wild. 

“So it forms naturally sometimes, but all this stuff that Cloud had was made on purpose, like, industrially.”

“Likely.” Aerith holds her staff up, activating the wind materia in it to gently blow away from them, pushing the smell away. “It doesn’t take much to activate gentle winds.”

“Feels good.”

The corridor comes to an end, and they finally find a doorway that’s cracked open slightly. The rats are nowhere to be seen at this point, having continued to retreat into a large burrow against a cratered wall. Fortunately it’s in the opposite of the direction they want to go, and the door is on the same side they think Jessie is.

“Not sure what we’ll find in here,” Tifa says, grabbing the metal door and pulling on it. It looks like it was designed to unlatch electronically, and part of it is still attached to that mechanism. The rest has been busted out of its frame by something, probably something big, and Aerith grabs Tifa’s shoulder before she makes too much noise. 

Tifa shrugs the arm off. “We’re going in. If whatever did that is in there, it’s probably dead now. Not much to live on down here.”

“The rats seem to do okay.”

“Don’t they always?”

Aerith persists, though. “We should make some noise while the door is intact.”

Tifa huffs, annoyed. “I wish you wouldn’t make sense so I could ignore it.”

Aerith opens her mouth to say something, but Tifa spins and kicks the wall next to the door, emitting a massively loud and hollow clang that reverberates all around them. Then she goes to the door and peeks through it. It’s dark on the other side, with some faint illumination on the far side, a few white glows almost floating around. The really far side. 

“Jessie!” Tifa calls, rapping her one remaining razor knuckle on the metal door. “If you’re out there, let us know!” Her voice is tinny and echoes away into nothing.

A nothing that becomes a rumble, and a roar of some beast far in the distance, that creeps into Tifa’s body and activates all her fear responses, like prey caught out by a predator. She freezes, then lets herself be pulled away by Aerith. 

“Well, now we know something’s down here, for sure.”

“Yes, how lovely that we know,” Tifa whispers. Inside the burrow, chittering and squealing erupt, probably also in response to that roar, but they stay put for now. “We have to go in there. There’s nowhere else to go.”

“I don’t have to like it!” Aerith hisses. “Okay, um, let me change my materia real quick.”

She pops out the still-dark Carbuncle from her bangle, placing it gently back into Cloud’s satchel, and withdraws another green one. “Ice and wind in the staff, lightning in the bangle,” she whispers. “That way we’re covered on the basics. Might be a good time for you to try and use that fire before we go up against something big again.”

“What, on the rats?”

Aerith shrugs. “It’s all wood and cloth in their nest. Ought to burn.”

“They didn’t do anything to us.”

“You don’t think they will if given half a chance? Scavengers kill when they think they can get away with it.”

“Doesn’t feel great,” Tifa mutters.

“You said it less than an hour ago, Donna Lockhart. No mercy.”

She did say that, didn’t she? “I like you better when you’re giving me disapproving stares.”

“I’ll disapprove all day if we get out of here with Jessie alive.”

Tifa lets out a long, slow breath. “Ugh. Fine. Do you have advice for someone who badly used materia one time?”

Aerith bites her lip and thinks. “Well, you communed with Carbuncle. It’s not that different. Just… let it tell you what it can do, and then will it do that, where you want it.”

Tifa shrugs uncomfortably, holding her gold bangle with the fire materia out in front of her. “This feels more literal than before.”

“You want fire, it can do fire. It doesn’t have to be all meditation and breathing when you just need to burn something.”

“So why didn’t it work before?”

“Doesn’t work well until it does. Barret… well, I’m not sure about him, yet. Cloud could probably use it because of his SOLDIER training. You’re somewhere in the mix.”

“Okay. Fire, let it tell me what it can do, and then… ask it to do it.”

“More or less. I’m right here, in case you catch fire or something.”

Tifa’s eyes widen. “That’s not going to happen, is it?”

Aerith grins. “Shouldn’t, but just be careful what you think while you’re channeling the power of the Lifestream.”

“Sure. No pressure, touch the essence of the planet and don’t immolate yourself. This is my day,” she mutters.

Tifa stands facing the rat nest, wondering if they’ll wait for death or fight for it. Probably fight. She concentrates on the teal coloration of her bangle’s energy circuits. On the materia within, and what it feels like. On how it feels, as if it’s alive. It’s made of Lifestream, so why couldn’t it be? And like with the Carbuncle materia, there’s a sort of response. Not a strong one, not a knowing , but acknowledgement. A little metaphorical wave: hello, what are we burning today?

Tifa smiles, can’t stop herself. “It wants to burn,” she says.

Aerith whispers from very close behind Tifa, “It’s what it was made for,” which sets Tifa’s neck hairs on end, and she loses the thread of this fire materia for a moment. 

But just a moment. It’s eager, it wants to be used. So she thinks about the rat’s nest, holds her wrist out toward it, wills the magic inside to come out.

And it does, a slight trickle of flame, guttering and weak. Like before. Tifa huffs in frustration, and Aerith urges her to try again. “We’ve got a moment. You’ll get it. I know you can.”

How does she know? How does anyone know anything about other people? How can she rely on anyone when Cloud went and died on her before keeping his promise? If even Cloud can’t do it, an elite SOLDIER, how could anyone? 

But Tifa nods. That sort of despair and desperation won’t get them anywhere, and if Aerith says Jessie is alive, Tifa has to believe it. If Aerith says Tifa can use materia, Tifa believes it.

She concentrates again, on setting the nest ablaze. Not on producing the flame, but on what she wants the flame to do. In her mind’s eye, an inferno sweeps across the corridor, ripping and chewing at the flammable nest like a voracious beast consuming everything in its path. 

The fire materia responds again, this time as a fireball scorching out of her wrist, the flame singing the fine hairs on her wrist before jettisoning into the nest, exploding in white-hot fury before it catches the rest in a blaze of orange-gold.

The rats react immediately, rushing in a mass out of the sudden pyre, defending their home or fleeing to safety. Either way, Aerith and Tifa are dangers to them, and they come, small and midsize ones before a single doom rat crashes out of the nest, flames licking its sides as it squeaks horribly while leaping for Tifa. Of course there’s a doom rat, Tifa thinks as its maw widens to bite her.

She prepares to do a backwards leaping kick to create space, but a great whoosh of wind whips past her, sharp enough to slice, throwing the beast off while completely toppling the smaller rats. Aerith yells, “I acknowledge this as a bad idea!” as she steps in front of Tifa. “I can hold them back. Get the door open!”

The increased wind forces the creatures back into the nest, igniting more than before with all the new oxygen rushing inwards. The flames explode outward, greedily sucking up all the air and burning hotter, so hot Tifa has to block her face for a moment. She nods at Aerith, who keeps the creatures held back with channeled vortexes of cutting wind. So much for conserving energy. What fools they are.

Though Tifa admires the skill and strength. Tifa managed a small fireball, but Aerith is tornadic, wind whipping her hair and clothing about her. Good luck, Carbuncle.

Tifa turns to the door. It’s a metal lock, but made of some more resistant material than the rusting walls. Tifa tries to heel stomp it, just to see if it’ll snap loose with sheer force, but all that does is vibrate painfully up her leg into her pelvis. Not even a budge in the lock.

How hot does metal need to get before it bends? Before it breaks? “Might need your help in a second!” she yells, holding her bangle out to the locking mechanism and concentrating once more. Not for a big fireball, but a cutting torch. She has no idea if this is capable of that, if she can focus the magic. But she tries it anyway. 

The bangle responds, pulling energy from the materia and from the woman. Fire arcs out of the materia in a mass of flame before guttering out. And Tifa feels drained. She’s not sure she can do that again, but in the few seconds the searing fire was on the metal, it glows red with heat. 

She glances back at Aerith, sweat whipping off the woman’s face while the rats are held at bay. Only the doom rat is pushing against it. The others are all smoldering and dead, or cowering and waiting for death. And yet the doom rat is making progress, its gruesome nails digging deep rents in the metal floor as it drags itself forward.

Tifa turns back to the lock, still red with heat, and grabs onto the broken part of the door, leveraging herself on the wall using it as a pivot point, and pulls . The door slams against the lock; the lock strains, groans, and… holds. Tifa sucks in great lungfuls of hot air, with the sweat evaporating as it forms because it’s so hot in the corridor. She drops down, looks to Aerith standing there, arms locked, holding her staff out protectively, winds whirling like a vortex from her into the doom rat. And she has an idea.

Tifa stops next to Aerith, already feeling the winds buffeting her. “Cut off the wind and freeze the lock on my mark,” she yells, and doesn’t wait for the woman to answer her. She takes a couple steps backwards, judges the distance of the doom rat, and propels herself forward like a sprinter at the starting line. She leaps past Aerith, into the vortex, yelling, “Now!”

The whirling wind takes her in its hot embrace, a cutting gale that only spares her because she rides it like the great birds of the Junon plains when they dive attack. Tifa lets it guide her toward the doom rat, trusting that Aerith is doing her job, and extends her leg out into a true tornado kick, spinning with the wind so that the rat can’t dodge away, even if it wanted to.

The doom rat--maw wide, eyes furious and terrified, body already sliced to ribbons--holds itself ready. Tifa shifts slightly at the last moment, her boot cracking against the rat’s neck instead of its dangerous mouth. Where the wind had put out its smoldering fur, it suddenly ignites back into fire, knocking the creature away from the force of Tifa’s kick, back into the flaming wreckage of its nest, where it disappears amid shrieks of pain before going silent. The shock of it was like falling from a medium height and landing on her heel, and it reverberates up through her body painfully as she collapses to the ground, vortex of wind dead. 

For a moment there are only the guttering, sucking sounds of the fire burning up the nest, matched with Tifa’s labored breath. Then something cracks and shatters behind her, but she has no time to look back. The doom rat comes flying back out, all rage and inferno, skittering forward with claws hungry for blood and growling angrily. If this thing is going to die, it’s not going down without its pound of flesh.

Tifa shuffles backward from its gnashing teeth, desperate to escape. She’s drained physically and on some deeper level from the materia, so worried about Jessie that she’s taken chances and risks despite her own warnings to Aerith earlier.

She bumps into Aerith, who stands firm next to the now open door. “Time to go.” She holds a hand out to Tifa while a huge, beautiful grin spreads across her soot-streaked face. Tifa accepts the help up and they step through the open door, pulling it shut behind them. Only “shut” is relative, since they broke the hell out of it in the process. They press their weight against the metal door, holding it in place while the doom rat slams its not insignificant weight against it, trying to break through to the tender human flesh beyond. To the source of all its sudden frustration and loss. The claw digs runnels and dents in the door, but none make it through.

Tifa and Aerith are close, holding the door, listening to the creature scream its last. Each slam causes Aerith’s eyes to shut reflexively, and for whatever reason, this is what makes Tifa smile. It’s a hard smile. Aerith the Carbuncle is some kind of amazing, yet she’s still painfully innocent and vulnerable in some ways. 

The smile is wiped away as the last efforts of the doom rat exhaust, and its slams against the door weaken before finally stopping. All the screams and burning die away shortly after, and only then does Tifa release her death grip on the door, her muscles screaming out for relief. On this side of the door, it’s cooler because the fire hasn’t spread, and sweat now pours down her face, covers her in it such that her tank top is now uncomfortably cold and wet. Aerith suffers the same as they both collapse to the ground, sliding down the door in a heap, exhausted but alive and well.

And they just sit for a minute, leaning on each other as much as the door behind them.

“That was definitely a bad idea,” Tifa says after they’ve recovered a bit.

“I wasn’t expecting a rat the size of a motorcycle.”

“I told you about them.”

“I kind of figured you were gassing me up.”

Tifa stands, offering Aerith a hand up as well, looking around at their new surroundings. Once they’re both on their feet, she shrugs her shoulder into Aerith’s side. “Flashlight over there?”

Aerith fishes the flashlight back out of her pocket and shines it in the direction Tifa motioned. The weak beam illuminates more barrels and crates, mostly undisturbed. The fluctuating, waving light they saw earlier from outside the door continues in the distance. 

“Well, all that noise we made didn’t bring the big thing down on us,” Tifa says. “Don’t know about you, but water would be nice about now.”

Aerith’s eyes light up and she digs into Cloud’s pack. It’s not massive by any stretch, but it sure did have a lot of useful stuff in it. She comes out with a small bottle, something Tifa had seen Cloud drink once after an especially intense fight in that second reactor. He said it was a SOLDIER-issue restorative.

“This work?” Aerith hands it over, and Tifa nods. “There’s only two more in here. I haven’t had time to really figure out what everything is yet, but I know this from back when Zack was my security detail.”

Zack again. Tifa pops the top on the drink; it smells strange, but not unpleasant. Like a combination of the spring fields of Nibelheim, the ocean at dusk, and a leaking Mako pipe. Tifa takes a small swig, and finds the taste similarly weird but pleasing. She downs the rest, only a couple ounces. It washes over her stomach, already rejuvenating her, and she wishes for more suddenly. 

“I could get used to that, wow.”

Aerith takes the bottle back and sniffs it. “This tastes good to you? It smells like… well, the way the air did after the reactor blew up.”

Tifa’s eyes widen in surprise. That’s not at all what she got from it. She takes it back and sniffs it again, and it still has those same notes she smelled before. “Different tastes, I guess.”

“Helps, though?” Aerith asks.

Tifa rotates her head, stretching her muscles and punching her open palm. “I could fight a couple doom rats, I think.”

“No more doom anything, please.” She pulls another of the small bottles out and is on the point of opening it when Tifa’s stomach burbles, loud enough that Aerith hears it. 

Tifa says, holding her middle, “Ooh, that’s--that’s--” It all comes back up, splashing on the metal floor. Her insides tremble and buckle, and she drops to her knees. “Oh,” she says, wiping her mouth, “they might be bad.”

Aerith plops down beside Tifa, rubbing her back. “That was gross,” she says cheerfully. The rejuvenated feeling sticks with Tifa, but her stomach is sour and her mouth tastes bad now.

“Ha, ha.”

“You’re okay, though?”

“Still great. Maybe don’t drink one.”

Aerith makes a scrunched-up face. “After you spewed your review? You’d have to pay me to try it.” She offers her hand as she stands back up, stretching her back.

Tifa accepts it, though the wave of weakness has truly passed. “Cloud didn’t throw his up when I saw him drink it.”

“Well, we can look into it later. Right now, we should keep looking for Jessie.”

Tifa nods. They’ve only been down here a short time, minutes even, but when someone’s life is in danger, you measure in seconds, not minutes. “Does your… sense about these things tell you where Jessie is?”

Aerith frowns and shakes her head no. “We might head back towards the rubble and the entrance, see if we can pick up her trail.” They know something dangerous is down here, something with a roar that pushes Tifa to flee. She hopes they only find Jessie.

They approach the glowing lights in the distance.

Notes:

Some quick notes! First and foremost, everyone has surely noticed that it has been since November since I updated this fic. The short reason for that is that I got insanely busy at work up through the end of January, and just as I was clearing my docket so I could get back to work on fanfic, they fired me. I... did not handle it well. It was my career for 17 years, my entire adult life. It took a solid month of feeling worthless and driftless before I could even look at anything creative.

So here we are. I'm writing again. I don't know what the future holds for me as I'm still between jobs and hunting, but I very much hope that writing fanfic remains a part of it.

Thanks for bearing with me. I want this adventure to continue as much as anybody.

Chapter 12: A Behemoth of a Time

Summary:

Tifa and Aerith find ghosts and keypads as they continue their search for Jessie in the abandoned Shinra laboratory. They bicker and keep secrets, and then a desperate chase ensues.

Notes:

(See the end of the chapter for notes.)

Chapter Text

The lights unnerve Aerith, though she’s trying to hide it. She’s not ready to talk about her past in any detail, but if the feeling of what’s down here is related to her being Cetran, it might come out before long anyway. Whatever this is, it causes gooseflesh to stipple her arms and arrest her heart in anguish. Fortunately, Donna Lockhart hasn’t pressed for answers yet.

As they get closer to the lights, she realizes what it is about them that seems off. They’re moving, sort of floating lazily about, like fireflies stuck glowing. 

Aerith holds a hand up for them both to stop, and shines her flashlight in the direction of the lights. They’ve reached the end of this large room, and found a couple more doors. The lights are actually bobbing around a pile of refuse. 

“What is that?” Tifa asks, edging closer.

“Bodies.” She’s very sure that this is a pile of dead things. Maybe dead a long time, but dead all the same. And that makes the lights hovering around it: “Ghosts.”

Tifa laughs, a short, sharp, dismissive thing. Then when Aerith isn’t smiling, Tifa frowns. “Ghosts,” she says.

Aerith nods. “Well. The spiritual energy of creatures.” Now that she’s close, she feels them. Their confusion, sadness, some of them undiluted rage. The spirits are not friendly. 

“Ghosts,” Tifa says again.

“We’ve established it, yes,” Aerith shoots back, frustrated.

“Sorry, it’s just. Really?” As if in response, an unearthly wail pierces their surroundings, straight into their bodies, dancing up Aerith’s spine. The hovering lights dart away, all except for one, which jitters erratically and swirls in and around the two women. Aerith and Tifa both jump and clutch at each other instinctively. Aerith lets out a tiny squeak of terror. She’s met spirits who had unfinished business before--like Elmyra’s husband--but they were ephemeral, needful of returning to the planet. These ghosts are tortured, stuck. In their need for release is now anger, rage, distrust, pain. 

The ghostly light vanishes into the floor while the other spirits dance away into the corners of the room, leaving the women alone in darkness, clutching each other like children lost in the slums.

Tifa is the first to clear her throat and disentangle herself, and Aerith shines the flashlight anywhere but at their faces to hide the embarrassment.

“That was--” Tifa starts, but Aerith interrupts, “--Never happened.”

“Right. Good.” Tifa adjusts her gloves awkwardly, stares at a sign on the wall next to one of the doors they had been heading for, that hopefully would drop them into Jessie’s path. “What’s this say?”

Aerith’s flashlight focuses on the sign, which is a little rusted and dusty, but clearly states: Access to Labs X, Y, Z. Security Key Cards required beyond this point .

Below the sign is a keycard reader, an archaic thing the likes of which Shinra hasn’t used in twenty years or more. There’s dregs of power down here, but the security panel is dark, the door slightly ajar. “Looks like we lucked out,” Tifa says. “Unless the big howling monster is behind these doors. Then maybe not so lucky.”

“Before we go,” Aerith says, “I want to make sure.” She turns back to the pile of refuse the spirit lights had been bobbing around, and bends down with her flashlight, inspecting it. Sure enough, it’s old bones, tattered cloth. Shinra soldiers and scientists who met a bad end down here.

Aerith stands back up, face resolute. “I know we’re here for Jessie. I do. But once we find her, we have to put these poor lost spirits to rest.”

“Rest is fine, but the next time one gets close, I’m throwing a fist,” Tifa says. Aerith harrumphs. Every step forward has ten back with this infuriating woman. Undeterred, Aerith shoulders her staff and motions to the door.

She says with false bravado and more than a little sarcasm, “Onward, then, to the next horrible discovery.”

Tifa leans into the rusted door and shoves it open the rest of the way, which squeals as it moves. She peeks through with the benefit of Aerith’s flashlight beam before waiting a few seconds. Then, “Whatever roared, must not be listening too closely.”

“Maybe it left.” Tifa stares at Aerith for a moment, and they both grin. “I know, since when are we lucky?”

Tifa nods, then turns back to the doorway and steps through, heading left down a new corridor, back towards the hole to the sewer, they hope. It doesn’t take long before this new corridor terminates in a similar pile of sewer rock and smelly water. No sign of Jessie, and no way out from this end. The pig lizard’s dead face sticks out of the pile, though, and blood oozes slowly out of its mouth onto the metal floor, where it has begun to congeal in a sticky mass.

“Oh, wow,” Aerith says, covering her nose with her sleeve, “I thought it was just the sewer that stank, but this thing is the sewer.”

Tifa is busy searching the pile of rubble, whispering for Jessie, looking for any telltale sign of the woman stuck under the stone and debris. Aerith checks the ground and the walls, looking for signs of recent passage. Both come up empty, which is perhaps a good thing. Aerith knows Jessie is alive. She can’t really explain it beyond that. Anything under that rubble would likely not be alive, so it follows that Jessie is elsewhere.

Aerith says, “Jessie must be looking for a way out.”

Tifa glances back from shifting a smaller stone, which thuds against the ground. “You don’t think she might be trapped under here, unable to call out? Maybe unconscious but alive?”

Aerith shakes her head. “If she is, do you think we’d be able to find her, or get to her without maybe crushing her?”

Tifa’s eyes go hard and her brows furrow. “I’m not just trusting your ‘sense’ about this. What if we walk away to follow your hunch, and she bleeds out a few inches from where we’re standing now?”

“What if she does? What if we excavate for an hour only to discover that some big monster ate her deeper into this lab?”

Tifa stands straight, crossing her arms defiantly. “No good choices, I get it.” She sighs, turns back to the pile of rubble, places a hand on another muddy stone and whispers, “If you’re in there, Jess, I’m so sorry.” Aerith doesn’t think she’s supposed to have heard that, so she glances away, pretending to investigate the ground some more. Jessie’s a smart girl, probably would have left some kind of trail if she’d been thinking about it. But a tumble like that could rattle the brain. 

The ghost lights appear farther down the corridor, lashing about like kite tails in the wind. Almost gesturing.

Follow us.

So Aerith does. 

Tifa curses behind her, whispering loudly to wait for her. Aerith doesn’t, though. Time is moving down here. Their presence has upset the long-held balance of stasis this place has been in. The things down here--the rats, the roaring beast, the ghosts--are stirring. Aerith and Tifa are tired already, and Jessie might be hurt. It’s not worth their lives to try and fix this place. 

And yet Aerith can’t let it go. Besides, she suspects that if they try to leave, the shadows will have something to say about it. They made sure Jessie fell down here. They pushed Tifa and Aerith together. 

All that matters, doesn’t it? Yes, they have to see this through, whatever happens.

Tifa catches up to Aerith, brushing her shoulder harshly as she reaches her and walks with her. “You’ll get yourself killed wandering around by yourself.”

“I can handle myself.”

“I didn’t say you couldn’t. But we don’t know what’s down here. Don’t leave my sight, okay?”

“Yes, sir, Miss Mob Boss, sir.” Aerith salutes and Tifa’s eyes roll up while she shakes her head.

“Don’t mock what I’m doing, Aerith.”

“I’m not.”

“What would you call that, then?”

“Friendly ribbing?”

“We’re not friends. You work for me.”

Aerith settles into silence. She’s surprised at how much that hurts to hear. How much it weighs on her heart. To hear Jessie and Wedge talk of the Tifa they knew, she made fast friends and trusted easily. Whatever happened to her has fundamentally broken that.

Tifa stammers slightly as they walk, “I-I… That was harsher than I meant.”

Aerith huffs. “For starters, I signed up with Avalanche and thought Barret was going to be my boss. I haven’t joined your little offshoot yet. I’m down here to help Jessie, who IS my friend, and then deal with this other thing. But you’re right. We’ve only known each other for like twenty minutes. I’ll be a good soldier for now.”

Something happens to Tifa’s eyes when Aerith says this. Disappointment, or regret? Aerith can’t understand her.

But then Tifa shrugs and takes a couple of large steps so she walks in front of Aerith by half a pace. “Good, then. You’re useful, Aerith the Carbuncle.”

What’s useful is used, Aerith thinks. Something her mother, her real mother, used to say.

They walk in silence for a couple of minutes, checking small side chambers that turn out to be dusty supply closets and a restroom with an infestation of some kind of winged things. They slam the open door on these creatures when one shrieks at the disturbance. 

The next restroom is empty, though, and Tifa calls Aerith in after a few seconds of investigation. She is smiling, a real, hopeful smile, and points to one of the sinks lined up on the wall in front of a dusty, cracked mirror. “The middle basin.”

Aerith checks the sink in the middle, where a bundle of bloody bandages sits, still wet. “Looks like our girl left a trail, after all.”

Tifa “Looks like it. Not a lot of blood, and she wasn’t dripping on the way here.”

“Maybe we’ll catch up soon.”

Tifa nods. “Not many places to detour yet.”

Aerith shrugs. “We can try yelling for her again now that we’re on this side of the lab.”

“I don’t know if I want to do that. We’ve already stirred a few things and none of them have been particularly nice.”

Another of the spirits appears from the mirror directly in front of Aerith, and Aerith gasps, leaping back from the unexpected presence inches from her face. She jumps directly at Tifa. Tifa’s reflexes are better than Aerith’s, though, and she plants her feet, catching Aerith with a hand on one shoulder and around one hip to stop them colliding with the toilet stalls. The ghostly light weaves in, swirls around the two of them, and floats lazily back through the mirror, out into the corridor.

Aerith lets out the breath she holds, and then really notices where Tifa’s hands are placed. Like Aerith has just spun into her embrace before twisting away in one of those elaborate waltzes. The tension in her whole body relaxes in that instant. Tifa’s got me, she thinks. Tifa clears her throat, however, and Aerith puts all her weight back on her own two feet, standing up straight.

She turns her head back to glance at Tifa. “Thanks. I don’t do well with jump scares.”

Tifa grins, though. “At least you didn’t shove me out of the way to get to safety, like a certain spiky-headed boy.”

“He didn’t!” Aerith can’t imagine it.

Tifa chuckles. “Well, we were just kids telling scary stories in the basement. Dan was doing the spooky voice and keeping our attention, while Wei crept up behind us to shout ‘Boo!’ at the scariest part. You never saw those spikes move so fast.”

Aerith laughs with her. She still can’t imagine it. He was such a strong, competent man. “Let me guess, the others never let him live it down?”

Tifa nods sadly. “I suppose not. If they could have seen him now…”

Aerith remembers that Tifa said her hometown was destroyed in the mission that got Zack killed. She’d like to follow up, learn more, but now’s not the time. “I’m sure they wished the best for him, and would have been pleasantly surprised at his being a SOLDIER.”

Tifa’s eyes close and her head shakes slightly. “If wishes were ghosts.” She gestures around playfully as her eyes open back up and she sighs. “Let’s go.”

As they walk out of the bathroom, Aerith, feeling cheeky again, says, “Thought you were ‘throwing a fist’ the next time one got close?”

Tifa spares a single deadpan glance for Aerith and shrugs. “Didn’t want to hit you on accident.”

“Sure, sure.” Aerith holds her staff behind her back and skips a few steps ahead of Tifa, and grins wider when Tifa scoffs.

They continue down the corridor, which ends abruptly just another minute or so later at a three-way exit, doors marked Lab X, Lab Y, and Lab Z . X is on the left, Y is center, and Z is on the right.

These are all actively powered and two are locked down. The other, Lab X, has had its card reader cracked open, tampered with, and the door is open. Light shines from beyond.

“You know I’m thinking it,” Aerith says.

Tifa makes a kind of disgusted sound low in her throat and says, “X marks the spot?”

“Damn right it does.” Aerith is happy to find this active hint of Jessie. What they’ll find behind the door, who knows. But Jessie is beyond it, has to be.

“Do you think we’re still under Sector 6?” Tifa asks.

Aerith shrugs as she shoves the door open the rest of the way. “With the sewers and everything? We could be all the way over in Sector 3 for all we know.”

“Hm.” An arm crosses her chest and one hand comes up to her lips in a gesture of consideration.

“What?”

“I’m sure it’s nothing.” She brushes past Aerith, taking point into Lab X. Aerith huffs silently and follows. The things they don’t say to each other are going to fill a book.

Lab X is a sight to behold. It’s not some small experiment room with chemical burners and centrifuges like Aerith expects, but a massive open chamber with catwalks overlooking a large storage facility. Giant metal cylinders, big enough to hide the former Don’s pig lizard behind. A gargantuan but thankfully disassembled mechanized soldier of some sort sits in one corner, its arms and legs detached and its chest cavity gaping open with wires everywhere. When they get near it, it appears to have been ripped apart, and the dark stains across the interior of the pilot’s seat in the chest speak their own story.

No Jessie, though. No monsters nor ghosts, either. The place is empty of life. They speak in whispers, though, never knowing what might be hiding in all the pools of darkness where the big ceiling lights don’t cover. 

“I guess we’d have been too lucky to find her just… having tea in here, huh?” Aerith sighs.

“She came through here, for sure. Must be an exit somewhere.” Their footfalls ring out and echo uncomfortably. “What do you think this lab was for?”

Aerith shrugs as they investigate the desk, empty of electronics or paperwork. Whatever happened here, someone took the time to clean out the valuable data. “Shinra loves their tests. That mech suggests they left in a hurry, though.”

“The whole place feels like that, though.” Tifa glances back at the table. “Something bad, but not so fast that they couldn’t grab what was necessary.” She gestures at the blood stains on the mech’s cockpit a ways away. “Imagine that, Shinra values research more than human life.”

Aerith says, “They value life when it’s rare enough.” Tifa stares at her, but Aerith doesn’t explain. She wishes she had just not said it.

Tifa points a finger up, other hand cocked on her hip. “We need to have a nice chat at some point, lay all the cards on the table.”

Aerith only smiles. “We make it back to the mansion, I’ll tell you all kinds of stuff.”

A tinny pounding erupts somewhere in the distance of this massive space. Then gunshots. Jessie screams.

“Jessie!” Tifa yells, taking off into the darkened chamber. The time for hesitation appears to be over. Aerith breaks into a dead run, flashlight bouncing off the cylinders, robots, and other ephemera, but she can’t keep up with Tifa. Who could hope to, with those pistoning calves and thighs? Whatever’s down here must be bad if Jessie screamed like that.

“Tifa, no!” Jessie yells, from somewhere above Aerith. She flashes the light up to the catwalks, darts the beam around until it finally lands on the girl. Alive and unhurt.

Only why is she yelling? Aerith glances down, sees Tifa rushing toward some hulking mass. Something alive. Something… bestial.

It roars and spins towards the yelling. Tifa hesitates, hearing Jessie’s voice from above them. Every fiber in Aerith’s being cries out to flee, to leave them to their fates. To get out, to get to safety. This thing can’t be fought. It can’t be killed. It’s huge, angry, and it is comi--

An explosion behind the creature throws the whole world into panic and confusion. Tifa, far too close to the blast, throws her arms up protectively against her face, but the concussive force sends her flying back. Aerith, farther away, covers her eyes from the sudden blinding light, seeing the massive creature collapse in death throes while Tifa careens across the floor, slams into one of the storage cylinders, and comes to rest.

“What the hell is happening!?” Aerith yells, rushing to Tifa’s side. A rope descends from the catwalk, and Jessie shimmies down it.

When Jessie lands a few feet behind Aerith, she yanks on the rope, but it holds fast. She leaves it dangling as she follows Aerith. Tifa lays motionless on the ground, a big dent in the cylinder next to her.

Jessie says, “I blew up a monster, is what’s happening! You guys weren’t supposed to be here.”

Tifa coughs and groans from the ground just as Aerith reaches her. The fiery explosion dies down, glowing against the hulking monster’s shadow, and Tifa’s eyes open while Aerith looks over her. The fire and support materia has done its job again, luckily. But the force of the explosion was perhaps a bit much even for the magic of the blue materia, because Tifa’s skin is pink and her clothing is singed and sooty.

“I’m… okay, I think,” Tifa says, accepting both Aerith and Jessie’s help in settling her upright against the dented canister. She smiles while coughing and wipes blood away from her mouth. “Maybe--ow--a broken rib or two.”

“You’re lucky if you don’t have a punctured lung,” Aerith says, getting the cure materia out.

Tifa pushes her hands away, though. “Check Jessie out first. Heal her if you need to.”

Aerith turns but Jessie says, “I’m fine, boss.” Jessie does appear to be okay, miraculously. Her shoulder and one leg have been bandaged up, and she’s missing a boot, along with dozens of minor scratches and tears in her clothes. But otherwise sprightly and spry like usual.

Aerith turns back to Tifa. “Look, Donna Lockhart, I’m healing someone and only one of us just took an explosion to the face.”

“I didn’t say don’t heal me at all, Carbuncle.” Tifa coughs again and winces. 

And just like that, they’re back among mixed company and the titles and nicknames come back out. Aerith shrugs and hands the materia to Jessie. “Where does it hurt? Better if I can direct it.”

Tifa leans forward. “Back, definitely.” She hisses through the pain. “And my shoulder might be out of socket.” Aerith lifts Tifa’s shirt and sports bra from behind, runs probing fingers along Tifa’s back, feeling for obvious breaks and finds a couple of tender spots where Tifa’s sharp intake of breath says it all. She also feels the wrongness in Tifa’s left shoulder where it is definitely out of socket.

Aerith nods. “Jessie, can you do something about the shoulder while I use this?”

“Sure can, Carbuncle. You’re gonna hate me in a sec, Donna.”

“I already hate you both, just get it over with.”

Jessie hands the materia back to Aerith, and helps Tifa stand up. Aerith lifts to her feet as well, holding the cure materia up to the broken ribs. She focuses her will, asking the materia to speed up the healing process, to knit the bones back into place and close up any internal wounds around them. 

The soothing coolness leaves her fingers and goes into Tifa’s back. Tifa sucks in a great lungful of air, and Aerith feels the bones snap into place under her skin. Unnerving but at least it’s working. “Concentrate on me, Donna.”

“It’s like an itch under the skin. Ugh, I hate it.”

Jessie says, holding Tifa’s arm at an awkward angle, “Maybe when I set your shoulder you can scratch--” In the middle of her sentence, Jessie does a sharp motion, pulling on Tifa’s shoulder while shoving the arm back into place. Tifa lets out an involuntary gasp and yell, then drops back into Aerith slightly, sharing the burden of being upright while this intense pain courses through her. Aerith holds the woman’s weight just long enough for her to gather herself, and then lets her stand on her own again. The warmth of her was comforting and all too brief.

“Why’d you scream, Jessie?” Tifa finally asks. She drops down to her butt and gestures for the others to sit, catch their breath.

Jessie grins as she drops down and Aerith follows suit. Jessie says, “Decoy. I’ve been playing shadow games with that damn thing for half an hour. I don’t know what it’s been eating down here all this time, but it was hungry .”

Tifa asks, “And your solution was to blow it up?”

Aerith says, “I think the better question is, what did you use? That was stronger than any grenade.”

Jessie grins, that beatific smile of which only she seems capable. “I may have found fuel tanks. Took a bit of work to get it all situated, and find a proper trigger, but the plan was to simply let it blow itself up.”

Tifa says, “Seems like it worked.”

“I am a demolitions expert, folks.”

Aerith smiles. “We’re really glad you’re okay.”

Tifa nods. “Goes without saying. But yes, Jessie, I don’t know what I’d have done if you got hurt or worse down here.”

Jessie holds a hand out to Tifa, and she takes it. Aerith lets them have their moment. Jessie says, “Might go without saying, but it’s nice to hear.”

They settle into silence while the fire burns down, just resting for a moment. To Tifa and Jessie, the mission is over, the urgency gone. But Aerith has more to do down here. 

“Have you seen anything else while you were wandering?” Aerith asks.

“More ghosts?” Tifa says, sighing.

Jessie shakes her head no. “Ghosts? And no. Not much time to explore once that thing woke up.”

“That thing” is huge and Aerith can’t imagine how it lived down here all this time. “What is it?” she asks.

“Like a lion and a dragon had a baby,” Jessie answers. “Uh, speaking of which--” She points and scrambles to her feet. “I’m not so sure it’s dead.”

Tifa and Aerith follow her gaze, and sure enough, the guttering fire is blocked out suddenly by the creature rising to its feet, easily twelve feet tall and the length of an upper plate bus. Aerith and Tifa climb back to standing as well.

“Are we running? I hope we’re running,” Jessie asks nervously.

It stretches to its full height, charred and blackened skin and fur sloughing off it as it does. Exposed muscle flexes in the dim light. Wicked horns atop its head glow a threatening red, which emanates down its back and across its whiplike tail. Its furious eyes train on the trio and razor-sharp claws dig rents in the metal floor. It prepares to charge. They can’t fight this thing.

“Run,” Tifa says, and they do. They sprint across Lab X, the beast thrashing wildly as it bears down. Storage cylinders and robot parts fling every which way, crashing against walls and knocking loose the catwalks above. One catwalk collapses above them while they run, and they just barely get out from under it as it smashes into the ground, metal sparking off metal. Another, the one with Jessie’s rope attached to it, hangs askew but holds in place.

They near the exit. Aerith casts a single glance back, terror in every part of her. The monstrous creature launches off the ground, claws wide to swipe as it sails overhead. 

“Duck!” Aerith yells, and the others drop as Aerith throws herself down. The beast, stinking like death and char, misses them all with its claws, but lands between the exit and the women. Its tail whips about blindly, smashing tables and crates. It forces its prey away from their safety, their hidey-hole. 

It snorts while the red lights recede from its tail and horn, along its back. It growls as it goes back to its normal state of danger. That hardly seems to matter to Aerith.

“So much for running,” Tifa says, standing and positioning herself in front of Aerith and Jessie. “Carbuncle, is this the reason we’re down here?”

Aerith blinks, uncomprehending for a moment. She says, “I don’t think so. It’s just… leftover, from whatever Shinra was doing down here.”

“Didn’t anyone ever tell Shinra that leftovers are the best part?” Jessie quips, and the other two women smile, hard smiles without much humor behind them.

“Any ideas?” Tifa asks. “If that explosion didn’t kill it, I’m not sure what we can do.”

Aerith isn’t sure herself. They only finished off the pig lizard in the sewer because of the Carbuncle materia, and a quick glance in her satchel shows it’s still dark. “Are there other explosives around? C4, fuel, grenades?”

Jessie shakes her head no. “Took everything I could find and had for that one big boom.”

“Stay clear of its claws,” Tifa says, and takes off in the beast’s direction. She lets loose a battle cry to catch its attention. Jessie and Aerith glance at each other quickly before nodding and following.

Tifa runs forward alongside some damaged cylinders, making a big show of winding up a punch with her one intact claw. The beast rears back on its hind legs, shaky from muscle damage, and swats at the place Tifa is about to be. Tifa jumps and kicks off the cylinder next to her, leaping high and away from the monster. Jessie takes aim with her pistol while Aerith holds her staff out, materia glowing.

Shards of ice erupt around the creature’s back foot, the one most damaged by the explosion. It forms a ball of shredding ice, sticks the creature in place for the merest moment, before it ruptures outward. Shards of bloody ice shrapnel shatter on everything they hit. Jessie shoots the exposed muscle, but it’s like gnats on a bobcat. Still, Aerith’s ice magic causes the beast to stumble and course correct. Where it was following Tifa’s trajectory for a second swipe, it turns back to Aerith and Jessie, roaring its new anger.

In that moment of confusion, Tifa lands and flings herself back at the beast. She slams into its side with a solid claw puncture, embedding in the thick meat of the shoulder. The beast cries out in pain and its tail swipes forward, swatting at Tifa with a meaty thwack . Tifa manages to shift herself around while pulling on the claws, trying to extricate herself and avoid the tail.

Stymied in swatting this fly, the creature roars and does something new. It swings its thick tail in a huge arc and somehow its whole body moves with the same speed. This massive beast spins, claws thrashing and tail whipping about. They lose sight of Tifa in the whirlwind of motion, and then she goes flying out of it, an uncontrolled toss. The whole glove remains behind as Tifa falls away. She slams into the ground before tumbling into a roll that puts her upright once more between the creature and her companions. The beast’s spin ends, and it locks eyes on the trio, waiting for their next move.

She holds the recently-dislocated shoulder with her other arm, wincing and working the pain out. “All good?” Jessie shouts, and Tifa nods, grinning.

“First blood. I’m out of blades, though.”

Aerith nods. “And Jessie’s gun isn’t doing much, no offense.”

Jessie scoffs good-naturedly despite their predicament. “Why do you think I tried to blow it up?”

Tifa grins. “It’s you.”

“Well, besides that!” Jessie says, defensively. 

Tifa looks around. “Aerith, how do you feel about being bait?”

The creature swats the clawed glove out of its skin, which pings off the ground in a mangled mass. Bent and shattered. The beast roars, impatient, and the lights inflame along its horns, back, and tail once more. 

“Rather not!” Aerith yells as they all turn and sprint away once more. Deeper into the big chamber, avoiding scaffolding, catwalks, torsions of steel. What chance do they have when this creature can do all this?

Aerith shuffles quickly under an opening in a downed catwalk while Jessie hops onto it, sliding down the walkway canted toward the ground. Tifa leaps and kicks off the upper railing, sailing over it to land on the other side gracefully, and they keep moving while the monster barrels through it, sending it crashing into the wall.

“Showoff!” Aerith and Jessie yell together. They share a grin as they run.

“Head for the mech!” Tifa yells. “I have a bad idea!”

“Better than the no idea we already have!” Jessie yells back. Aerith glances around. The mech is off to their left, and the moment they dart that way, the monster turns to intercept. It’ll cut off their route at this pace, but Aerith is once more trusting in Tifa. Then she sees the rope dangling from the half-broken catwalk above them. 

“Grab the rope and pull on my mark!” Tifa shouts to Jessie. To Aerith she says, “Hit it with ice again, get its attention. Right… here.” She stops Aerith at a place in the open, a ways off from the dangling rope, while Jessie grabs the rope and holds it tight. “You need to trust me and do it just right. Throw yourself to safety at the last moment.”

“What last moment!” Aerith shouts as Tifa turns and runs towards the beast, grabs the rope, and begins to climb. The beast bears down on Tifa as the closest of them, and Aerith’s insides quiver at seeing Tifa so exposed, so in danger.

So Aerith does her part. She focuses the ice magic and shoots icicles out of her staff, straight at the snarling, slobbering creature’s horned face. Maybe she’ll get lucky and pierce an eye. But they all just shatter against its head. 

It works, though. It turns attention away from the easy prey reaching the top of the rope and clambering onto the precariously broken catwalk. The creature rushes at Aerith, claws digging rents in the metal floor, glowing tail swinging wildly behind it. It wobbles slightly because of its injuries, but it bears down all the same.

“Now!” Tifa’s voice echoes down from the ceiling. A shrieking, tortured, twisting of metal rings out after her because she kicks free some of the remaining supports, and Jessie pulls the rope, which she’s wrapped around one of the cylinders and then herself for added leverage. For a desperate moment nothing happens, and Aerith stares at the face of her death coming in with maw wide. 

Then the catwalk rips free of its ruptured moorings, descending in an angle at the beast. As the catwalk drops, Tifa sprints down the ruined walkway before leaping. She crosses one of the sparing floodlights in this massive chamber, which backlights her as she soars, creating a halo effect around her. Aerith can only stare as Tifa descends like an angel of justice upon the beast’s head. The catwalk falls behind her and collides with the beast’s back, cratering its spine and sending it to the ground, back legs kicking weakly.

Tifa’s boots connect with a shattering thud against the beast’s horned head. One of the horns snaps free and slams directly into the creature’s skull before falling away. It crashes and skids forward; Aerith throws herself to safety lest she be crushed.

Tifa’s trajectory sends her flying from the beast’s head, and she ducks into a roll, landing harshly but safely near the dismantled mech. The beast is alive, but severely injured now.

For a moment it seems as if the creature will stand back up. It’s shaky front legs get back under it, and its head begins to rise. Jessie, having climbed on top of a ruined storage cylinder, fires her gun several times at the beast’s head. Two spang off the skull or the horn, but one drives home into the fresh wound, penetrating the softened skull. It thrashes and roars, then mewls pitifully, attempting to lift itself. The catwalk keeps it down and its back legs splay out uselessly. It drops back down, thrashing at nothing.

“Did we win?” Aerith hears Jessie call from the other side of the beast.

Tifa yells, “Stay clear of it just in case!”

Aerith shuffles away and rejoins Tifa and Jessie. They wait for the creature to bleed out, and Aerith can’t stand it. This thing was just trying to eviscerate them, but it seems cruel to her now to just… let it suffer.

“This thing didn’t ask to be this way,” she says, holding her staff up. It might not be the reason she came down here, but she can help put this beast to rest all the same. Shards of ice slowly begin to form over the creature, encasing it in a frozen tomb, slowing its body, its breathing. The frost drains Aerith, but this thing is done for. They don’t need to fight right now. Just end its suffering. Do the right thing Shinra obviously couldn’t be bothered to do.

Only as it gasps in its death throes, the beast glows red again. It shakes itself free of the ice, roars, and thrashes wildly. The three women back away, unsure if it’s going to somehow keep going. The roar is piercing, angry, sorrowful. It shakes the room.

Pieces of the ceiling break free. Lights cant and snap, falling. The whole place seems like it’s coming down.

Jessie yells, “How many things are gonna fall on me this week!?” No one laughs; no one has time to.

They have nowhere to run. Aerith covers her head as if that will help if the ceiling collapses on them. Tifa grabs them both and yanks, pulling them toward the mech’s torso leaning against one wall. She lets them both go and climbs up the robot, investigates the cockpit briefly, and then nods to herself while she clambers up and behind it to the wall.

Aerith understands what she’s doing right before she does it. She pulls Jessie back slightly, and they cower while shielding themselves and each other. Tifa uses herself as leverage against the wall to slowly push the robot torso forward, away from the wall. The creature continues to moan and thrash, and the ceiling keeps crumbling. It is merest luck they haven’t been crushed by something yet. One of the lights slams down next to them, shards of glass splintering out every which way. Aerith screams out her terror.

Tifa lets out a yell of her own upon hearing that scream. “I’m--not--losing--anyone else!” she roars, stressing her body to the max as she lets the robot come back a little bit, and then pistons her legs out, tipping it over at last. She slips free of the wall now that her leverage is gone, and hits ground just before the mech drops onto its chest. Aerith grabs at Tifa, helping her stand, while Jessie makes sure the cover is safe.

“You’re incredible, you know that?” Aerith asks, pulling Tifa along.

“We can blow smoke later,” Tifa responds, drenched in sweat and breathing heavy. Completely exhausted. They all are. It’s been a hard day.

“Come on!” Jessie yells. A metal piece of the ceiling collides with the back of the mech, pinging off it. The mech torso shifts slightly, but holds.

Together, Aerith and Tifa crawl inside the cavity created by the broken cockpit. The three of them huddle close, sure death is coming for them while the monster enacts its final vengeance.

Notes:

One more chapter to go this week, which will close out the underground lab arc! Expect it around Friday afternoon, American Central Time!

Aren't you glad Jessie's safe? Well, as safe as can be when yet another ceiling collapses upon them all. Can't catch a break, these three!

Chapter 13: Sins and Ghosts of the Past

Summary:

Tifa, Aerith, and Jessie climb out of the collapsed lab and must deal with the spirits still haunting this place. Tifa must decide how to deal with Aerith's flirting.

Notes:

(See the end of the chapter for notes.)

Chapter Text

Tifa clutches at her two companions. Her friends. She feels terrible about telling Aerith they weren’t friends. After today, what else could they be but closer, more intimate? How to bridge that gap? You don’t trust a stranger with your life the way they continue to do.

The crashes and roars go on forever, and darkness slowly consumes them. Each time something bangs against the roof of their pitiful safety, she’s sure this is the one that will break through, or crush down under the tons of falling debris, trapping them, consigning them to a slow death in the bowels of Midgar, no one ever knowing what became of them.

Until, slowly, the roars die off. The tumbling crashes become skitters of stone. They wait even then, fingers and arms sore from the death grips they’ve had on each other for probably only minutes. It felt like hours.

“Are we dead?” Jessie asks in the stillness and silence. 

Aerith coughs dust away. She releases her grip on the others. The sudden flashlight beam banishes the darkness, and they all squint against it, eyes adjusting. “Guess not,” Aerith says. “I have a sense about these things.”

Tifa laughs, short and unexpected. The outside rumbles ominously at the sound, and she shuts up while they wait for silence again. “Sorry,” she says. 

“I don’t get it,” Jessie says, glancing curiously between the two of them.

“Inside joke, I suppose,” Tifa answers.

Jessie’s glance between the two women begins to grow suspicious, and Tifa clears her throat.

She asks, “Can we climb out of here, do you think?”

Between the three of them, Jessie is the smallest, and she shuffles forward away from their little group, investigating the hole they came from. “Can I have the flashlight, Carbuncle?”

Aerith hands it over, and before they lose the light, she smiles at Tifa. A secret smile only for her. Thankfully the cockpit is bathed in darkness before Tifa’s face turns red. She can feel it, though. Hot. How does one not feel something when a woman like Aerith focuses those lips on you? 

“Any luck, Jessie?” she whispers. 

Jessie scoots forward, light bouncing off debris. “There’s a bit of a tunnel here. I can… probably squeeze through, see if it’s safe to come out. Uh. I’m not normally one for this, but if it seems like I’m about to be buried under debris, I demand you grab my ass and pull me to safety.”

Aerith chuckles. “Probably easier to just grab your legs.”

“Well, grab something . I’m not about to live through two cave-ins only to be crushed to paste because I’ll report you to HR.”

Tifa gently tugs on Jessie’s boot. “Hey, before you go.”

Jessie backs out of the small tunnel, and Tifa grabs her into a hug, squeezing tightly. “I knew you weren’t dead, without Aerith telling me. You’re too stubborn.”

“It was a close thing after I practically tripped over the beast,” Jessie says, sniffling back sudden tears. “You have no idea how my gut dropped when I saw you running towards what was about to be barbecue.”

“Like when I thought you were being eaten by a creature and I wasn’t going to get there on time. It was a good plan and we messed it up.”

Jessie pushes back from Tifa, tears in her eyes. “Hey, it’s still dead. You literally kicked its own horn into its skull. Who does that?”

“Donna Lockhart does that,” Aerith says. “The kind of boss you like to have leading you.”

“Damn right,” Jessie says, and Tifa can’t fight the blush now. “We’ve got our own kickboxing master, who needs some boy with a sword?” She seems to realize immediately what she’s said, as she stutters an apology. “Oh, uh, sorry, Tifa--”

“It’s okay,” Tifa says. It is, as strange as that sounds. “Really. Just look for an exit. We’ll be right here.” Jessie nods and turns away, back to the tunnel, and begins to crawl her way to safety. 

There’s that emotional kick in the chest when someone brings up her childhood friend, the boy who made a promise he couldn’t keep, but it just proves one thing she’s known since she was a child: everyone lets you down, eventually. Trusting someone else to protect you, to save the world… that isn’t who Tifa is, not anymore.

And yet, she thinks of Aerith. A woman who clearly likes her and isn’t afraid to be herself, nor speak her mind. A woman who has saved her life several times in the very short time they’ve known each other. And above all, a woman who respects her, helps her achieve more. A woman like that is dangerous. She knows Tifa’s secrets, her weaknesses. A woman who knows that, like Madame M, can take advantage. Can slit a throat as easily as part a kimono to get what she wants.

So what does Aerith want? What secrets does this woman hide? And how long until one of them gets Tifa killed?

No, this woman is a distraction from her goal. She will make Shinra pay for Nibelheim, for Cloud, for Sector 7, for the whole damned planet. Anything else is secondary.

While Jessie works her way forward, they are in darkness again. Aerith clears her throat, and Tifa turns to the woman despite not being able to see her anymore.

Aerith says, “This has been a weird day, huh?”

Tifa smiles, but forces it back to neutral. Doesn’t matter that Aerith can’t see it right now. Tifa says, “I’ve had worse.” Don Corneo made sure of that. So did Sephiroth, for that matter.

“But have you had weirder?”

Tifa shrugs before remembering that they can’t see each other. “Maybe not. You?”

“When you can hear the planet, every day tends to be pretty strange.”

“Do you really? Hear the planet?”

Aerith says, “I don’t know if that’s the right way to say it, as it’s not words. It’s not a sound.”

“Just a sense?”

Aerith says, “A feeling that it tries to communicate.”

“You talk like this is just a weird quirk people have, like ‘hey I’m double-jointed, how wild is that?’ only it’s chatting with the Lifestream.”

“It’s who I am. I’ve always been able to hear it. Just because no one else can, that doesn’t make it seem like I’m the weird one to me.”

Tifa can’t understand that outlook. “If you’re the only one, that makes you the weird one. By definition.”

“But it’s just me. It’s strange to you, but it’s very natural. Everyone should speak to the planet sometimes. Just because you can’t hear it, doesn’t mean it isn’t listening.”

“I’m not interested in all this spiritual nonsense. The Lifestream holds the planet together. Shinra is sucking it dry, using it up. We stop that, the planet is safe. Simple as that.”

“Nothing is as simple as we want it to be, Donna Lockhart.” Tifa doesn’t know how to respond to this, and Jessie saves her from having to.

She whispers from maybe ten feet away, her flashlight beam bouncing down into the tunnel, “Hey, I found a way out. It’s a--” She hesitates, sounding almost like she’s struggling. “It’s a tight fit, though. Your, uh, well, you might have some trouble.”

Tifa chuckles. One more way in which her chest gets her into trouble. “We’ll just have to try anyway. Carbuncle, you go ahead. No sense getting you trapped in here with me if I can’t make it out.”

Aerith shuffles, bumps into Tifa. She says, “Ow, sorry. But so you know, there are worse ways to die than being trapped with you, Donna Lockhart.”

The insolent woman! Tifa swallows the response gagging in her throat. “Just go already. I’ll be right behind you.”

Aerith goes, and Tifa follows behind. Bare hints of flashlight make it past Aerith’s body, and Tifa shuffles before having to flatten herself to the ground as best she can. Aerith vanishes upwards, and the flashlight blinds Tifa for a moment before she blinks away the sudden strength of the beam. She inches slowly forward, her back against uneven and sharp metal, poking and prodding her as she drags herself.

“How’s it going in there, Tifa?” Jessie asks.

“Peachy,” she hisses. “Next time I try to hide in a cave-in, just go ahead and--hrng.” She clears a particularly sharp spoke of something that tore into her top and into the tender flesh of her back a little. Not much. Death by a thousand cuts for them all today. “I’m good. It’s easier now.”

She reaches the flashlight beam dangling into the hole, and realizes she can’t move any farther because it narrows again. So she does her best to spin in place, putting her chest up and flexing her arms towards the hole. “A little help?”

Hands reach in and grasp her arms, which she locks her own hands onto. 

They pull. Nothing moves for an uncomfortable moment as she is well and truly pressed in tight. She says, “Wait,” and takes a deep breath, letting the compression against her chest just hurt until she feels the metal around her flex ever so slightly. She expels her breath out, collapsing her chest as much as possible, and says with her last breath, “Okay, now.”

They pull again, and she slips free with minimal damage. The sight that greets her as she sucks in a great lungful of air would steals her breath all over again..

“It’s… Sector 7.” 

“I didn’t want to say anything,” Jessie says, putting a comforting hand on Tifa’s shoulder. “Sorry.”

All around them, the debris is eerily familiar. The ceiling has caved in completely once again, and only a pile of rubble and buildings connects them to the surface. The school. The front of Jessie’s flat. A great big portion of the “7th HEAVEN” sign lays partially buried in the distance, one of the intact lights from the ceiling flickering on it.

Tifa stares at it all. She can’t do anything else. They stand atop a heap of Shinra’s sins, past and present. And though it angers her, fills her with the rage she felt the night she became Donna Lockhart, she also feels the regret again. That she was unable to stop it. That she was powerless when it mattered. Jessie sits atop the heap, knees huddled up to her chest. Aerith stands by, unsure what to do or say. There are bodies buried within all this rubble, too.

Tifa says it for them all. “I was worried we were under home.”

“Huh?” Aerith says. Jessie wipes tears from her face, glances up at Tifa’s stone cold voice.

The earlier memory that nagged at her comes back sharply. “You remember the rumors, the stories the drunks would tell or the kids would scare each other with?” she asks Jessie.

Jessie nods, standing up. She sniffles a bit, but holds it back. “Yeah. That there was a secret Shinra base underground. That’s where the mutants came from. The Mako monsters.”

Tifa nods back. “Looks like the rumors weren’t so false. It wasn’t bad enough that they forced people into the slums under the plate. Wasn’t bad enough they polluted us down here and paid us nothing. Forced us to fight for scraps. No, they also made it harder by experimenting on creatures under our noses. And if they got loose into the slums, well it’s just the slums, who cares?”

“Tifa…” Aerith says, but Tifa glares at her, and Aerith swallows nervously. “Donna Lockhart.”

“This is what we’re fighting. This is why we’re going to destroy them from within.”

“For the planet,” Aerith says.

“For the planet, and everything that lives on it.”

Jessie says, “Hell yeah. They didn’t just kill everyone in the slums, either. All the people on top of the plate, too, those that thought they were safe… my folks…” Tifa puts a hand on Jessie’s shoulder. “I’m okay. I’m with you, Donna Lockhart.”

“I know you are.” She turns to Aerith. “And you, Carbuncle? Can you follow my lead?”

Aerith doesn’t answer at first. She’s looking beyond them both. Then she says, “If you’ll help me fix the rest of what’s down here, I’ll join you.”

Tifa says, “We’ll put to rest some of their past sins today, and worry about their present sins tomorrow.”

Jessie and Aerith nod. This is the rebellion. This is their Eruption.

*****

They stand outside Lab X in the corridor, which has been mercifully spared the destruction caused by the beast and the collapse of the ceiling. What they’ll find in Labs Y and Z is anybody’s guess, though. Now that they’re back in the corridor, the spirits float lazily about once more. Tifa really doesn’t like them, and if one tries to touch her, she really will punch it.

Jessie works at the keycard reader of Lab Y, little sparks flying. “At least you’re not likely to set off a security alert, right?” Aerith jokes.

“Are you kidding? The fact that this still has power means all bets are off. No idea what we’re finding inside these labs. Maybe supplies. Maybe weapons. Dust or drones, more monsters? Who knows?”

“Pretty sure it’s not just dust,” Tifa says.

Aerith crosses her arms over her chest, the staff held in the crook of her arm. “Right. We keep saying that they left in a hurry, but not fast enough not to leave some stuff behind.”

Jessie bites her lower lip as she says, “Annnnnd got it!” The red light on the reader beeps over to yellow briefly, and then back to red before turning green. The door unseals and opens up, sliding into the wall next to it. “Fancy,” Jessie says, standing up.

“Okay, serious time,” Tifa says. “Jessie, take point. I’ll follow. Carbuncle, if it’s safe, I’ll wave you in.”

“Yes, sir, Donna Lockhart,” Aerith says. There’s still some cheekiness to how she says it, but Tifa chooses to ignore it. She’s falling in line. 

Jessie holds the pistol and glances inside the door before darting in. Tifa follows with a last glance at Aerith, who now holds her staff at the ready.

The room is small, and doesn’t appear to have been used as a proper lab even when it was last in use. There’s more storage crates here; Shinra uniforms, lab coats, surplus lab supplies like beakers and microscopes. Nothing useful in the moment. Nothing that speaks to what they were doing down here. Jessie, however, finds something unusual in one of the crates. She lifts out a curious device, some kind of control apparatus that conforms to a hand and wrist, and holds it up for Tifa. 

“What’s this look like to you?”

“Some kind of controller for a video game?”

“Maybe, but uh… can I have your bangle? The one with the materia on it.”

“Why?” Tifa asks, holding the gaudy gold thing protectively. It might be a piece of the former Don, but the fire protection has saved her twice today.

“Do you trust me?”

“Every time you ask that, something inevitably explodes,” Tifa complains, but she uncouples the bangle and hands it over. 

“If I do this right, something will definitely catch fire.”

Aerith removes her silver bangle and hands it over to Tifa. “You know how to use materia now, might as well have one on you.”

Tifa thanks her as she slips on the bangle with the lightning materia inside it. It’s warm from Aerith’s wrist, and tingles from the lightning. This isn’t a gift, she scolds herself. This is simply returning what’s already hers. After all, this silver bangle was also the former Don’s.

They step out of the room, and Jessie begins working on Lab Z’s door now. After a minute or so, it also beeps and unlocks, and they follow the same procedure as before. 

Inside the room, it’s much smaller than Lab X. Or rather, the walkable space is smaller. This resembles much more a lab room Tifa was expecting. A large computer sits against one wall, as big as the wall, with broken screens. Desks with scattered papers and a microscope. All of it faces a frosted glass window with some kind of glowing lights behind it. A door with another keycard reader sits next to the window, granting access to whatever this is.

It seems safe enough in this small chamber, so Tifa waves Aerith inside. A wispy white spirit follows her in, sort of flitting about her body like a ribbon in the wind.

“I think I made a friend,” Aerith says, holding her hand up, while the spirit snakes up the arm to her hand, where it forms into something almost recognizably human before drifting back into wispy whiteness.

“That’s so creepy,” Jessie says, watching it with guarded fear. 

Tifa feels the same, but she shrugs it away while she grabs the assorted papers from the desk in front of the window. Most of them make no sense, talking about iterations and incubation periods, but only referencing subjects as “SUBJECT A” or “SUBJECT B” and so on. Tifa glances through the window, which she realizes isn’t frosted glass, but dust. With her arm, she wipes a large swath of dust away and peers inside.

She nearly falls backwards. Rows and rows of clear tanks, filled with malformed bodies. Human, animal, some unrecognizable as anything at all. All float within an aqua fluid that appears to be Mako. One up close to the window has been broken open, and the creature inside lays dead over the broken glass, as if it fought to free itself, but couldn’t survive all the same.

Something glows inside the pool of Mako in that broken container. Something red.

“I think we found the source of the spirits,” Tifa says. “It’s pretty rough in there, though.” She is utterly appalled at this display of wanton recklessness in experimentation. If this is legal under any government, that government deserves to be abolished. Simple as that. It takes everything she has not to vomit from sheer disgust and horror, but she holds it in.

Jessie and Aerith peek through the window now, and both gasp. Aerith covers her mouth and runs from the room. Tifa’s first instinct is to follow her, comfort her, and she fights that. The matter at hand is right here.

“Do you think any of them are alive?” Tifa asks, internally berating herself for ignoring Aerith’s pain.

“I mean, how could they be?” Jessie says. “They’ve been down here for years.”

“Yes, but the big monster was also down here for years, and I didn’t see any evidence of recent feeding.”

“Good point. I dunno, boss. I really don’t. You want me to blow it all up?”

“I think so. But we should go get a closer look first.” And if that gives her a moment to talk to Aerith, so what? “Tell you what, see if you can get that door open and I’ll check on our planet-talker.”

“Take it easy on her, huh?” Jessie says.

Tifa’s shoulders tense up at that. “I have been nothing but cordial.”

“You’ve been like a cold fish, Tifa. Are you gonna tell me you haven’t noticed she likes you?”

She has, in fact, but she shakes her head. “I have a criminal organization to run, and a government to overthrow. Romance is not high on my list.” Especially after Cloud was taken from her after those emotions were rekindled. After Don Corneo made her feel so helpless. After Madame M tried to take advantage of her desires. No, romance is a luxury. Intimacy is a crutch.

Jessie scoffs, though, as she sets to working on the card reader. “Hey, this is me. How many nights did we sit up gossiping about the locals and how none of them were good enough for us?”

“That night we did it in front of Wedge was maybe a bit much,” Tifa admits.

“Poor Wedge. We didn’t get a chance to talk about it, but he like, defended my honor to Cloud the night before the Sector 5 raid. It was kind of a backhanded way of doing it, but I heard him say it all, and it was cute in its way.”

Tifa smiles. “Wedge is too good for us, if we’re being honest.”

“You know it.” She starts to concentrate on the card reader in earnest, then turns back to Tifa with a quick glance. “Look, all I’m saying is Aerith isn’t like me. I flirt with all the boys. She flirts with you . Just… if you don’t want to hurt her, maybe let her down gently?”

“You’re too good a friend, Jessie the Strawberry.”

“Hey, it’s just Strawberry!” Jessie teases. 

Tifa pats her shoulder and leaves the room, finding Aerith outside a little ways down the hall, leaning against the wall, doubled over. There’s a splatter at her feet.

“You okay?” Tifa asks as she gets close.

“I’m fine. I just… You can’t feel it, can you?”

“Is this another planet thing?”

Aerith shakes her head, holding her stomach protectively. “They’re so angry. Like sick with it.”

“The… mutants?”

“The spirits. Tifa, they died in agony, in isolation. The scientists and soldiers died in terror. They all died not understanding what was happening to them, or why. It’s overwhelming.”

“If they’re so angry, why aren’t they… attacking? Is that a thing they can do?”

Aerith looks up. “They’re not mad at us. If we start doing something, they may turn on us, though.”

“Great. Jessie wants to blow the place up. Going to imagine this qualifies as ‘doing something’. Will that fix this?” Aerith considers, shaking as if cold. Tifa almost reaches out to her, to pull her into a hug, and stops herself. She’s a friend and maybe something more, but there’s no time for distractions. 

Aerith says, “It might. Did she find another grenade or something we can use?”

“No, but she’s resourceful. It looks like Mako in the tanks. We can use that, can’t we?”

“What’s the word for it? Makes fire move faster.”

“I’m sure Jessie knows,” Tifa says.

“Well, it’s not that, I don’t think. Mako isn’t gas.”

“Look, I just punch things. If you tell me it can’t work, we’ll ask Jessie.”

“You do more than that, and you know it.” Aerith smiles sadly and Tifa feels bad all over again. But Jessie’s right. Treat her gently. It’s not fair to Aerith otherwise.

Tifa smiles, crossing her arms and leaning next to Aerith on the wall. “Do you ever stop flirting?”

“When I’m told to. Are you asking me to stop?” There’s hope in Aerith’s green eyes. A hope that Tifa doesn’t think she can fulfill.

“It’s hard to concentrate on what I need to do when you’re casting those big eyes at me. Like that,” she says when Aerith’s eyes widen.

“Are you not into girls?”

“I hate that question. I’ve had flings before.” She thinks of that embarrassing moment with Madame M that almost saw her dead. That attraction wasn’t nothing. “Just never met someone quite like you. But that’s not the point.”

“What, you don’t like my personality ?” Aerith mocks.

“I hate your personality! You’re crazy, and frustrating, and you say the opposite of what anyone else would ever say, and somehow you’re never wrong.”

Aerith smiles. “That doesn’t sound like a bad thing.”

Tifa huffs in annoyance. “Look, I’m not about to lie to your face. I’m not going to kiss you after some sweeping, romantic gesture, or accidentally admit my feelings for you in a moment of weakness. I don’t have time for that, and you don’t deserve being held in suspense.”

“Taking off the kid gloves. I get it.” But her eyes are hurt. The lines of her face are more than that. Aerith is more like Jessie in one regard than she probably thinks: she loves with her whole heart, only Aerith hurts with it all, too. 

“I’m sorry. I really am. Maybe if things were different…”

“No, none of the platitudes. You want to be the boss, be the boss. I’m a happy soldier in the Lockhart army.”

Tifa’s heart aches to hear the dismissal. What are they doing? Why won’t Aerith just be… less endearing? Tifa says, “We’re happy to have you. For the fight.”

“Sure, a girl who talks to the planet and can shoot lightning, what’s not to like?” She stalks past Tifa and into Lab Z again. Tifa follows, feeling like a wretch for the entire conversation.

Inside Lab Z, Jessie has the door open and is tinkering away at that strange apparatus, with Tifa’s gold bangle next to it. Parts are being removed from the bangle, and the materia sits idle on the desk next to it.

“Sure you’re okay with that?” Tifa asks.

Jessie looks up from her work, grinning. “I’m insulted you’d even ask that.”

“Is this the best time to work on it?” Aerith asks.

“Oh, please, you two were out there playing mooneyes at each other for so long, I had time to tinker. Give me another few minutes and I think I’ll have something brand new for you to play with.”

“Will it still protect me from fire when you’re done? Because that’s a feature, not a bug,” Tifa asks. 

Jessie frowns now. “Not… sure. I guess we’ll find out!” She goes back to working on it, while Tifa follows Aerith to the open doorway next to the window.

She stares inside the room, and jumps a little when Tifa asks, “You still good?”

“Sorry,” Aerith says. “Yeah, I think we should just burn it all down, if we can.” 

Jessie says from behind them both, “Mako’s a poor accelerant, but it will burn.”

“That’s the word,” Aerith says. “Well, good. If we break them all open, we can burn them all up, right?”

“Before we go destroying it all, let’s at least search the room first.” Tifa thinks of that soft red glow from the first container.

“Nothing’s in there but death.”

“Let’s look, all the same. We have to break the containers anyway, we can do that after we make sure there’s no files or anything.”

Aerith nods. They walk into the large chamber, and Tifa doesn’t wait any longer. She approaches the broken container with the dead creature, and pokes at it carefully. It’s fairly desiccated, but no reason to take chances. Aerith scoffs but doesn’t interrupt. What’s left of its skin is mottled gray, its skull malformed. This might once have been a human, but it died as something else. No wonder this place is haunted and the spirits angry.

Jessie taps on the glass urgently and hops up from where she’s tinkering. Her head pops around the door and she says, “It’s Mako. You can touch it, but don’t let it linger.”

Tifa nods. “Should we find suits?”

Jessie frowns and shakes her head no. “They don’t really do anything. Just be quick and you won’t be exposed long enough to matter.”

That changes the conversation a bit. Tifa knows a little about Jessie’s father, how he got sick from Mako poisoning despite wearing protective gear. A lifetime of exposure kills, mutates. A couple of minutes should be fine, though, right?

“Noted,” Tifa says. “We’ll be careful.”

“You better.” Jessie goes back to tinkering, but Tifa can see one eye watching them as she works. They don’t deserve Jessie.

“A little help, Carbuncle?” Tifa asks. “Two means less exposure to each of us.”

Aerith comes forward and helps lift the body from the shards of glass, grimacing the whole time. From disgust or frustration with Tifa? Hard to say. The body is old enough that it doesn’t smell anymore, and she can only smell that heady, noxious odor of Mako permeating everything. The corpse slips free and they gently set it aside. Aerith’s throat does an ungainly lurch, but she holds it in. 

Inside the tank, in a pool of Mako, is the red materia. It glows like the Carbuncle once did. More living materia. They’ll make good use of it. Some glass floats from where they just removed the body and more broke off into it. Tifa grabs a shard of glass from the ground, uses it to scoop and clear the area directly above the materia. As soon as it’s clear, Tifa darts her hand into the murky Mako and pulls the orb of materia out. The Mako tingles on the skin and seems almost to cling to the materia as it breaks the surface. Tifa immediately sets it down to reduce contact with pure Mako.

Her hand drips with the aqua liquid, and she flicks it back and forth to get the majority of it off her, spackling the tank and the ground with droplets. “Any bandages or spare cloth in your bag?” she asks Aerith.

Aerith digs but comes up empty. “We’ve been using them a bit. But wait.” She reaches down and snaps up a shard of glass, then slices through the bottom of her dress. “I’m made of slightly used bandages,” she says cheerfully, ripping free a large swatch that reveals the bottoms of her calves before handing it over. “I’ll make another cut for the materia.”

“Don’t bother. This will work.” She regrets that a little bit, but smiles. “Thanks.” Tifa rubs her hand over the cloth, careful not to spread it around. It’s not quite like water or oil, but it lingers on the skin and doesn’t rub off easily. “I’m definitely ready for a shower when this is over,” Tifa says.

“Two showers and a hot bath. I bet we smell just great .”

Now doesn’t that just sound nice. She knows the mansion has a hot tub, and her face warms a bit thinking about it.

Tifa turns and drops the Mako-soaked cloth onto the red materia, then picks it up and  rubs it clean before tossing the cloth away. The red materia is large, bigger than the others they’ve handled so far, and she wonders if maybe sitting in Mako all this time has messed it up, or caused it to swell or something.

But it’s theirs now. “How’d it work before? Breathe into it and let it breathe into me?” 

Aerith nods. “I can help again.”

“I’ll try it alone first. If something’s wrong with it, no reason for us both to get hurt.”

Aerith opens her mouth to protest, probably, but Tifa ignores her. She shuts her eyes, cupping the materia, trying to remember that feeling of a friendly wave.

Only this one isn't friendly. It’s pissed . Instead of that kindly little gesture she expects, this one slams against her being. It demands attention, release. Tifa gasps and nearly drops it, but Aerith reaches out and snatches it. Right before Tifa loses it, she feels its name deep inside her. Hades

Tifa tries to catch her breath while Aerith holds the materia. She says, “You were right. Nothing but death in here.”

“This is the source,” Aerith whispers. “It’s what I was feeling before.”

“The ghosts are… what come from it?”

Aerith’s head shakes and tears stand in her eyes. “I think they’re tied to it. They’re angry and this thing is furious. They’re scared and this thing is terrifying. Hades. Death. They’re trapped by a false deity.”

“Well. Shit.” What else is there to say to something like that? “What do we do?”

“I--I’m not sure,” Aerith says, voice breaking. 

“Well, I sure can’t offer any advice. This is your arena.”

Jessie’s head pops back into the doorframe. “Hey, you two should come see this.”

Tifa scowls. “Jessie, I love you, but this isn’t the time for tinkering.”

Jessie grins, though. “Please, I finished that five minutes ago. Here.” She tosses a pair of knuckledusters cobbled together from Tifa’s bangle and that gloved apparatus. “You can play with it in a minute. I’ve been trying to access the computer in here.”

“You managed to power it on?” Tifa asks. They leave the room with the tanks and rejoin Jessie in the small lab. Aerith still holds the red materia, as if she’s afraid to let it go. It seems even bigger in her hands, and she clutches it protectively against her stomach.

Jessie nods, pointing at the little tablet on her gauntlet. “Lucky this thing didn’t get busted in either of the collapses I lived through today.” The gauntlet has been wired to the large computer on the wall, and its tiny display shows folders, but it’s all so small on the tablet that Tifa can’t make out the names of anything.

“You just happened to have a cable to interface with this tech from… what, twenty years ago?”

“Maybe thirty. And of course. What kind of expert would I be if I didn’t have a dozen connectors in my pack?” Tifa smiles, impressed always with Jessie. Aerith pays only a little bit of attention to the proceedings. Her focus is mostly on the Hades materia.

Jessie continues, “Okay, so I know it’s hard to read for my display. I’m copying it all, but in the meantime, I can access something. There’s folders and files that start with an R, an H, an M, a B, an S.”

“Let’s just do the alphabet,” Tifa says. Jessie accesses the file marked “B” and it’s a report on something called the Behemoth, Type-0. The graphic associated with it proves it is the creature they fought in the other lab. “Type 0? Is that like… a prototype?”

“Could be.” Jessie shrugs. “Says here it was slated to be decommissioned because it was too volatile.” She snorts. “Understatement of the year.”

Aerith says, “You don’t decommission an animal. Shinra is cruel.”

Tifa agrees. “Well, at any rate, it seems like it’s obvious it didn’t feel like being decommissioned. Now I feel bad we had to kill it.”

“I wouldn’t feel that bad,” Jessie says, skimming the file more, eyes squinting to read the tiny text. “It says it was also unbelievably vindictive for a creature, holding grudges against even the nicest of its captors.”

“Just because they turned it into a monster doesn’t mean we can’t pity it,” Aerith says.

“Move on to the next file,” Tifa says. She doesn’t want to think about pity right now. Shinra deserves none.

Jessie opens the next file, and this one displays a dossier of a young man with slicked back hair in a ponytail and thick glasses. A small goatee frames his smug smile. Tifa immediately dislikes his demeanor.

Jessie says, “This is for a young scientist named Hojo.”

Tifa and Jessie both catch Aerith’s sharp intake of breath, a barely-concealed gasp. Tifa says, “You’ve heard of him?”

Aerith nods, still cradling the Hades materia. “He’s… not a nice man.”

“What did he do?” Jessie asks.

Aerith shakes her head, though, grimacing. 

Tifa’s arms cross in front of her as she turns to Aerith. “We’re not going to see your name in here, are we?”

Aerith sticks her tongue out at that. “I’m not that old.”

Fair enough, Tifa thinks. She also didn’t say she wouldn’t show up for the obvious reasons, like “I’m not a research subject.” A woman who speaks to the planet, and has heard of a Shinra scientist from decades ago. Trouble any way you slice it.

“What’s it say about him?” Tifa asks Jessie.

Jessie finishes skimming and says, “Looks like it was a performance review of sorts. Cold, calculating, interested only in the science. Excitement because he’d go far in the new program.”

“New program?”

“Doesn’t say.”

“Next file, then.”

The “M” file looks like an overview of various Mako experiments being performed down here. Mostly just statistics, nothing that makes sense. “I’d call this proof of Shinra doing bad things if I could make sense of it,” Tifa says.

“I’ll copy it all regardless,” Jessie says, moving on to the “R” files.

These all point to fuel experiments for a rocket program Tifa only vaguely remembers back when going into space was a thing Shinra cared about.

“Damn, no wonder that fuel was so explosive,” Jessie says. “I blew up a monster with rocket fuel. New first for me!”

“You’ll have to brag to Biggs and Wedge about it when we get out of here,” Tifa teases. “What’s next?”

“Hm, the last one that isn’t corrupted beyond repair is ‘S’ and it--oh wow. It’s the prototype for the SOLDIER program.” Jessie and Tifa share significant glances. This might be incredibly useful, given that they’ve known Zack and Cloud, and Jessie had a run-in with this Roche guy. 

Tifa asks, “Does it say what they did to them?”

Jessie reads more, and her eyes go wide. She nods towards the window with the tanks of mutated creatures beyond it. “You’re looking at it. Mako baths to infuse them with strength. These were the first round, which were not just bathed in it, but put into a kind of cryogenic sleep while their whole bodies were suffused with it.”

Despicable. What a legacy for people like Zack and Cloud, who just wanted to be strong, to protect the weak and live honorable lives. “Most of this file is busted, but there’s a footnote that talks about a new infusion technique. Using something called JENOVA. Doesn’t say what that is, though.”

Aerith says, “I don’t want to hear about this anymore.”

“Heard of that, too?” Tifa asks.

Aerith shakes her head no, though. “It just… it makes me feel like someone walked over my grave.”

Jessie sighs, then frantically presses buttons on the side of her tablet. The screen flickers and fades. “Well, damn. I copied what I could, but I think this gave up the ghost, maybe pun intended. We’re not going to get much more from these files, but I’ll see what I can recover from what I copied later.”

“You’re the best, Jessie.” If they can recover that bit about the SOLDIER program, that might be a great leak to destabilize their control, if the public trust in them can be chipped away at. Tifa leaves her to work on the old computer, and turns back to Aerith. “You’re pale. That thing affecting you?”

Aerith smiles shakily. “It’s not that. Well, I don’t think so. I hate it, though.”

Tifa shrugs. “So what is it?”

Aerith’s head shakes dismissively, but her eyes are resolute. “I have an idea. You’re probably not going to like it.”

“It couldn’t be something easy like just tell it to chill out and let all the ghosts go, huh?”

Aerith’s weak smile fades. “That’s kind of what I have in mind. Only I don’t think it’s going to listen. And then we’ll have to force it.”

Tifa takes a moment to process. “So… so you’re telling me to punch Hades.”

“Maybe?”

Tifa wants to laugh, but that would sour the mood. Time to be serious, because Aerith obviously cares about this. Tifa does, too, she realizes. What if something similar was going on in Nibelheim? If her father, her mother, everyone, was trapped in some kind of death loop, unable to return to the planet? It’s only right to fix this if they can.

“Can we make a promise before we try this?” Tifa asks.

“Depends what it is.”

“If we live through this, we lay some cards on the table.” Aerith’s mouth opens in what looks like protest, but Tifa cuts her off, “I’m not saying we do a tell-all. But we’re both holding things back, and that’s not good for what we’re doing. You share, I share. Deal?” Tifa holds her hand out, and Aerith frees a hand to shake it, still holding the large red materia with the other protectively against her stomach.

“Good. So what’s the plan, then?” Aerith talks her through it, and Tifa can’t believe they’re going to try this nonsense, but she nods. Time to parlay with madness and death.

*****

“So tell me about this thing you’ve made me,” Tifa says, pulling this strange glove on. It seems like a pair of knuckledusters, but half the gold bangle with one materia slot each is on each fist. Tifa isn’t sure the punching part should be made of gold. 

They’re setting up in Lab Z, the only place with enough room to maneuver. Everything is wrecked in X, Y is too crowded, so they just have to hope they don’t interfere with the tanks next door while they do this.

Jessie says, running a hand through her short ponytail and scratching her head nervously, “Well, I honestly don’t know. The blue materia supports the green, right? I kind of inverted the wiring and ran the connections up to the metal frame. In theory it will augment offense instead of defense.”

“Why did you make this gold part the hitting part, though? It’s going to be soft and bend, won’t it?”

Jessie grins. “Oh, please. Do you think Don Corneo could afford solid gold jewelry? Check it out.” She shows Tifa the small space where she cut into the gold to test it. “Pretty sure it’s just steel underneath. Gold-plated, which means you get to leave behind a little something when you punch.”

“It’s pretty comfortable for something you made in ten minutes.”

Jessie gives a thumbs up with her happy expression. “Donna Lockhart deserves the best.”

“She always has it with you around.”

Jessie beams at that. “Oh, and I’m almost 99% certain it won’t like… melt your hand.”

Tifa shakes her head. “Maybe lead with that before I put them on next time?”

“Hey, nothing is 100% sure.” Tifa glances at Aerith and catches herself thinking that someone just might be. She shrugs that away and finishes tightening the knuckles around her fists. She isn’t sure if the materia will function as a pair separated like this, but when she draws her hands up into a defensive stance and clenches her fists, the blue and green glows intensify. They’re not melding into that nice teal color anymore, but she thinks maybe they’re still working together somehow. Her hands and feet feel warmer. Not hot, but like they’re next to an open flame on a cold day.

“I’m ready,” Aerith announces. She has seated herself seiza with her hands holding the red materia out in front of her. She looks like a stone altar given life.

“That’s my cue to back out,” Jessie says. “Pretty sure you can’t shoot ghosts and I have no idea how materia works.”

“It seems pretty safe along the path we took to get here. Want to scout it out to make sure it’s still okay?” Tifa asks. 

“We just got each other back and now you’re sending me out alone?” Jessie asks. It’s half teasing, but Tifa can see the worry in her eyes.

“I have faith in you, Strawberry.”

Jessie grins. “Hey, if you’re lucky, the talking thing will work.”

“Because diplomacy has worked so well, historically,” Tifa deadpans. 

Jessie snorts, but backs out of the room. “Good luck!” She goes down the corridor a ways, and Tifa waves a last time before turning back to Aerith.

“So should I help with the first part?” Tifa asks, standing in front of Aerith.

Aerith nods. “I’d like that. Doing this alone is scarier than I thought.”

Tifa sits on her knees, too, boots stuck out at an angle she can quickly vault up onto if she needs to. She reaches her newly-adorned hands out, and shares the weight of this materia. It is so similar to the time they dealt with the Carbuncle materia that shivers run down Tifa’s spine. It’s a good memory, and this is probably going to be a bad one.

Aerith takes a deep breath and exhales, eyes closed. “Okay. Think happy thoughts. Peaceful thoughts.”

“Easier said than done, but okay.” Tifa closes her eyes, too, and tries to remember the last time she was actually happy. Not just complacent, or relieved. But actually happy. And the first moment that pops into her mind is seeing Cloud in Midgar. Reclaiming some semblance of her past, an old friend. The moment that she thought it might all be okay after all. 

The red materia warbles in their shared grip. Vibrates angrily. The memory in Tifa’s mind sours. Why would that moment make her happy, when Cloud failed her? When he wasn’t there in Nibelheim when she needed him. When he wasn’t there in Don Corneo’s mansion. No, that isn’t a happy memory. It’s a memory born of pain and frustration.

Aerith says, “Tifa, I don’t know what you’re doing, but you’re making it worse.” Tifa’s eyes spring open, back to the present. Back to the desperate spirits they’re trying to help. 

Only it’s too late. It’s feeding off her frustration. The orb swells and contracts, and spindly, skeletal fingers reach out, covering their own hands. Cold as the grave, sharp as death. In her mind she feels Hades questing, seeking. Embrace corruption , it says. Welcome death.

“No,” Tifa says, springing back onto her heels, lifting from her seated position. She rips her fingers free of Aerith’s, tearing the skin against the skeletal claws, and only hopes the promise in her eyes is enough for Aerith to know she isn’t being abandoned. Aerith nods, her green eyes resolute.

The gnarled, skeletal hands force their way out of the red materia, closing over Aerith’s tighter now. It is summoning itself into this world, feeding off Tifa’s negative energy.

“I don’t know what you did, but it didn’t like it!” Aerith yells. Her hands are trapped, and she seems locked into position. A grim visage of death swirls up and out, and suddenly standing before them is a reaper out of legend. Hades. It stands over Aerith, noxious green fumes pouring from its jawless mouth.

The wispy white spirits swarm now, wailing their discontent. At first Tifa thinks they’re attacking, but they seem like they’re trying to escape and are slowly being drawn inward towards Hades. Into the soulless black depths of its hollow sockets. It reaps now that it’s free. Aerith screams and coughs at the noxious fumes, and Tifa has to act. She has to do something right now .

So she spins into a roundhouse kick directly at the skull bearing down on Aerith. Her leg passes right through and Tifa loses her balance for a moment. She tries again with a flying knee into its back, sailing right through it and landing awkwardly next to Aerith. The spirits swirl and cry. Aerith sobs as the skeletal fingers dig into her hands, and crimson drips down to pool on her dress.

Tifa throws a single punch as near the red materia as she dares, hoping that she can hit this thing where it clutches at Aerith. But her fists pass through harmlessly, chilled to the bone.

And that’s when she realizes the warmth is gone from her arms and legs. She stands to her full height once more, draws herself into a defensive position, and clenches her fists. The difference is immediate. Warmth surges back into her fists, into her legs. She rears back one quick punch, ready to rebalance when she passes through Hades, but one skeletal hand shoots up from where it clutches Aerith, grabs her fist, and squeezes.

Its haunting eye sockets lock onto her now, and it throws her backwards. Embrace corruption . Welcome death.

Tifa crashes through the glass partition and into one of the full tanks, which also shatters from the force of her body. Her world dissolves in a deluge of glass shards, Mako, and the tortured remains of a SOLDIER lab experiment. She swallows Mako as she drops to the ground, glass crunching under her, slicing her arms and legs with shallow cuts. The sickly sweet stench of Mako and decayed creature overtakes her. On hands and knees, she vomits up the aqua liquid, tearing her throat as glass comes up with it. She spits Mako and blood as she stands up, her shoulder and back aching where they crashed through two different pieces of glass.

The spirits swarm around Tifa, urging her back into the fight. The reaper swats at more spirits on the other side of the partition, rending them into shreds that wail and get sucked into its gaping maw. No, Tifa thinks. We can’t let it do this.

She runs and vaults through the broken glass window, slides over the desk and plants her feet at the edge, letting her forward momentum carry her upright while her knees scream at the pressure. She leaps off the edge of the desk towards the skeletal spirit and kicks out at the hooded skeleton’s chest. For the briefest moment, Tifa sees a halo of fire around her boot before it connects, setting the phantom robe ablaze, cracking the bones beneath. Tifa grins, clenching her fists once more, feeling the power of fire course through her limbs. 

Thank you, Jessie.

She’ll worry about all this Mako in a minute, when they’re still alive to worry about being poisoned.

She swings again, this time for the skull, but Hades swirls away into nothingness and Tifa’s fist meets only air. “What the hell, did I kill it?” she calls out.

Only the spirits swirling around them all continue to wail, and one is shredded before her eyes. The faintest hint of skeletal fingers vanish as the ghostly spirit is sucked away into nothing.

“Turning invisible is cheating!” she yells, swinging out wildly at the places she sees the claws ripping the spirits apart. Each time she hits nothing and grows more frustrated.

Sudden, sharp pain slashes her back. Blood trickles and she drops to a knee next to Aerith. Aerith cries out, “Tifa!” while she still holds the materia. She begins to let go of it, to reach for Tifa, but Tifa grimaces and grabs for Aerith’s hands, holding her in place.

“I’m fine,” she hisses. “What do we do?”

Aerith shakes her head, terror in her eyes. “It’s taking everything I have to keep it contained.”

“This is not contained, Carbuncle!”

“You don’t want to see it truly free. I think--I think if you let despair in, it can kill you.” Aerith’s eyes find Tifa’s, and Tifa has a hard time looking away despite their desperate situation. “Think of something worth living for, Tifa, and then live for it .” Live for it. Can she possibly do that? Her entire world is anger and vengeance.

Tifa struggles to her feet. Her back hurts, but she’s okay. It seems superficial, but she’s so tired. Something to live for, she thinks. Something worth living for. Tifa throws her body backwards, narrowly dodging a raking claw to her face that comes out of nowhere and vanishes back into nothing.

Aerith holds the materia, concentrating on it. “What are you doing?” Tifa calls.

Aerith doesn’t answer, but her lips move frantically, repeating a phrase. “Go in peace, return to the earth, release your anger.” Almost like a recited prayer. And though she doesn’t appear to actually be doing anything, a soft white glow suffuses itself around Aerith, centered on her head and radiating outwards. Maybe Tifa’s just about to pass out from blood loss, but it’s one of the prettiest things she’s ever seen.

Only the white glow reveals something else: a pale, bony hand, fingers outstretched like claws, hovering over Aerith’s back like a spearpoint. Hades appears more fully as the white glow spreads, and the hand rears back before darting forward.

Tifa panics. She’s not close enough to stop it, and that’s a killing blow. Every nerve, every shred of Tifa’s being, screams out to do something, to stop this from happening. She can’t lose anyone else. Especially not this one. 

Her body responds with sudden intuitive understanding. She slams the gold-plated steel knuckles together, and a fireball sparks to life from the concussion. In the split-second it forms, Tifa spins, backhanding the little ball of flame, which scorches across the room. Aerith’s eyes go wide as the fire streaks over her head, snapping one of the bones off of Hades’ hand and forcing the grim specter away.

Something to live for. Something worth living for. Some one . Tifa and Aerith stare at each other for a brief moment before nodding. This is the moment. Tifa becomes a spinning wheel of flame around Aerith. Everywhere Hades appears, Tifa is right there moments later to deflect a blow or rain punches down upon it. One flying knee sends her perilously close to the edge of the white light, and she ducks instinctively. Noxious fumes pour over the spot she just was, and she rolls away, back to Aerith’s side.

Tifa is a furious tornado, protecting Aerith and whittling down the reaper bit by bit. Protect her while she keeps the being at bay, weak enough to defeat. Each kick, each punch, frees the essence of spirits. Sets the tattered cloak aflame. Hades cries out pain and anguish. They’re doing it. They’re fighting for each other and all the spirits at risk. Tifa has in mind to finish the fight with one final blow, and she waits for her moment. 

There. Hades appears, a wreath of fire and frustration at the doorway out to the corridor. It flies in, skeletal claws swinging. Tifa rushes in, one massive flaming punch straight at the thing’s chest, and it dances away. Her punch is a feint, though, and Tifa drops down, sliding on her knees in the direction the reaper fell away. And with one crushing uppercut, she knocks the thing away, out the door. It leaves the white glow of Aerith’s radiance, but something has changed. It is still visible. 

It laughs. A horrible, piercing neigh erupts as Hades reaches out to nothing, and grips the swiftly appearing reins of a shadowy warhorse dragging a chariot. Hades rides straight at Jessie, who has just come back around the bend and stares with wild confusion at this apparition riding down upon her.

“Jessie!” Tifa yells, but what can she do? What can they do?

“Tifa!” From behind her, Aerith drops the materia and rushes to Tifa’s side. She taps the side of the silver bangle and the lightning materia pops out into her hands.

Tifa fumbles a bit trying to make sure Aerith has it, but Aerith grabs Tifa’s hand so they both clutch the materia between them. She holds her other hand out towards the charging Hades, and gestures for Tifa to do the same.

Together, then. Their screaming voices, their wordless cries, release a corona of lightning out into the corridor. The jagged, electric blue chases the reaper down, envelops it and its steed in crackling lightning. Amid shrieks and rage, it burns away inches before a horrified, cowering Jessie. Wisps of white splash over her instead, and the spirits happily swirl and dance around her before vanishing into the ether. Going back to the planet.

The red materia goes dull and shrinks back down. 

For a moment Tifa’s entire world is breathless worry: for Jessie, for Aerith, for everyone who has ever been hurt. Then it all comes crashing down upon her, and she drops to one knee, Aerith beside her. Both are heaving breaths, as if they’ve forgotten what air is. 

“That was crazy,” Tifa finally manages, falling back and resting her weary limbs. She spits more blood, coughs on it a bit. Aerith lets herself fall, half on top of Tifa, head resting on Tifa’s stomach, both too weak to do anything about it in the moment.

“I’ve never cast magic cooperatively before,” Aerith says between breaths. “I wasn’t sure it would work.”

“Hell of a time to try it.”

“Holy cow, are you both alive!?” Jessie yells, running up to them from the corridor. “Why did a reaper on a horse come tearing down the hallway? What in the HELL happened?”

They can’t answer. It’s all too absurd. All that matters is--“We did it,” Aerith says.

Tifa says, “I punched Death.”

And that settles it. They all collapse into laughter for a minute, relief and exhaustion overwhelming the trio of women. They did it. One less evil perpetrated by Shinra. One less worry.

The real work can now begin.

*****

Leslie closes the door to the entertaining room, and knocks on Donna Lockhart’s office doors. He’s been antsy ever since he returned to the surface, stalling for time. Finally when he receives word of the Donna’s return, he enters her office to find the three women in a state of total dishevelment and disgust. They are covered in sewer water, blood, mud, dirt, and somehow stinking of Mako and death. He is in shock that they’re alive in this state.

Yet they are. Donna Lockhart went into the depths on a whisper and a prayer, and came back with her friends. Donna Lockhart, Jessie Raspberry, and Aerith Gainsborough. Who are these women to defy all the odds and survive? He is as impressed by them as he is fearful.

But that doesn’t matter in the moment. When Tifa sees his worried expression, she straightens and calls for water and a change of clothing. Kotch retreats into her personal chambers to do as she says. 

“What’s going on, Leslie?” she asks. Her voice is scratchy, warbling. It gives her a dangerous edge just to hear her speak.

He says, “Shinra sent soldiers to arrest the Don. Once they realized he was gone, they sent… a delegate, instead. Someone to talk turkey with the new boss and keep the arrangements going. I’ve been stalling.” Tifa’s eyes go hard and she glances at her companions. They all nod, faces hard and eyes resolute.

Tifa says, “This is the mission. Give me ten minutes and send them in. See if there’s a Bee or Bear willing to entertain until I can get cleaned up. Volunteer only.”

“On it, boss. I’m glad you’re back.” He salutes and closes the door on her, takes a deep breath, and reenters the entertaining room. The chubby, balding man sits impatiently drinking from the bottle of wine Leslie left him. “Director Palmer, the Donna has returned and will see you shortly. In the meantime, I’ll have one of our Honeybee recruits bring you another drink.”

Director Palmer, the deadest of weight in Shinra, is a frequent flyer at the Honeybee Inn. He smiles broadly, wiping his mouth and belching slightly. “Why, yes, I think that would be quite lovely. How long, do you think? I’m a very busy man, you know.”

“Just another ten minutes, Director. You’ll be quite pleased with things, I guarantee it.”

Palmer chuckles and waves Leslie away. Donna Lockhart has her work cut out with this guy. The real test of her leadership is about to begin.

Notes:

The Underground Lab arc has come to an end! As you can see, it's time for Donna Lockhart to step up and be the Donna of Wall Market, by dealing directly with Shinra.

I can't promise a quick turnaround on the next set of chapters, but I can confidently say it won't be six months between updates like it was last time. Donna Lockhart and Aerith the Carbuncle will continue their adventure soon!

Chapter 14: Handed on a Silver Palmer

Summary:

Tifa, the Donna of Wall Market, meets with Director Palmer of Shinra. All her plans and preparations have led to this.

Aerith and Jessie worry about Tifa, and reminisce about Cloud.

Notes:

(See the end of the chapter for notes.)

Chapter Text

When Leslie leaves the office to waylay this Director Palmer, Tifa leaps into action. “Jessie, what do we know about this guy?” she asks, peeling her top off as she disappears into the personal bathroom off to the side of the Don’s bedroom. She leaves the door open, and hastily undresses while hopping into the still cold shower. It warms quickly, a luxury they barely had in Sector 7, but she has no time to enjoy it. She drenches herself, soaps up, and scrubs. All the while, Jessie talks at the doorway, her friend protecting her modesty and privacy. No time for either, but Tifa appreciates it all the same. That Aerith and Kotch were in the room, too, hardly seems to matter in the moment.

“Director Palmer, one of the big wigs at the top of Shinra,” Jessie says. “We had files on him back at the base, but–well, there wasn’t time to back anything up. He’s the leader of the space initiative and rocket programs, all of which have been shuttered and he’s been growing lazy with idleness. If he’s here to direct underground business, there’s a good chance he doesn’t really know anything about it and someone up there was just looking for something to keep him occupied. That could be useful to us, but we can’t take any chances. All of us have been seen in connection with Avalanche activity at this point, so probably best if Aerith and I make ourselves scarce. Even so, if he recognizes you, I guess it’s all over.”

Tifa doesn’t say anything during all this. There’s just no time. She tries to think about what needs to happen; if this Palmer sees her and recognizes her as a terrorist, he’ll have to be dealt with. But if he doesn’t let on that he recognizes her, and they let him go? This whole endeavor could come crashing down. Top that with the soul-deep weariness cascading over her after a sewer and subsequent secret lab adventure? She’s running on fumes.

She kills the shower, and though she knows there’s no time, she stands for a few seconds, hands on the shower wall, grasping at whatever moment of tranquility she can. Then a towel flips over the shower stall door. Jessie disappears back outside the bathroom and closes it up. 

Tifa yanks the towel down, thankful for Jessie and so mad that she can’t take her time and just sleep for twelve hours before all this happens.

She quickly dries off, scrubbing at her skin and shaking loose her waist-length hair. It’s tangled and messy, but she can’t do anything about it immediately. Her mob boss outfit–the trousers, button-up shirt, and vest–wait for her inside the bathroom. Kotch did his part. Everyone is doing their parts. This is the moment when it all comes crashing down or proves itself out. When her lackeys and lieutenants discover if they’ve made a bad call by choosing to serve her.

She can’t let them down. Won’t.

She steps out of the bathroom, feeling harried but refreshed, and the smell of her companions immediately hits her and her nose curls up at it. Jessie and Aerith have gone but the scent of Mako and sewage remains. Kotch pulls the chair back to Tifa’s vanity and says, “I know, boss, I’m on it. I’ll have the smell dealt with while you sit. I’ve already sent for one of the new recruits to help finish your hair and makeup. Carbuncle left you a little something, said it would pep you up.” He motions to the top of the vanity dresser and Tifa sees the last bottle of the SOLDIER-issue restorative from Cloud’s satchel.

Her stomach burbles at the thought of drinking it, but the results speak for themselves as she downs it, and manages to hold it in this time, too. Revitalization courses through her; the fatigue doesn’t exactly wash away, but it’s muted. It hangs in the background, letting her know it’s there and will come back with a vengeance.

“Thank you, Kotch. This is the moment we’ve been preparing for. Whatever happens, you’ve done well. If it goes bad, it’s not on you.”

“Appreciate the kind words, Donna, but it’s on all of us.” He trades places with a young woman Tifa met briefly. A Honeybee whom she remembers self-describing as ‘the girl you bring in when the guy won’t admit he’s into other guys yet’. Tifa takes a seat and lets this handsome, tawny woman rip the tangles from her hair, blow dry it, and touch up her makeup. Not a lot; there’s no time for anything fancy, and Tifa wouldn’t waste her time with it anyway, but smoothing the bruises and scratches from the last few hours is just good business.

Tifa thinks about what Jessie said about Director Palmer and glances at her attendant. She asks, “You were a Honeybee; you ever heard of this Palmer guy before?” 

The woman gives Tifa a sidelong glance in the vanity mirror while hastily blow-drying Tifa’s hair. “All the bees know Huff and Puff Palmer, Donna.”

Tifa snorts at this unexpected nickname, and the woman smiles. It’s a good smile, Tifa thinks, and suddenly Tifa glances away, embarrassed to have the thought. 

She clears her throat and asks, “And you call him that because he’s not big on stamina?”

“Short on breath, short on height, and short on other things it might pink your cheeks even more to hear.”

Tifa catches her face in the mirror to verify that yes, in fact, she’s blushing a bit. “Any chance all this makeup can hide this?”

“Sure, Donna. But the best way to hide a blush is to just get a little experience under your belt.” She smiles again as she smooths Tifa’s hair, preparing it for the tie at the tip, almost like a fin poking out under it. It’s a dangerous smile, a promise. “Nothing to be embarrassed about once you spend a little time between the sheets.” 

Tifa’s face grows hotter and she diverts the conversation. “Um. Any advice for dealing with a man like that?”

“He’s drunk on power and wine, Donna Lockhart. Give him more of the latter and you take away the former.”

Tifa likes that. She likes that notion a lot. “What’s your name?”

The girl twists Tifa’s chair and takes a seat on a nearby stool to focus on Tifa’s makeup. Time is running short, but this part is important. She says, “I go by Lenna.”

“Short for something?”

“It is.” 

“Maybe one day you’ll trust me enough to tell me.”

“Maybe, Donna.” Lenna finishes the hasty makeup job and stands, stretches her back a bit. “You gave me a chance at something different, so I owe you this much. The rest is on you.”

Tifa’s subordinates are far too free with their critique, she thinks. But she nods. “Well, I’m doing my best. We’re all starting over from something.”

“Not all of us are mob bosses, but I take your point.” Lenna bows respectfully and takes her leave. 

Now Tifa sits, alone with her thoughts and the vaguely unpleasant stink permeating the room. No more trips to the sewer, she promises herself. 

She sucks in a great breath and heaves it out, psyching herself up. This is it. The real deal now.

No more fucking around.

Donna Lockhart stands and leaves the room, entering her spacious office and closing the doors behind her to trap the smell in. 

Leslie stands at the double doors leading out of the office, waiting for Tifa to appear, and he nods at her. “Donna, I thought you might like to receive him on the balcony, with a view of Sector 7 at your back.”

Tifa tenses up. That sounds like the worst possible idea to her until she recalls what Lenna said about Huff and Puff Palmer. She doesn’t want him in this office while it smells, and she doesn’t want to go to him in the sitting room. The dungeon would be an interesting location, but she’s not ready to go back down there.

She nods. “Yes, let him work up a little bit of a sweat, and then a chilled glass will be waiting for him up there.” She strides forward and catches herself, stumbling a bit, when she sees Aerith and Jessie off to her right, hiding in the alcove that leads into the dungeon. Its door hasn’t been replaced yet, and the two women chuckle at something Jessie said as Aerith stands straight upon noticing Tifa, smiling and giving a sheepish thumbs up, as if she were caught doing something bad. Jessie follows suit, a big grin, the kind of grin men are intimidated by.

The knot of jealousy that winds its way into Tifa’s gut is like nothing she’s felt before. What is it about Aerith that has her in such a tizzy?

She shakes her head. “You can clean up in my room while I’m dealing with this Palmer.”

“Aye aye, Cap’n Mob Boss,” Aerith says, mock saluting. Fortunately Leslie has already stepped out of the room, waiting for Tifa, and she steps past the threshold, stomach twisting into knots. Dealing with a Shinra official could go very wrong. She thinks suddenly that this might be another reason to meet with him on the balcony. A fall from three stories may not be fatal, but it would be incredibly hard to get away if he survived.

She grimaces. That this thought occurs to her isn’t unexpected, but that it comes so readily as a good outcome chills her. Flashes of the way she acted in the sewer shoot through her mind as well. She’s committed to this path, and this path requires hard choices and harder repercussions. She only hopes that she continues to internally feel this awful about them. She isn’t sure what she’ll do if the hard options become the only options.

She climbs the steps, and though she’s got the energy from the SOLDIER restorative, the weight of an entire day spent in the sewers hangs heavy over her. She steps out onto the balcony to find daylight pouring in from Sector 7’s gap, and pours herself a glass of scotch from the mobile bar Leslie had brought up. Just a quick glass with a little lemon twist. It’s a luxury that she only rarely could bring into Seventh Heaven, fresh citrus from the Costa del Sol region. Usually she settled for the artificial stuff that came in industrial-sized bottles. 

Apparently a mob boss can afford such things, because there are half a dozen lemons, limes, and oranges in this cart. She resists the urge to tear into an orange and devour it whole. Later, when she isn’t meeting with an important Shinra contact. She does cut a lime open and squeeze the juice into the air, giving the balcony with its terrible slums view a sprightly, light scent.

She hasn’t been up here since that first one-on-one with Aerith, and they shared news of past loves and materia. This place feels… important now. Does it cheapen this place if Tifa uses it for her mafia business? Or only increase its mystique? 

The line of thinking is cut short as Director Palmer’s arrival is preceded by his complaining of climbing yet more stairs. The balcony door slides open as he drags himself into the open air. “Finally, you’ve kept me waiting long enough,” he wheezes. “You’re the new boss around here, eh?” He dabs at his balding forehead with a handkerchief, blotting the sheen of sweat he’d formed from climbing one set of stairs.

“Did you have dealings with the former?” Tifa asks, gesturing for him to take a seat on the bench while she pours him a chilled glass of wine, something sweet she wonders idly if Aerith would like.

“Not directly. Under my paygrade, you see.” He accepts the glass and downs half of it in one go, and sighs heavily. “That’s not half bad for the slums. This goes right, I’ll send you something real fancy. So you’re the Donna Lockhart.”

He sizes her up and down, and she lets her physique and cut of this outfit do her talking for her. He nods appreciatively. “Not really my type, but you may hold Wall Market for a time.” He squints at her. “Why do I feel as though we’ve met before?”

Tifa fights not to react to this. She turns her head so that the short hair side is visible, and shrugs. “Perhaps I just have one of those faces.”

Director Palmer snaps his fingers. “You were a Honeybee, weren’t you?”

This feels the safer option, and she adopts a coquettish grin and casts her eyes upward in a “you got me” gesture.

“Not one of mine, though. I remember all mine. With those legs… you were a performer?”

“You have me at quite a disadvantage, Director Palmer. Nothing escapes your keen eyes.”

He grins at the compliment and holds his glass out for her to refill it. “Yes, well, you don’t become the director of an entire section of a global superpower by missing things.”

She dutifully refills his glass. “So what brings a director to the slums now, of all times?”

He takes a quick sip and leans back, relaxing as much as he can on a bench. “I take it you weren’t aware of Don Corneo’s dealings with Shinra before you usurped him.” Suddenly his eyes widen in momentary panic, and he reaches into his jacket pocket. Tifa tenses up, ready to act if he pulls a weapon. Instead he activates a little device, which beeps and hums, and sets it on the bench next to him. “Can’t have you recording me, now. Shinra only pays off blackmail so many times before they just–” He mimics slicing a throat and Tifa nods.

“Of course. We respect the need for privacy in all matters. As to your question, Leslie brought me up to speed, but I’m happy to honor the Don’s agreements. We’ll keep the communication and product flowing in the right direction so long as the gil also flows in the right direction.”

Palmer smiles, a greedy, half-cocked thing that makes Tifa want to shudder. “That would be good, yes. Wall Market isn’t the only game in town, but some on the upper plate have a fondness for ragamuffins and dishevelment.” The way he eyes her as he speaks tells her all she needs to know about him, even if she hadn’t heard about his proclivities at the Honeybee Inn.

So Tifa goes a bit on the offensive. “Director Palmer, while I assure you that I can provide the girls, the boys, and the party favors, I’m going to make it very clear that I am not on the menu, nor will I ever be, if you want this arrangement to continue.”

“Oh ho ho,” Palmer chortles, drinking more of his wine. “I like them feisty.” He looks more closely at her now, seems to see through her facade. “No, I don’t think I like your kind of feisty. You hide the bruises well, but you put up a fight. No wonder you took the man out. He had a reputation of not knowing the word ‘no’.” He’s breathing easier now, having rested for several minutes while they chatted, and he sits up, swishing the wine in his glass.

“There is another matter we must discuss, of course, before we can continue.”

“Before you showed up, there was a cleanup crew here to arrest Don Corneo,” Tifa says. “You’re fishing to find out if his secrets died with him, or if the hit squad will need to be sent back in.”

Palmer eyes her warily, then nods. “You’re very direct. I like that. Bureaucracy often means people in power say one thing, and do another. I’ve done it often enough. Yes, to be blunt. If you are aware of certain deals Corneo made with Shinra–deals I’ve only been made aware of today, in fact–then that changes the conversation.”

She has to be careful here. Shinra sent soldiers to arrest the Don, to cover their trail of framing Avalanche for Sector 7’s destruction. Which means they’ll have no qualms about killing his replacement. 

“I know a fair bit about his dealings, but as I said before, hearing about Shinra deals is as fresh to me as it was to you, apparently.”

“You are aware of his goon squad in the slums, yes?”

“I know he’d send them out to do some dirty work. I always figured it was just reinforcing his hold on the sector. Nothing’s on the books, otherwise.”

He stares at her, hard, his little piggy eyes seeing right through her. Or not. He shrugs. She’s not lying–all of Shinra’s dealings with the Don were verbal. Paper trails could damage both, so better not to risk it. Avalanche operated much the same. 

Palmer looks out at the ruins of Sector 7. Tifa breathes deeply before following his gaze. After seeing it up close, collapsed inside the underground lab, looking at the wreckage up here is shockingly easy. That it’s easy doesn’t make it any easier, she thinks.

“Had you seen it this close, yet?” Tifa asks.

“Only from the highest floors of Shinra Tower. Tragic, what the rebels will do to incite fear and chaos.” The absolute fucking gall for him to say this. She damn near grabs him to toss him over the balcony railing, but she can’t. This is a test. He’s not fishing for rebel connections. He’s fishing to find out if she knows the real plan, that Shinra orchestrated it all.

She shrugs. “The rebels are all dead now, according to the news. Caught by their own blast when Shinra managed to waylay them.”

“You don’t sound sad to hear it.”

Tifa turns away slightly, to hide her face for the lie she’s about to tell. She pours herself a drink at the cart as she says, “Sector 7 was right next door. I’m sad for them, but dead men spend no gil. The rebels did me no favors.” Her fury and sadness at telling this lie balance each other out. She doesn’t break down in tears, nor does she break this man’s neck. Her fingers vibrate as she cups the shaker and shakes her mixed drink. She has to be ruthless here. She has to sell the lie. She can’t show weakness. 

So she shakes until she gets her emotions in check. “Would you like to try this, Director Palmer?” she asks, settling into her bartender routine. She pours a gin fizz with a lemon twist, and is satisfied that her fingers are no longer quaking with rage and adrenaline. 

Palmer eyes the drink for a moment, grins, and says, “You know they say cocktails are a product of the poor, but my, some are quite tasty.” He nods and accepts the glass. “Aha, it’s no wonder we never crossed paths at the Honeybee Inn. I always had my girls bring the drink to my room. I daresay you’ve served me many a cocktail, Donna.”

“Perhaps I have.”

He sips it to taste first, then downs half of it at once. A slight belch reveals how he likes it. She forces a smile learned when fishing for tips from drunk patrons. “So what can Wall Market do for Shinra?” she asks, hoping Palmer doesn’t notice that she never really answered him regarding past Shinra dealings.

He nods, standing up and joining her at the balcony overlooking Sector 7. He’s short enough that he doesn’t even need to lean to put his elbows to the railing like she’s done. “Well, past dealings aside, there is an event coming up three days from now. An impromptu celebration at the highest levels.”

“Celebrating what?”

“The defeat of Avalanche, naturally.” He drinks the rest of his glass, and refuses more when offered. “I’d better not, if I want to partake of other pleasures before I head back up.” Tifa’s grimace can’t be hidden, but he’s not looking at her anyway. “There is a need for discreet entertainment, and if Wall Market provides it, you will receive a percentage. A dozen Honeybees and three Honeybears ought to do it.”

This is nearly too good to be true. “I can arrange that. The Shinra Tower in three days?”

“I have the details here somewhere…” He feels around his various pockets in his tan suit and withdraws a pamphlet before handing it over. “That’s the official information. On the back is the… unofficial. Instructions for smuggling the honeys in, and so forth.”

“Smuggling into Shinra…” Tifa muses. She nods. “Wall Market is happy to oblige Shinra and all its wealth, Director Palmer. Is there anything else I can do for you, before sending you off to Andrea at the Honeybee Inn? I’m sure he’ll want to personally meet the new Shinra contact, as well.”

Palmer does the discourtesy of looking uncomfortable at mention of Andrea. He shakes his head. “Perhaps another time for Andrea. No, the girl who kept me company while waiting ages for you will do nicely. Send her back to that waiting room with another bottle.”

Tifa panics. She promised the recruits they wouldn’t have to do that anymore. When she asked for volunteers to keep him occupied, it was strictly voluntary and they weren’t to engage him beyond flirtatious behavior. She stammers, “Apologies, Director, but I’ve had to send her and the rest of my goon squad out on collections.”

“Pity, that. She was one of my favorites. I’d hoped for a last hurrah, as they say.” He does indeed look forlorn about it, and despite the grossness of this man’s sudden sadness, Tifa feels sorry for him. She then crams that down. No room for the old Tifa. The compassionate Tifa. Especially not for this man.

She says, “I hope this won’t put a damper on future dealings.”

“If it does, there are other arrangements with other people to be made.” That sounds more like Shinra. Vague threats and the confidence that they’re the biggest game in town and everyone would be fools to turn them away. He grins, big and showy. “Well, I’m off, then! Your hospitality leaves a little to be desired, from what I know of the former Don, but next time I’m sure you’ll get it just right.”

“Yes, Director Palmer. I’m sure I will.” He doesn’t seem to notice the undertone of threat in her voice, which is just as well.

She holds the sliding door open for him, and he collects the device that blocks recordings before leaving the balcony. She follows him back inside, where she leaves him with Leslie to escort him the rest of the way out. Upon parting at the front of her office, his nose curls up and Tifa smells what he’s smelling. Odor of sewage and Mako thinly-masked with cloying aerosol sprays and incense. 

“You might air the place out, Donna Lockhart. It’s a little ripe, though I suppose that’s the slums for you. Even the most wealthy of you still lives under the plate.”

With that final proverbial slap in the face, Director Palmer leaves. Heading for where, Tifa couldn’t guess and right now, had no reason to care.

She stares at the pamphlet gripped in her palm. An open invitation to infiltrate Shinra headquarters. To go in with an entire force. It can’t be that easy, can it?

She suspects that maybe, just maybe, it will be.

*****

In the Donna’s private chambers, shortly after Tifa and Director Palmer moved upstairs, Aerith and Jessie clean up. Aerith has never met the man before, but she feels certain Palmer would recognize her. Shinra bigwigs all know who she is, even if they don’t know the specifics of her origin. She’s a prized research subject.

That it took this long for Shinra to come after her again is surprising, mostly. The Turks had been content to keep tabs on her, but with Rude and Reno now gunning to bring her in, and Tseng presumably taking orders from above, it’s likely to be even more trouble than it’s worth.

And given the nature of Donna Lockhart’s new regime, Eruption, Aerith might be a bit too high profile to be seen with them. 

She sits on the tile floor of the bathroom, still dressed in all her grungy clothing, while Jessie strips down and hops in the shower. Aerith politely averts her gaze, though the flash of skin she catches is admirable. Aerith recalls that Jessie lived with a gaggle of other young women in a kind of actor’s hostel, so privacy at bathtime is probably a myth for her. She certainly makes no attempt to hide herself from Aerith.

Once in the shower, Jessie starts a conversation, muted and garbled by shower water somewhat. “Now that I’m in here, I feel like maybe we should have waited until we knew Tifa was gonna be safe with Palmer.”

“I think it’s the other way around, personally,” Aerith calls back. She’s exhausted, both physically and mentally, from the long day of fighting, materia usage, and communing with the angry, dark spirit of the dead. Beyond that, she feels it deep in her connection with the Lifestream. Something went wrong–or maybe not wrong, but different–during the encounter with Hades. Sure, they pulled out a win, such as it is. So why does Aerith feel this… malaise? This siphoning of her will?

Not to mention the whiplash of emotional fallout from one Donna Lockhart, broken soul hiding behind anger and fear. Aerith begins working the ties and braids out of her hair. Once the bow is loose, she slips the white materia free and sets it aside. Even while the rest of her and her belongings are covered in layers of grit and grime, the materia glows with the gentle light it always has, unmarred. 

Her hair, however, is all matted and tangled, and will be an utter nightmare when she has time to properly clean and brush it out, but it eventually begins to come loose.

Jessie snorts at Aerith’s suggestion, then makes a gagging sound within the shower. “Gah, water up my nose. Don’t make me laugh, Carbuncle, I might drown.”

“An ignoble end for one Jessie the Strawberry.” She rubs at her arm where it itches under all the muck and grime, and then realizes she’s coated in a film of the stuff when it scratches away a thin line. Aerith idly writes on her arm with a fingernail, scratching away the mud and muck. It’s a silly, childish thing she does, a heart with the initials TL & AG inside it. She smiles at it, at what might have been, before rubbing it away. 

“You’re probably right, though,” Jessie says. “Chances are he’s gonna recognize Tifa, and with Tifa being all… ruthless? Odds are good he won’t make it off the balcony.”

“I hope it doesn’t come to that.”

“Sympathy for the devil?” Jessie asks, turning the shower off. She reaches for the towel and scrubs herself dry, so that she’s pink-cheeked and her hair is already beginning to frizz when she steps out to get dressed. With a little more propriety than she showed getting into the shower, she exits the stall with the towel wrapped around her, cinched tight above her chest. 

“Sympathy for our devil, I suppose.” Aerith stands and blushes a bit as Jessie makes no motion to turn away or avert her gaze. “Sorry, um, could you–”

“Oh!” Jessie grins. “Sorry. Sure, do your thing.” She turns away and Aerith rapidly undresses. Once she’s in the stall and luxuriating in the heat of the shower, she realizes Jessie’s talking again.

“–cut her some slack. I know you didn’t know her before this, but my Tifa is still inside that shell.”

“I didn’t mean to call her a devil,” Aerith says. “Just… she’s vexing.”

“She was a bit of a contradiction before this part of her life ever happened.”

What does that mean? Aerith wonders. So she asks.

“A bartender who’ll put a man twice her size in the dirt, but is so scared of offending people by having a say in things. She’s got some darkness in her past that she doesn’t talk about–hell, we all do, or otherwise why would we be in Avalanche–yet she turns all flustery and shy when she’s around someone she likes.”

“Not exactly the Tifa I know,” Aerith says, watching the water run down the drain as it goes from muddy brown, to reddish brown, and eventually to clear.

“No,” Jessie agrees. Her voice is muffled for a moment, under cloth. “She’s more confident and driven now. I guess whatever happened here–whatever prevented her from coming back to Sector 7 to try and stop it–was the pack that broke the chocobo’s back.”

“It’s not like I’m gonna lose any sleep over her,” Aerith says, shutting off the water and taking the towel that appears over the stall. Drying herself off proves that her hair is worse than she originally thought, and she pulls at the tangled mess as she steps from the shower, feeling refreshed but still bone-weary. Jessie’s already changed into some fatigues, and she has a flowery dress of yellow and green for Aerith along with functional underthings. Jessie’s also wearing a grin that sees right through Aerith.

“What?” Aerith asks, taking the dress before ushering Jessie out of the bathroom altogether while she finishes cleaning up and getting dressed.

Through the door, Jessie says, “Look, I’m not trying to play matchmaker or anything. She’s probably too focused on revenge to think about romance, anyway. Just… you look at each other the way I looked at Cloud. And the way that I think he looked at me the last time I saw him.”

“I wish I’d gotten to know him,” Aerith says, changing the subject while popping the door open, nearly catching a stumbling Jessie. She’d been leaning against it.

Jessie chuckles as she rights herself and steps aside for Aerith to come out into the bedroom. The room still has the faint tang of sewer about it, but it’s been airing out for half an hour and incense is doing the rest of the work. Their clothing is unsalvageable. Better to just bin it and burn it than try to wash it.

Jessie gestures to the chair in front of the vanity. “He was a man of few words, but the ones he said were nice. Direct. Come on, let’s get you combed out.”

Aerith takes the seat, draping her tangled hair behind the chairback. “I know you liked him, and I know Tifa had something with him. Even childhood friends don’t make the face she did when she found out he was gone.”

“Yeah, I didn’t really get it between them. She was so earnest about him being here, a friend from the old days, and he was so earnest about making himself useful. Proving himself to her.”

Aerith smiles at Jessie in the mirror while Jessie works meticulously at brushing and separating the tangles. She isn’t exactly delicate, but she makes good progress. “And yet you decided to throw your hat in the ring.”

“Nothing ventured, etc.” Jessie’s smile changes, though. The lines of her face get sad, then hard. “Maybe nothing could have happened. I had to practically bully him into agreeing to a date.”

“His loss.” 

“Damn right.” Again the false bravado cracks. Of course, they’re talking about a dead man. “Still, my heavens, he was pretty.”

This causes Aerith to snort and yelp in pain simultaneously at a particularly hard knot Jessie works through. “Sorry!”

“It’s fine. I don’t understand how our glorious leader managed to not be a total rat’s nest. Or you, for that matter.”

Jessie grins. “Short hair don’t care. Can’t speak for Tifa, though.”

“Yours isn’t that short,” Aerith reminds her.

“Hm. Ponytail, can’t fail?”

“Mine was in a big braid! That should have made it easier.”

“Do you want the braid back? I’m not the best at fancy solutions.”

“I’ll take care of it later. Just get the tangles loose.”

“You got it, Carbuncle.” Jessie works in silence for a little while, tongue stuck out in concentration. Aerith finds it wholly adorable, and Jessie blushes slightly when she catches Aerith’s wispy smile in the mirror.

“Sorry,” Aerith says. “My mother always said I didn’t know when to stop looking.”

“I’ll take it as the compliment it is. Also, you’re nice, pal, but you kinda lack the required parts.”

“I’m not hitting on you.”

“Uh huh.”

“I’m not!”

Finally finished with the tangles in Aerith’s hair, Jessie sighs and plops down onto a sofa next to the vanity, the kind with the half-circle armrests–a cabriole, Aerith thinks? “I’m only teasing.”

Reminded suddenly of the sheer weight of exhaustion, Aerith yawns. “How long do you think she’ll be, dealing with Palmer? I’d like to go home tonight, check on Mom.”

Jessie shrugs, lounging out, her damp hair draped over her shoulder onto her chest. “Nothing to do but wait. Can’t risk him seeing us.”

Aerith sets her arm over the chairback, resting her head on it. Her hair not being braided bothers her, and there’s something discomfiting about its looseness right now, in this moment. It feels lighter. Something’s missing. She yawns again, eyes growing watery from staying open. Lids heavy. Then it occurs to her what’s missing.

She snaps to attention before she nods off all the way, and laughs softly, expecting a return chuckle from Jessie for nearly falling asleep. But Jessie breathes deeply on the sofa nearby, arms crossed in front of her chest, eyes closed. Fast asleep. Peaceful. The sleep of a person used to catching whatever sleep she could for however long it was available.

Aerith stands up. She’d rather not nap in the middle of the day, but she’s confined to this room for now. So she retrieves the white materia from the bathroom. Once it’s in her hands again, she feels at peace. That she left it unattended after her shower speaks volumes about her own exhaustion.

She paces in the large suite. Each circuit across the carpeted floor drains her more and more. She’s never felt this tired. Maybe when she was a little girl enduring tests from Shinra, but never in her adult life.

So she sits down on the nearest surface, Tifa’s bed. It’s shockingly comfortable, and she melts into its warm embrace. “Just for a minute,” she mumbles. 

She’s asleep in seconds.

*****

After setting some preliminary plans in motion with her staff, Donna Lockhart sits at her desk in the big office. She signs something for Leslie, a bill of lading for some of their above-board commerce, and stretches her arms up over her head, cracking her back and massaging the muscles. It’s easy to forget you’re tired when there’s so much to do, and you’re hopped up on SOLDIER juice.

“Is there anything else pressing?” she asks Leslie, covering a yawn with a gloved palm. 

Leslie shakes his head. “Most business waits on you, not the other way around, Donna Lockhart.”

“Until Shinra comes calling, that is.”

“And we’ve done all we can for that right now. With radio and cellular communications still spotty, your cohorts over in Sector 5 will get here as soon as they can.”

“When will the team be ready to go spelunking? There’s a lot of useful stuff down in that lab. Especially now that we know we’re going to Shinra HQ on a tight deadline.”

“First thing in the morning. Not everyone can just slide down a chute and fight monsters for several hours. They’re preparing.”

“Good. The adventures in the sewer notwithstanding, I haven’t slept in over a day.”

“Do you need anything before I go, boss?”

Tifa hesitates. She’s not used to people waiting on her and asking her what they can do for her. The life of a bartender is endlessly asking others what she can do for them.

“Is this where you ask me if I want a companion for the afternoon?”

“It can be, if that’s what you want.”

Tifa shakes her head. “I told you I’m not going to be that kind of mob boss.”

“Old habits and making sure you’re not going back on your word. I can also have a bath drawn up, or a masseuse brought in. Perhaps one who won’t try to murder you.”

Tifa’s eyes shoot up to him standing nearby. “And how do you know about that?”

“It’s my job to know these things. The Trio talks, and their servants overhear things. I’m friendly with all of them.”

Tifa sighs. Too many people know her weaknesses. She needs them to focus on her strengths, or perceived strengths. “What do they say about it?”

“Madam M thinks that if you survive the first month, you’ll probably outlive them all.”

“Do you think she’ll make another attempt?”

“I wouldn’t know, Donna. She’s smart, but she’s also ambitious. I wouldn’t accept any gifts from her or be alone in the same room with her, though. Not for a while.”

“Noted. I’d ask about Andrea and Sam, but I think I’ve got their measure a bit more.”

“Likely. Andrea has nothing but respect for you, and Sam is probably more afraid of you than he is attracted.” Tifa makes a lip-curling face of displeasure. He’s a handsome man, but he’s far too old for her and far too willing to just toe the line even when that line is questionable.

“From my understanding, a little fear goes a long way with these types. When your illegal activity is avaricious instead of righteous, the only thing you fear losing more than your life is your livelihood.”

“Couldn’t put it better myself. So do you need anything, Donna Lockhart?” Leslie asks again.

“Just a few hours of quiet. Where are my wayward stinky girls?”

Leslie shrugs. “Haven’t seen them since you told them to clean up in your private quarters.”

Really? She hasn’t heard anything from her room. No voices, no clattering or action of any kind. Did they slip back into the sewer?

“If you see them, tell them to take a break, but to stay in the mansion for a while. They need to be able to hide if our spy reports back that Palmer is coming here again, for some reason.”

“Will do, boss. I’ll come knocking if anything urgent comes up.”

“Let’s hope nothing does.”

“Yes, Donna.” Leslie gives her a slight bow, and departs the office.

Tifa stands and stretches a bit more, yawns, and really puts the effort into stretching out her legs. It’s been long enough that she’s sore all over from the exertion. Despite how tired she feels, she isn’t sure she’s going to be able to sleep. Not with all there is to do. All there is to plan. Not with her mind running a mile a minute.

She needs Barret, and Wedge. Biggs, if he’s up and about yet. They’re going to want to be in on the infiltration plan no matter what. And seeing their friendly faces would do her good. It’s nice having Jessie here, but the rest have their own comfort, too. Sibling energy, she thinks.

She pushes through the double doors to her private chambers, glad to have the heady aroma of incense and perfume masking what’s left of the bad sewer smells. Then she sees her companions. Jessie’s clean and wearing basic fatigues, sacked out on the sofa, neck cricked at an odd angle that will probably make her sore. Aerith, however, is curled up on Tifa’s big bed–hair soft and unbraided, wearing a cheerful sun dress–hands cradled protectively around some soft, white orb that tugs at Tifa’s memory. Where has she seen that soft glow before?

During the Hades fight. Is it materia? Tifa’s never seen its like before. She knows about purple, green, yellow, and blue. Red for those special living materia. What does white do? Questions for another time. 

Tifa sighs heavily. After that conversation with Aerith about how there won’t be some grand romantic gesture or explosion of feelings, she has the nerve to fall asleep on Tifa’s bed. In Tifa’s room. And look that cute.

It would be endearing if Tifa weren’t so damned tired. The SOLDIER restorative has clearly run its course, and just the sight of her sleeping friends is enough to make her yawn again.

But there’s nowhere for her to lay down and she’s grumpy about it. She uses the restroom, washes her face, and quite indelicately slams the bathroom door shut on the way out.

Jessie shoots up from sleep, hand going to a holster that isn’t there. Eyes bleary from rest. But she’s wide awake and takes in the room. Aerith continues dozing. She didn’t stir a bit. Why would she? She’s a slums girl, sure, and has seen her fair share of conflict. She’s also never done whatever she did to that living materia.

All tuckered out, her mom would have said back in the day. Tifa shakes her head of that memory.

Jessie yawns when she recognizes there’s no immediate threat, and sits up on the sofa, massaging her neck. She whispers, “Scare the Hades out of me, why don’t you?”

Tifa whispers back, “I meant to wake up the other one. She’s in my bed.”

Jessie stands, stretching and yawning again. She smiles. “Oh no, a pretty girl is in your bed, who happens to think you’re the cat’s meow, or the bee’s knees, or some other infantile saying.”

“Not the point and not the time.”

“You’re so hung up on this.” Jessie goes to stand next to Tifa, and they both watch Aerith sleep for a moment. “She’s something else, huh?”

Tifa shrugs, unwilling to admit anything. “She’s useful.”

“You’re an idiot, Donna Lockhart. And still a bad liar.”

“I’m gonna wake her up.”

Now Jessie shrugs, rummaging around on Tifa’s vanity for a hair tie. She settles for a length of green ribbon, and draws her hair up into her signature ponytail. “Do what you think is best. I take it the meeting went okay? How long ago did he leave?”

“I could tell you all about it, but I think you’ll have an easier time getting the gist from Leslie. He’s got some orders for you, too, when you’re up for a little recon.”

“Mmm, love recon. Mind if I go pick up Biggs on the way? Kind of his specialty.”

“With any luck, they’re on the way here now. So sure.”

Jessie sighs. “I was just getting used to you back in the suspenders and skirt.”

“It’s a battle kilt, and good for dungeon crawling, not so much for running a criminal empire.”

Jessie waves her hands flippantly. “Yeah, yeah, it’s a battle kilt, and Aerith is just a friend.”

Tifa groans. “You definitely need to let this go.”

“When have I ever let anything go?” Jessie pulls Tifa into a hug, something Tifa desperately needed and didn’t realize it. 

“My turn to ‘yeah, yeah’ you. Go find a Leslie to bother. I’m going to kick her out of bed and catch a few hours myself.”

“Good luuuuuck. You could always try the remedy in the fable of the Dozing Damsel.” Jessie makes kissing noises as she departs, leaving the door cracked open. Reclaiming that sister energy has done wonders for Tifa. Now if only the other woman in her life would make things easy.

Tifa shakes Aerith by the foot, and then the ankle. She repositions slightly, snores a little, huffs in her sleep, but doesn’t wake. At least she’s not in a coma or something.

“Carbuncle,” Tifa says, repeating it multiple times when Aerith doesn’t rouse. This is getting ridiculous. It’s Tifa’s bed! She glances at the sofa recently vacated, and for a moment considers whether to just give up and crash on the couch. Certainly the easier route.

Not the satisfying one, though. Not the one that a mob boss of a criminal underworld would accept.

Feeling utterly foolish, but wanting to reclaim some semblance of control over this roller coaster, Tifa sits down next to Aerith on the bed. For the briefest of moments, she’s sure that Aerith’s eyes are going to spring open wide and she’s going to yell, “Surprise!” A fine joke for a foolish woman.

But Aerith keeps on sleeping. Tifa tries one last time to rouse her with light shoulder shakes, but she only mumbles slightly. She’s so helpless right now. So vulnerable..

Ultimately, Tifa can’t do anything to disturb her. Some of Aerith’s hair, one of the swatches that frames her face, has fallen over her nose and mouth when Tifa shook her, and she keeps making little nose-scrunching faces as it tickles her. Tifa runs a finger up and under this strand of hair, curls it behind Aerith’s ear. This close, it’s like the warmth of that white materia clutched in her hands permeates the entire bed, drawing Tifa in invitingly. One of Aerith’s eyes opens ever so slightly, unfocused green taking in the scene. She gives Tifa a dreamy smile and closes her eye again. Tifa stands hastily, face burning red. She turns and plants herself on the sofa nearby, refusing to look at Aerith. 

The woman doesn’t stir beyond that, though. What a mess. What a damned mess. Why did you do that, you stupid girl!?

The warmth of that bed beckons her, though. The warmth from that woman. Tifa can’t give in to that. They barely know each other. They certainly don’t trust each other, even though they’ll fight for each other. Protect each other.

Maybe that’s a good enough place to start.

Tifa dozes fitfully, nightmares and dreams intermingling. Running from monsters, running towards Aerith, Tifa’s body mutating, losing everyone all over again, stolen glances and chaste kisses.

She wakes after dark, sitting bolt upright on the sofa from a particularly hollow dream where Cloud reaches out for her, and she can’t get to him. Her last sight of him alive before he fell from the reactor. Betrayal in his eyes that she failed him. Only that’s not true. The betrayal on his face was that he failed her. That he couldn’t protect her, like he promised. 

There’s a blanket covering her now, and the room is utterly dark and quiet. She scratches her head and feels something unexpected: a flower stem tucked behind her ear. She stands and turns on a lamp. It’s not a buttery yellow reunion flower, but a cheerful white one. 

Her face reddens all over again. Tifa can’t be mad at Aerith, not after that moment on the bed, but still she feels foolish. And the woman is nowhere in sight now. The bed is empty, the covers slightly rumpled where she had been sleeping. Tifa goes to her doors and cracks one open, shields her eyes from the harsher light of her office.

One of her new recruits stands at attention at the hallway leading to the dungeon. He nods at her and asks, “Anything you need, Donna Lockhart?”

She shakes her head no at first, ready to close the door and try to sleep again. Then she asks, “How long have I been alone in here?”

“Not long. Carbuncle wanted to make a visit home, she said.”

“Home…” Tifa repeats, not fully grasping it yet. “Home. She left the mansion?”

“Yes, Donna. Your lieutenant, Jessie, agreed it was safe to go out once Huff and Puff left the sector.”

Tifa can’t help but smile at the nickname. But Aerith, traveling alone at night? Why would she take such a risk?

She says, “Did she go with a team?”

Her recruit nods. “Jessie and Lenna went with her. Is there a problem?”

Tifa shakes her head. That’s plenty of trouble right there. “No problem. You’re doing a good job.”

She closes the door again, back to it, leaning against it. Aerith can’t be her problem right now. Not when there’s so much to do, and so little time to do it. If Jessie went with her, that means Barret and the others must have been preoccupied and couldn’t make it back here yet. She hopes everything is okay, and plans to follow up first thing in the morning. 

She mistakes the sudden burbling in her stomach for a side effect of her worry, and of course stress. Tifa goes into the bathroom for a drink of water, to settle her nerves.

She runs water on her face, rubbing at the scant amount of makeup left from earlier. The bathroom still has a bit of a funky smell from their ruined clothing and gear, and that is probably going to linger for a good long while no matter what. She curls her nose at it, but smiles all the same. They did good work down there. 

The smell combined with her upset stomach pushes her suddenly over the edge. She drops over the toilet, vomiting the light meal she had after Palmer left, and then keeps going despite there being nothing more to eject. Her insides are in full rebellion for a few agonizing seconds, and she struggles to breathe while all the pressure rushes to her head, making her feel like an overblown balloon ready to pop.

She collapses in relief when the wave passes, sucking in great lungfuls of hot, caustic breath. She spits into the toilet and stands on shaky legs. She stares into the mirror at a ragged Tifa. A Tifa who could fall over from a faint breeze. She doesn’t have time to be sick.

They’ll keep doing good work, if she can manage it. In just a few days, the real mission begins. She lays down, on the bed this time, curled into the same position as a certain infuriating woman. She tells herself it’s still warm and it would be a shame to waste it. Lying to herself is almost as comforting as this warm spot. Almost.

Notes:

More chapters are coming soon! There'll be some action, some repressed emotions, some new faces, and some grieving.

Chapter 15: Flowers, a Ninja, and a Menacing Interlude

Summary:

Aerith and Jessie head back to Aerith's home to regroup with the rest of Eruption, and run into sneaky ninja problems on the way. Aerith and Marlene bond. A menacing interlude happens. Donna Lockhart catches up with an old friend.

Notes:

(See the end of the chapter for notes.)

Chapter Text

Aerith trails a bit behind Jessie and their escort, this Lenna. She’s handsome, and tall, and not a little bit cocky. In some ways Lenna reminds Aerith of Zack. Thinking of Zack always hits her sideways, even now after several years. It’s not fair to have a heart so wholly open to everything. So ready to love. After she felt Zack’s spirit return to the Lifestream, she was more guarded for a time. Flirty and sarcastic, sure. All day long, and she could never fully suppress her instincts to poke and prod at people. Get them to open up.

That makes it harder, what’s happening with Tifa. With Donna Lockhart , she reminds herself.

The path from Wall Market to Sector 5 is dark and foreboding, but Aerith couldn’t stand being in the same place as Tifa with the way things ended. Sure, that half-remembered dream where Tifa moved Aerith’s hair from her face is nice. It also complicates matters when just hours before she flat out said nothing was going to happen between them.

That was hard to hear. Harder to pretend like it didn’t affect her much. And hardest of all to walk out when they’ve made a promise to each other. A promise to be honest, to share a little of their histories. To talk about Zack Fair.

It always comes back to a boy.

Aerith shakes her head. A noise in some far distant pile of scrap alerts Jessie and Lenna, and they proceed carefully. The mutated beasts aren’t moving about too much since the plate fell; too many people packed into too tight a space. That doesn’t mean they aren’t out there. That doesn’t mean bandits aren’t waiting on the right circumstance.

Just to be safe, Aerith adjusts the materia in her staff and bangle. She’s had the most luck with fire against living things, but she left that with Tifa’s knuckleduster–left a bit of herself with the woman–so she slots the lightning back in place of the wind and maintains the curative materia. Too bad the Carbuncle materia is dormant. Aerith can feel that little creature inside. It’s almost as if it’s sleeping, waiting to be needed again. That amplification could always be useful.

Jessie has her sidearm and a new bandolier filled with who knows what kinds of pain. Lenna carries a more traditional semi-automatic rifle, which necessitates avoiding Shinra soldiers. 

Lenna says, after the noise fades and they calm down, “I didn’t really sign up for this kind of guard duty.”

“No one assigned you it,” Jessie reminds her. “I just asked for volunteers.”

“How could I pass up the opportunity to learn about the Donna’s friends?” She flashes a grin that makes Aerith smile in return. Not like Zack, really, at all. But a bit of a presence all the same. Lenna continues, “You, I get. You’re an engineer and a brain, and the Donna’s a bruiser. You, though,” Lenna says, gesturing to Aerith, “What’s your deal?”

“Someone missed the Corneo Cup last weekend,” Aerith retorts.

“Yeah, I heard you put up a fight with the big guy as well. But, really, Carbuncle, what do you do in a scrape?”

Jessie snorts, mumbling something about famous last words. Aerith doesn’t mind being underestimated. She smiles. “I’m just here to look pretty and cast shadows.”

“Cast shadows?”

Aerith activates the lightning materia, and it zaps out of her staff into a plate of sheet metal a few feet behind them all. The sudden brilliant-white causes them all to cover their eyes, but the shadows make their point.

“Okay,” Lenna says, impressed, “Magic.”

“It’s not really magic.”

Lenna waves that away. “You’re basically a wizard out of a storybook.”

That causes Aerith to chuckle. “Remind me to get a floppy hat and robe, Jessie.”

They all chuckle with her at that. Finally, halfway to Sector 5, Jessie’s communicator crackles with static. She says, “I was beginning to think something was broken. One of our relays must have gotten damaged.” She activates it and says, “This is Strawberry, anybody listening, over?”

They walk while she waits, nothing but static coming back for several seconds. “I repeat, Strawberry reporting in. Come back, over.”

The crackle of static dies out and Barret’s voice comes through, ragged and breathing heavy. “Hot damn, we hear you. Could use a little help if you’re in the area. We got… well, we got a sneaky little something came in and started making demands, said she had a deal with Aval–with the resistance.”

Jessie’s face scrunches up in thought. “Who is it?”

“I’d love to tell ya, but she ain’t exactly complying. Biggs, watch out!”

There’s a solid kthunk of metal and the comms shut off. No code name for Biggs, Aerith notes. Probably an oversight in the heat of the moment.

“Horus, come back,” Jessie says. “What is your location? I’ve got a good luck charm and a hired gun as backup.”

An unfamiliar voice comes over the comms, faint and cheerful. Almost like a young girl. “That’s cheating!”

“Of course it’s damn cheating, you sneak-thief!” Barret shouts back. To Jessie, apparently, he says, “Plenty of flowers around us. Get back here, you little–” The comms cut off before he says something untoward, and Jessie grimaces. 

“Sounds like he’s causing trouble at my house,” Aerith says. “If something happens to my mother, or my flowers get trampled–”

“He’s not fool enough for that,” Jessie assures her. “Come on. Let’s double time it back.”

They do, Lenna bringing up the rear. Fortunately there’s no bandit or monster activity on the way. Fortunate for the bandits, as Aerith isn’t about to take the peaceful route when her home’s in danger. 

A deal with Avalanche? Certainly not the Turks, then. If Barret doesn’t know, then who could it be, if they’re telling the truth? 

There’s no time for Aerith to greet all the people still up and about in Sector 5 as they rush into her little community. Some wave at her and jump out of the way as they barrel through, guns drawn, staff at the ready. Others just yell to watch it, people are sleeping, etc.

They pass by the old folks’ home and the orphanage, both overflowing with refugees. The kids have decorated the exterior wall in the shape of a cactuar using Aerith’s flower cuttings, but Aerith has no time to admire it. Even this far out they can hear Barret’s booming voice. No one’s shooting anything, though, so there’s that.

They rush down the path, through the tunnel, and across the makeshift bridge. Aerith has always loved her garden at night. When the sky is dark and hidden and she can imagine it’s all the steel of the upper plate. Comforting darkness.

Now, the garden seems treacherous. Wedge is at the base of the garden where wooden planks cross the stream. He’s hogtied, face in the dirt, yelling at shadowy figures in the dark rampaging through Aerith’s precious flowers.

Wedge also has a nasty black eye and cut on his forehead. But when he sees Jessie and Aerith, he grins. In his gravelly voice he says, “Finally, some backup. That crazy ninja jumped me and took all my stuff.”

“Ninja?” Jessie asks, cutting his bonds. “Did you hit your head?”

Aerith rushes past them to her house, which is well-lit and calm. She calls for her mother as she steps inside. Elmyra and Marlene watch from the front window at this crazy display going on outside. Marlene hops off the chair and runs behind Elmyra, clutching at Elmyra’s skirt and hiding.

“Oh, it’s fine, child, it’s just Aerith,” Elmyra says. “You remember her, don’t you?”

Marlene glances up at Elmyra, eyes widening and glistening. She gasps and runs forward to Aerith as Aerith rushes up to hug Elmyra. “Flower lady!” Marlene calls, clutching at Aerith’s sunny flower dress. It’s been a hard few days since Aerith has seen her adoptive mother, and she holds tight for a long time. Or maybe just seconds as there’s another of those loud kthunks of metal hitting metal outside. 

“What kind of crazy is going on here?” Aerith asks, going to the window when she finally lets Elmyra go.

Marlene starts explaining as only four year olds can. “The ninja beat up Wedge and took his shiny rock. She thought he was a bad guy and not part of the ‘sistance. Papa and Biggs caught up to help, and they been chasing her ever since. Now they’re all mad at each other and Papa’s gonna hurt her!”

What a kid. Aerith glances at Elmyra for confirmation, and her mother nods. “There was some talking, the girl tried to calm things down, but Barret doesn’t calm easy, especially when he thinks this little one might be in danger.”

“I’m going back out to help Jessie and the others,” Aerith says. When she reaches the door, Marlene grabs her dress again and tugs on it. Aerith slows up long enough to look at her. 

“Did you bring Miss Tifa with you? Papa said you found her and she’d come visit.”

Aerith’s heart breaks for this little girl. She’s been through so much. “Sorry, Marlene. We did find her. She’s okay. I’m sure you’ll get to see her again real soon.” Aerith drops down to her knees, snatching a white flower from the counter as she goes. The yells outside grow in pitch and intensity, but she can take a second for this girl. “I gave Tifa a flower just like this before I left, to keep her safe and give her courage.” She hands it over to Marlene, who takes it as if it’s a holy object. “It’ll do the same for you, okay?”

Marlene nods, hugging it to her chest. And something happens. Something Aerith hasn’t felt in a very, very long time. Emotions and memories pass between them. Marlene’s eyes grow wide and they both forget to breathe. Flashes of a tragic past Marlene barely remembers. Flashes of Aerith’s real mother dying. Secrets of the earth both understand even if Marlene hasn’t been told what it means yet. 

Elmyra reaches for Marlene’s shoulders and pulls her back, resting her hands protectively there. The moment passes, the bond breaks. Aerith holds a finger up to her lips and makes a shush sound. Marlene giggles and mimics the gesture.

Aerith stands, nodding at her mother again, and goes out the door, staff at the ready. 

Lenna stands sentry on the little porch, rifle aimed at the ground but ready to point and fire at any moment. “Any headway?” Aerith asks.

“Can’t tell. The big man keeps yelling and the little guy with the green bandana fell in the creek, I think. The gravelly-voiced guy is working up a flare.”

“And Jessie?”

Lenna shrugs. “She positioned me here and went back to the tunnel to make sure this ninja or whatever can’t escape. Do you think it’s really a shinobi?”

“Is that a Wutai thing?” Aerith asks.

“Don’t get out much, huh?”

Aerith shakes her head. “Keep the house safe. I’ll join the… whatever’s going on out there.”

Lenna nods. Aerith holds her staff at the ready in front of her, concentrating on the materia within to generate a soft glow. It’s too bad she didn’t have the fire materia right now. A fireball into the sky might help illuminate things. Instead she moves swiftly across ground she knows better than her own body, listening for the sounds of her rebel friends and whoever this ninja is they’re chasing.

“I can’t believe you’re members of Avalanche!” the girly voice calls somewhere deeper into the garden. When Barret yells wordlessly and gives chase, she laughs and her silhouette vanishes in the night.

“Stop trampling my flowers!” Aerith yells, pointing her staff at the Mako lantern at the cross section of two paths. Lightning shoots from the staff into the metal lantern, arcing harmlessly up into the sky. It briefly illuminates everything in a flash shadow, messing up her night vision. 

“Whoa! Carbuncle, watch where you point that thing!” Biggs calls from a few feet behind the lantern, emerging soggy through the tall grass out of the creek. 

“Sorry!” She doesn’t have time to say anything else, as the shadowy figure flips through the air to land behind Aerith.

“Yoink!” the girl says, plucking both orbs of materia out of the staff in the swiftest motion Aerith has ever seen. Or not seen, as the case may be, in this darkness. She feels it happen. Aerith swings the staff blindly, waiting for her night vision to readjust, but the attacker backflips away to safety and vanishes into the cat-tails.

“She took my materia,” Aerith calls, fishing in her pouch for the wind or ice. She’s hesitant to use either in her garden. She already hears the cries of the planet at all the senseless destruction they’re causing. She retrieves the ice materia, but instead of pushing it into her staff, she clutches it in one hand, close to her chest. Stealing materia? Let’s bait this out.

“Hey,” the voice says from somewhere far away. “Let’s talk about this, yeah?”

“Talk, hell, you little magpie,” Barret growls somewhere nearby. “Sure, I’ll talk. I’ll talk so much you got holes in you when I’m done.”

“That’s no fun.” This time it comes from closer, but the opposite direction it did before. She’s so fast!

“You said you had a deal with the Resistance?” Aerith calls. “Well, what resistance? Who was your contact?” She whispers to Biggs, who is still nearby, ”I put new materia in my staff. If we can get her over here, I can zap her.” She wasn’t as quiet as she could have been, trusting the ninja will repeat her theft.

Biggs nods in the dark. Her night vision is settling, and she can at least catch gestures and shapes again. She’s happy to see he’s up and about, but they’re in a bad way with this stranger, who has better night vision, reflexes, and skills than any of them, it seems.

Aerith holds the materia close to the staff, shooting a ball of ice harmlessly off into the distance, towards a pile of rubble away from the center of Sector 5. The vague glow of the materia dims, and Aerith pulls it back to her chest. She listens while Biggs makes his way to Barret, whispers something she can’t make out, and they both begin making more noise shuffling around in the dark. Wasn’t Wedge prepping a flare or something?

Aerith hears it, then. Not the crunch of grass or leaf, nor the whisper of boots through the grass or soles on gravel. No, this interloper is far too good for that. Aerith instead hears the urgent cries of the planet. Flowers, each alive in their own right, each connected to the Lifestream, each calling out their displeasure at being stepped on, ground into the dirt. Ripped apart and mutilated for the sin of existing.

And it’s coming from right behind her. Aerith spins, trying to find the silhouette of the creeping figure. But it’s already gone. Then the cries come from her right, in between Aerith and Barret. How this girl jumped or flipped her way over there without a sound is anybody’s guess, but Aerith knows where the girl is now. And the girl doesn’t know it.

Aerith swings the staff far right so that the girl moves off to the left. Simultaneously, Aerith points her materia in her other hand at the ground where she knows the girl is going.

Instead of a ball of solid ice that shatters, an almost gelatinous form rockets out of the materia, flash-freezing as it makes contact with any surface, until it creates an icy boulder. Trapped within it is the leg of this interloper, basically glued to the ground via ice. She swears under her breath just as Aerith begins to call out that she’s caught the stranger. 

Bright red and green flares roar to life, their smoky plumes ejecting into the night sky. Wedge tosses one to Biggs and they surround Aerith and the stranger. She’s young. Probably younger than everyone out here, definitely not an adult yet. And her attire sells that fact even more. She’s got a big white cloak with a moogle hood, complete with big red nose and pom. Her face is mostly hidden, but she’s grinning sheepishly as she stares down at her foot frozen to the ground.

“Is that also cheating?” Aerith asks, smirking. The others begin to surround her. With flares, she’s beginning to lose this shadow game of cat and mouse and she knows it.

“I doubt you’d agree if I said it was.”

“Hell yes, Carbuncle, good job,” Barret says, clapping Aerith on the back as he gets to her. “I’m gonna shoot her now.” 

“No one’s shooting her,” Biggs says. “Though I wouldn’t mind dunking her in the water for good measure.”

Aerith finally catches a good look at Barret and snorts. “Are you seriously wearing your shades at night?”

He has the decency to look at least a little sheepish about it, but he nods. “Style is style, Carbuncle. If we’re not gonna shoot her, what do we do with her?”

“Uh uh uh,” the girl says, shaking her head. “You’re all so cute, talking like you’ve caught me.”

“Uh. We did?” Wedge says. “You’re kinda rooted to the ground. Now give me back the stuff you took.”

“As if.” She swings a large metal bladed… thing, directly down at the ice entrapping her foot. Aerith has no idea what it’s called, but it has four huge spikes coming off a metal circle, and a crossbar inside the circle for grip.

Barret’s gun-arm raises up, but the girl’s other hand comes out from under her moogle cloak, slamming something tiny down on the ground. The last thing Aerith sees is the piquant grin on the girl’s face. Then she’s enveloped in smoke and everyone’s coughing, grabbing for a girl who’s obviously not there anymore.

“Guess I’m just too fast!” the voice says from a distance. It’s moving farther away. “And here I thought Avalanche was the best there is–” A surprised yelp sounds out from the little tunnel leaning to Aerith’s home. It’s followed by a thud.

“Owwww,” the voice says, as Aerith and the rest fight through the smoke to give chase.

They catch up in short order, mostly because the girl’s unsuccessfully slicing at metal wire tangled around her legs. Some kind of bolo? 

Jessie’s got her sidearm pointed at the captured girl, and when Barret catches up, his gun-arm trains on her again.

The girl takes stock of her new circumstances and shrugs, shoulders slumping. She tosses her large weapon down and holds her hands up. “All right, all right, I’ll admit it. It took five  of you to catch me.”

“Really just the one,” Jessie says, grinning. “Barret?”

“She’s just a kid,” Barret says, mystified. Suddenly all his anger and bravado are gone, and he both looks embarrassed that she beat him, and ashamed that he was going to shoot her.

“Old enough to give you all a run,” she says.

Biggs grunts. “Someone tie her up.”

“I wouldn’t bother,” the girl answers. “There’s not a knot I can’t loosen, a lock I can’t pick, or a building I can’t escape from.”

“You know,” Aerith says, putting her materia back into her bag, just in case, “I almost believe her.”

Wedge nods, but holds up some paracord anyway. “We’re gonna go ahead and do the prisoner thing, if you don’t mind.” The girl shrugs and holds her hands out, and Wedge carefully moves forward. Is he limping?

“You get hurt, Wedge?” Aerith asks.

“Uhh–” he starts, but Biggs and Jessie chuckle. “I got bit by a dog a couple days before we met you. All this action must have opened the wound.” He begins tying the paracord around the girl’s hands.

“I can cure you, if you get my materia back.”

Wedge hesitates and his face grows red. Biggs snickers louder. “It’s fine, really. Okay, done. Now where’s our stuff?”

The girl shrugs. “You’ll have to search me.”

“That sounds like a Jessie job,” Wedge says, standing and brushing his hands. While Jessie comes forward to search their captive, Wedge picks up her weapon to investigate the bladed object. “This certainly looks like something from Wutai.”

“No shit?” Barret asks. “Let’s get a better look at our prisoner. In private, if you please.”

“I’m not the bad guy here,” the girl says as Jessie finishes pulling orbs of materia and other small trinkets and items from her person. She tosses the lightning and curative materia back to Aerith, then yanks the girl to her feet. “Uhh, little help? Can’t really walk when you’ve got me all hog-tied.”

“You been hopping all over the damn place,” Barret says, “so keep hopping, little rabbit.”

“You’re all very rude.”

“Rude is stripping you down and leaving you for the bandits,” Biggs says. The girl harrumphs. Aerith really does think she’s putting on a show, though. With how she was moving around Aerith’s garden, it’s no wonder she’s so cocky.

“Glad to see you’re up and about,” Aerith says to Biggs.

“I’m up. Get back to you about the other part.”

Jessie claps him on the back. “He’s up, all right. Worrying up a storm for the rest of us.”

“Um, I guess take her inside,” Aerith says. “I need to do a little midnight gardening.”

“Elmyra told us to watch the flowers,” Wedge says. “Or she wouldn’t feed us.”

“I guess we’ll see if you’re eating tonight.”  Aerith pokes her head into the house after they all shuffle in, the hopping girl sandwiched in between the rest. “All good out here, Mom. Just need to fix some garden plots.”

Elmyra nods, glancing at the proceedings about to unfold around her kitchen table. “Sounds good, dear. Um, I know it’s late, but if it’s safe out there now, maybe we send Marlene to help while the rest of you do whatever it is you’re keen on doing?”

Barret nods. “Keep her safe, Carbuncle.”

“Sure thing, Horus.”

Biggs glances at Barret as Aerith helps Marlene outside. The door shuts on him saying, “What’d she call you?” 

“My daddy’s name isn’t Horus,” Marlene says, holding her hand out for Aerith to take. It’s still dark out, and Aerith guides her along, lighting the little trail lanterns as they go. She doesn’t like relying on things fueled by Mako, but beggars can’t be choosers at night.

“Kinda like how mine isn’t Carbuncle, but he calls me that.” Aerith brings Marlene to the flowers, and the girl’s eyes are wide with joy. She’s been here for days and still the simple pleasures of nature astound her.

As much as Aerith dislikes the open sky, she dislikes that beauty is stolen from everyone under the plate even more.

“Daddy says I should respect others by calling them by their last names. What’s yours?”

Aerith thinks Marlene will have some trouble saying it, but she ought to let her try all the same. “Gainsborough. Can you say that?”

Marlene screws up her face in concentration, listening to the word and working it out for herself. “Gainsborrow.”

“Almost.” Aerith repeats it, slowing down the last two syllables. “Try it again?”

“Gainsboruh.”

“So close.” She repeats it again, and the girl gets it right this time. Aerith claps for her and says, “But you don’t need to call me Miss Gainsborough, okay? I like Aerith, or even Carbuncle, but don’t tell your dad that. Wouldn’t want him getting a big head.”

“Daddy’s head is huge!” Marlene says, and Aerith suppresses a cackle. “I like Miss Aerith.”

“I like me, too,” Aerith says back. She feels a tiny warmth in her chest that Marlene referred to her the same way she referred to “Miss Tifa”. Marlene doesn’t seem to know what to say to Aerith’s little joke, so Aerith holds her hand out again. “Let’s go over here and see if he ruined anything with all his big trampling around, okay?”

Marlene nods. “They don’t like it when they get stomped,” she says. Aerith isn’t sure what to make of this little girl. She’s not strictly normal, by any stretch. But a Cetra? Aerith doesn’t feel that bond with Marlene like she did her real mother. But she feels a connection. That sharing of memory in the house is important. It means something .

While directing Marlene in how to help lift broken stalks and remove the dead ones, Aerith responds, “No, they don’t like being hurt. Just like you wouldn’t like it if you got stepped on and ignored.”

Marlene whispers, “You can hear them, too?”

“I can. Let me guess: everyone thinks you just have a vivid imagination.”

Marlene nods. “My teacher says I have a overactive imagination.” The little grammatical slip is cute. 

“I bet it’s just the right level of active. You shouldn’t tell people what the planet says, though.”

“The planet?”

“It might not seem like it, but that’s what you’re really hearing.”

Marlene works in silence for a little bit, thinking. Finally she asks, “How come no one else can?”

“They’re not in tune with it like we are.”

Marlene is quiet for a while, pulling at broken stems of flowers. When they move on to the cattails plot, she opens her mouth again. “I don’t get it.”

“I don’t really get it, either, honey. But one thing I know for certain is that you don’t want the wrong people to know you can do it.”

“Like the Shinna?”

“Shinra. And yes. Exactly like them.”

“I told Daddy once, but he didn’t believe me.” They finish up with this plot, and Aerith sighs, wiping a tiny bit of sweat from her forehead. Gardening is work, never let anyone say otherwise, Aerith thinks, smiling. Something Elmyra would say to her when she was just starting to grow things and getting frustrated how long it took.

Aerith says, “Let’s go back inside. I bet there’s food and everything.”

Marlene nods, yawning and rubbing her eyes. Now that the excitement has passed, the fact that it’s late is catching up to Marlene. To Aerith, as well. Leaving the mansion at nightfall was risky, especially when she’s soulweary like this. Not that she’s ever felt this particular wave of exhaustion before. Hope I never do again, she thinks.

Aerith takes Marlene’s hand, and together they head back inside. A shadow on the bridge leading to Aerith’s little grotto nods to itself, vanishing back into the darkness.

Inside, Barret takes his daughter the moment the door closes, and shuffles her off to bed upstairs. The dining area is… quiet. Elmyra silently washes dishes from some kind of hasty meal. Lenna and Jessie stand sentry to either side of the girl, now tied to a chair at wrists and ankles and looking smug as ever. Biggs leans against the stairway railing, and Wedge sits at the table, still running inventory on the things they recovered. Upstairs, the gentle and offkey singing of Barret’s voice filters down, as he puts his daughter to bed.

“Heck of a party,” Aerith says. “She give you a name?”

“I did. Yuffie Kisaragi,” the girl says, lifting one now-free leg up, pushing on the table slightly to put herself into a precarious reclining position.

“What–” Jessie starts, but Yuffie drops back down, laughing. 

“Told you these wouldn’t keep me. I’m not going anywhere, so stop worrying.”

“Why would we worry?” Biggs asks. “It’s not like you stole from us and played shadow games with us until we chased you out here.”

“I can’t believe none of you knew I was coming,” Yuffie says. “There were coded messages, and signs. Our spies set it all up with some graffiti guy months ago.”

Wedge says, “Finn never mentioned it or you. You sure you were talking to Avalanche and not some Shinra counter-intelligence agent?”

Yuffie shrugs, picking at a nail with a kunai. No one bothers taking it from her or tying her back up now. She’s clearly not leaving. “I guess not, but it’s not important now, is it? I show up just one day later than planned because of a busted engine on the cargo ship to Junon, and by the time I get here, most of Avalanche is kersplat.”

“That’s our friends you’re talking about,” Jessie says, hand tensing on her holstered sidearm.

Yuffie frowns, apologetic. Genuinely, if aerith had to guess. Yuffie says, “No, it’s horrifying, you’re right. Sorry; kinda my thing, make jokes to hide the trauma.”

Aerith shrugs. “So Yuffie. What was your goal?”

“I’m only speaking to the boss,” Yuffie answers.

“She’s not here right now,” Wedge says, “and you probably want to be on our good sides before you ever meet her.”

“The big guy’s not your leader? Not my intel.”

“Our cell of Avalanche is dead,” Barret says, easing his way down the stairs. “I ain’t in charge of shit anymore, so whatever deal you made is null and void.”

“We’re going by Eruption these days,” Jessie says, imitating a little volcano exploding. Elmyra tenses at the sink, shoulders hunched, but she goes on cleaning. Probably doesn’t like hearing about how her daughter joined extremist eco-terrorists. 

“Well, whatever you’re calling yourselves, we can still help each other,” Yuffie says. Aerith can see her running scenarios in the way her lips purse and her eyes dart around. She’s adjusting. She might be young, but this little spitfire is quick on the uptake.

“Not up to us,” Biggs says. “Why’d you steal our stuff if you were chasing down leads on Avalanche?”

Yuffie snorts laughter. “Think of it as initiation, had to make sure you were legit and worth my time.” She shifts forward on her chair to plant elbows on the table, fingers interlocked in a pyramid shape, and guns train on her. “Come on, haven’t you heard of dramatic effect?”

Aerith’s turn to snort now. “Oh, put the guns away,” she says when everyone glances at her, “I like her moxy.”

Barret sits down next to Yuffie, pulling his chair in close. “You might be a kid, Kisaragi, but you’re in some serious shit. You obviously ain’t from around here, which is maybe the best argument for you not bein’ a Shinra spy. So tell us a story and we’ll go from there.”

“If you’re not the boss, I’m not talking.”

“We can always tie you up again.”

“Because that was so effective.”

Aerith says, “I have some medicinal herbs we could use to knock her out.” She wouldn’t actually do that, but Yuffie doesn’t know that.

“Whoa now,” Yuffie says, kicking back her chair, only to bump against Jessie and Lenna. She grins sheepishly at them before letting the chair fall forward again. “Okay, fine. How about as a gesture of goodwill, I give you back your stuff?”

“We already got it back,” Biggs says.

Yuffie’s right hand flashes in front of her face, and one of Jessie’s grenades sits in it after the gesture. “The stuff I’ve taken since then.” She drops the grenade in Jessie’s outstretched hand, and then rummages in a pouch, dropping several rifle rounds onto the table. Lenna and Jessie both react to this, checking over their belongings. Yuffie grins again.

“I could take your fancy shooting arm if it wasn’t attached to you,” she says to Barret.

He holds his gun-arm protectively in front of him. “Okay, you’ve made… a point. Not sure what, but you did it. You’re here to mess with Shinra, right?”

“Sure, you could say that. I have a very specific mission, but completion of it absolutely weakens Shinra.”

“I like that. We’re not carting you around, Kisaragi, so you can learn all our secrets, but maybe I can convince the boss to come calling.”

Jessie says, “For what the boss has in mind, an annoying little ninja could be useful.”

“Hey, who’s annoying? I’m a damn delight.”

Biggs makes what Aerith is coming to realize is a trademark scoff while Jessie and Wedge both chuckle. They’re at a stalemate with Yuffie if she’s not talking until she meets with the boss. With Donna Lockhart. 

“We’re not gettin’ anywhere,” Barret says, standing up. “And it’s late. Any suggestions what we do with her while we figure this out?”

“I have one you probably won’t like,” Aerith says, yawning and also standing. “You could trust her.”

Yuffie smiles. “I like this one. She says smart things.”

“Why the hell would we do that?” Barret asks.

Aerith stares at him. “You trusted me.”

Barret grunts. “Yeah, I guess we did. Circumstances were different, though.”

“Not that different.”

“You didn’t steal from us. Point of fact, you brought back SOLDIER boy’s stuff.”

Wedge interjects, “And you didn’t hogtie me.”

“You should be so lucky,” Aerith says, ruffling his bandana and hair. He blushes furiously, and Aerith holds a hand out to Yuffie, which Yuffie takes for an aggressive handshake. “You can call me Carbuncle. This is my home, and that’s my mother. Do anything to hurt anyone in this house, and I don’t care how many knots you can get out of: you won’t get out of here alive.”

“Noted. Wait, Carbuncle like the good luck charm?”

Aerith shrugs. “I’m exhausted. Can we table this until the morning?”

Barret nods. “Sure, Carbuncle. Get some sleep. We’ll watch her in shifts and figure it out tomorrow.”

“Mom?” Aerith asks, “Mind if I bunk with you?” Elmyra has been patiently cleaning up in the kitchen all this time, but Aerith notes she was never far from a rolling pin and butcher’s knife, should she need it. 

“Sounds lovely, dear. I’ll be up in a minute; just need to settle things down here. I have some spare linens in the closet upstairs.”

Aerith nods and bids everyone goodnight. Based on what Jessie told her on the way here, she doesn’t really know what’s coming next. Tifa wants to infiltrate the Shinra building, but Aerith can’t go anywhere near it without someone recognizing her. And worse, now that she’s connected with Marlene, she has to protect the girl from Shinra, too. Marlene might not be Cetran, but there’s something going on there. And maybe she is an Ancient. Maybe Aerith isn’t the last one, after all. She definitely doesn’t seem like Barret’s kid by blood, for all that they clearly have a familial bond.

Aerith closes the door to Elmyra’s room, changes into one of her old nightgowns, and falls asleep almost as she hits the bed, thoughts of the Ancients chasing her into dreams.

*****

Reno, the newest Turk, runs a hand through his red hair as he jogs to the exfiltration site far outside of the Sector 5 slums. His ribs still ache from the fight against the bitch and the big guy on the pillar control tower. Every time they think she’s going to be alone, and they can take her without any hassle, something happens. Weird wind and furniture attacking. Rude got his ass kicked when she had materia. They both got a bit of a beating when she showed up with Avalanche. 

Tonight, when it was just Aerith and a little girl, he was going to make his move. Orders directly from Tseng to make it happen or he’d find someone who could. So Reno snuck closer. He listened in for his chance. Then he hesitated. The girl could do the same stuff Aerith could. That presented an opportunity. Not tonight, when half a militia is inside the house. But soon. He briefly wonders if the little girl would be good enough for Hojo. Easier to steal a child than a petulant woman.

He doesn’t have to like what he’s ordered to do. But he has to do it. The alternative is being stripped of his augmentations, probably shot in a back alley somewhere. Hell, his replacement might even be the one to do it. Turks don’t like killing if they don’t have to, but they don’t like failure even more.

He meets up with the team on standby. Not so much a team as a single soldier. No helicopters tonight, but motorcycles are good enough. One of the new recruits, still wearing Lieutenant’s reds, salutes him as he approaches. She’s wearing her full mask, including the goggles with three red lights. She might even be the one who would be ordered to put Reno down if he failed. He hasn’t actually seen her face outside of a small picture in a dossier. Cute, if you’re into blondes with muscles.

He brushes past her and hops on his motorcycle, kickstarts it and revs the engine a bit. She clears her throat nervously, and asks, “Is the mission over?”

“What’s your name again? Alanna?” He knows what it is.

“... Elena, sir. Elena M–”

“We don’t do last names, Elena.”

“Of course, sir.”

“And stop calling me ‘sir’.”

“Yes, si–Okay. Reno.”

He shrugs his shoulders and lights a cigarette. “Mission’s over for now,” he says, offering her one. She declines. “You’re first on the list for promotion, right?”

This seems to surprise her. “Am I really, si–Reno?”

“First in your class, high marks in ranged combat and martial arts. You made Reds in only one year. Don’t pretend like you didn’t already think it. Turks don’t suck up.”

She swallows visibly and gets on the other motorcycle. Under her goggles, she grins. “I’m glad to hear it, anyway. I look good in a suit.”

He glances at her, eyes her up and down, and nods. “I bet you do.” He blows smoke after a long drag and flicks the mostly-unsmoked cigarette to the ground. “We’re gonna come back tomorrow night and finish the job.”

“What if she’s not there again? We lost her after Platefall and–”

“That’s what the slums call it. Don’t.”

“Sorry. I’m from the slums, though. I still bartend a couple nights a week over at the Wall.”

“Your backstory is fascinating, but when you put on the suit, you don’t have an origin anymore. You got that?”

“Understood. I was saying, though, that it took until today to find her again after the… terrorist attack. Should we put a tail on her?”

“Good idea.” He reaches into his jacket and withdraws his electric baton, taps her motorcycle, which shorts out its battery. She leaps off just in time to avoid getting electrocuted herself. 

“What the hell–” she yells as she drops to the dirt.

“Radio for help if she goes anywhere. See you tomorrow!” he calls back as he rides off into the darkness of the slums. In his rearview mirror, he sees her standing and yanking her helmet off, a flash of angry blonde hair whipping around before he turns a corner and loses sight of her.

He grins. Rude did the same shit to him. Welcome to the Turks, Elena.

*****

Tifa is slow to rouse the next morning. She’s sweaty and has chills. Great. Last thing she needs is to have gotten some kind of grossness from the sewers.

She doesn’t have the chance to sleep in, though. The reclamation crew she set up yesterday needs to head into the sewer to search for any evidence of Don Corneo’s whereabouts, as well as retrieve some of the old uniforms and lab coats they found in the underground lab. 

She puts a robe on, yawning and fighting the chills, and throws open the doors to her office. The crew is all assembled and ready to go. She lets them in and watches them descend the ladder after the trapdoor opens. Leslie stands nearby with a cup of hot coffee waiting for her.

She accepts it and yawns again. “Do we have anything for sewer diseases? Think I caught something fighting the pig lizard.”

Leslie eyes her and nods. “I’ll have Kotch bring something up.”

“Good. What about Jessie and the others? Are they back yet?”

“Not yet,” Leslie says, waiting for Tifa to take her seat at the desk. Tifa glances at the gaudy fixtures in the office, grimacing as she sits down. “Something wrong, Donna?”

“I didn’t think I’d get sick of Corneo’s taste in furnishings this fast. Do we have anything softer, less… gold and flashy red?”

“I’m sure we can dig something up in the storage. If not, Madam M and Andrea would no doubt advise you on redecorating.”

“Not Sam?” Tifa manages a grin despite feeling rough. She sips her coffee and accepts a report from Leslie.

“He doesn’t really do aesthetics.”

“Bad joke, sorry.” She begins to feel somewhat more normal after the caffeine gets into her system. She looks over the report and asks, “What am I looking at here?”

“Preliminary cost analysis for the infiltration.”

“Why so much? This is tens of thousands of gil.” Running a bar in the slums paid the bills and gave her a little extra, which she usually funneled into Avalanche efforts, but it would take her a lifetime to earn this much slinging whiskey.

Leslie sighs. “I doubt you want all the nitty gritty details, but they’re deeper in the report if you want to audit your criminal empire.”

“Why does this exist in a hard copy that can find its way to Shinra?” She leafs through the report, finding sub-reports on staffing, alcohol, drugs, bribes for Shinra soldiers, falsified papers, and more. Her assurance to Palmer that there were no accounts of Shinra’s dealings aside, this is an impressive array of accounting.

“These go in the real books because we have to be able to run the business. But don’t worry, they’re exceedingly well-hidden, Donna Lockhart. We have some thoroughly cooked accounting books that we provide to the tax-man when he comes calling.”

“You have a tax-man who actually comes by?”

“Well, a tax-lady, I guess. She’s nice, doesn’t ask too many questions.”

Tifa shakes her head, letting the report drop to the desk. “And we can afford this?”

Leslie nods. “Hush money has the singular attribute of being ‘a lot’. Shinra pays for discretion, and the former Don was more than happy to provide.”

“Not the only thing he was happy to provide,” Tifa mutters. “What else do I need to see this morning?”

Leslie looks over his ledger and shakes his head. “Nothing important. Most of the specifics of the infiltration are kept between us. Just because you’ve got a core of trustworthy people doesn’t mean we let just anyone know. For every Jessie or Kotch, there’s half a dozen strangers who could still be vying for power. Best not to be too open with strategies.”

“Speaking of Jessie, you said she hadn’t gotten back yet.”

“I did say that, yes.”

“What’s the word? She’s supposed to be getting my logistics team in play.”

“As I said, not yet. Communications are still down all over the city, and spotty. I’m sure she and Aerith are fine.”

“I’m not worried about them,” Tifa lies. She also notes that Leslie snuck in Aerith’s name as smooth as silk. She did well with Director Palmer, but for those who know her, she’s apparently still an open book. He saw right through her questions to the heart of the matter, one Aerith Gainsborough. She clears her throat and says, “Just anxious to get the plan in motion.”

“Of course, Donna. I’ll go see about that medicine and check for word from Jessie.”

“Thanks, Leslie.” She sips her coffee as he turns to go, and she clears her throat. He turns back, waiting. “Seriously. Thank you. I couldn’t do this without your support.”

“Oh, I believe you could. It would just be… messier.” He grins, which she hasn’t seen him do much of, and leaves her in peace. After a few minutes of quiet coffee sipping and perusing the report, Kotch brings her some foul-smelling and even fouler-tasting brew, which she drinks because she doesn’t want to feel this way anymore. It doesn’t really help, and she finds herself wishing for another of those SOLDIER-issue restoratives. Maybe she can ask Leslie if it’s possible to source some.

“Is there an arena fight today, Kotch?” she asks, once she’s drowned the taste of the medicine with more coffee. 

He smiles, taking the medicine cup back. “There is. We’re running a trainer’s tournament this afternoon. We run them once a month or so to give prospective new teams a chance to show us their stuff.”

“Does it have some catchy name like Corneo Cup?”

“Mostly we just call it the trainer’s tourney. It doesn’t bring in big audiences or money, because it’s never any known names. The arena runs off celebrity, just like anything else.”

“So why have actual tournaments?”

“It doesn’t make nothing, Donna.” He stands up straight. This seems like something he perhaps spearheaded and so he’s a little defensive about it. “It gives speculators and bookies a chance to figure out odds, and it lets us bring in fresh contenders to keep things interesting. Even the Thuggish Riot’s novelty will wear off, and we gotta have something to replace it.”

“Thuggish Riot?” Tifa asks.

“They’re kind of our opening act, a bit of a joke, but always entertaining.”

“Oh, I heard about them from Barret and the others. I’d like to see them at some point.” 

“You could come tonight, check out what I do for the operation.”

Tifa shrugs. “I probably don’t have the time. Did you find yourself another announcer yet?”

Kotch deflates a little bit. “Nah, I’m running the show solo for now. People seem to like it okay. I’m just there to hype the crowd, you know?”

“I’m sure you’re great, Kotch.”

“Everyone has their talents. I blow a lot of smoke.”

Another thought occurs to Tifa. “Did Corneo make a habit of attending the fights?”

Kotch scratches his head a bit, chagrined. “He used to, back when he first took power. Or when he knew there was going to be a real vicious fight.”

“And more recently?”

“He’d make wild proclamations from on high, change the bouts and whatnot, but was never really there for it, you know?”

Tifa would honestly rather be in the arena than watching from on high, but she nods. “His loss.”

About this time, Leslie strolls back in, followed by Lenna and Biggs. 

Seeing Biggs fills her heart with so much joy. She smiles and stands, forgetting that she’s still in her robe, and pulls him into a hug. “Everyone’s dismissed. I have catching up to do.”

Kotch raises an eyebrow and slaps Leslie on the back as they leave together, saying something about how the Donna has an unexpected type. Lenna follows shortly after, casting a single glance back at Tifa before she smiles and shuts the double doors. Biggs looks utterly gobsmacked by Tifa’s appearance. 

“No one warned you, huh?”

He clears his throat and grins sheepishly. “No, they did. Just… difficult to believe it. The side shave is nice. You look… harder. What’s that old saying? ‘You’ve seen some shit.’”

She smiles as she sits back down, gesturing to the bench across from her desk so he can sit as well. “I guess I have. Did the others come back with you?”

“We had a bit of a problem, and Barret’s still dealing with that. Jessie and Wedge are out trying to repair our comm relays, too. All hands on deck, as it were.”

He didn’t mention Aerith, Tifa notes. He’d have said something if there was something to say, right? Tifa tries not to think about her. 

“I just need a minute to process, Donna Lockhart.” Biggs stands up again, paces. “This is such a weird wrinkle in all our plans.”

“Less a wrinkle in a plan and more a whole new plan.”

“Exactly! And with a new plan, that means new contacts, new spies, new safe houses and drop points…” It took less than a minute for him to start spiraling about plans and contingencies. 

“Turn off the strategist brain for a few and have a drink with me.”

That gets his attention. “It’s barely light out, Tifa.”

“So we’ll have tea.”

“Tea sounds nice. Should I… go find someone to do that?”

Tifa smiles. He doesn’t know how to act around her now. It’s mildly refreshing after all her new recruits, and Jessie, and Aerith. “Nonsense. Sit tight. I was a bartender a week ago, I can make a cup of tea.”

Her coffee cup is empty by now, so she takes it with her as she goes back into her room, leaving Biggs alone in the office for the moment. She peers down the trapdoor after starting the  kettle on the mini-stove, making sure none of her recruits are on their way up, and hastily dresses in one of her new mob boss outfits. This one takes after the Turks a bit, with black slacks and suit jacket over a crisp white button-up. It has green suspenders and a bowtie to give it a little flash, but she leaves off the tie, choosing instead to keep a few buttons undone at the top and bottom of the shirt, and to leave it untucked. Tifa thinks about her normal attire, and misses it. So she undoes a couple more buttons along the bottom of the shirt, and stretches the cloth through the suspenders, exposing her stomach in a kind of fetching way she likes. Andrea tailored this one especially for her, because there were virtually no suit jackets for a woman of her bust anywhere in the slums, and she thinks he must have planned for this style. 

She gets the kettle and prepares a tray for serving tea, and brings it all back out to Biggs. His eyes pop wide upon seeing her in the new getup. She smiles for him as she sets the tray down and begins pouring steaming water over tea bags. The aroma is spicy and minty. A good wake-up combination.

“You really put on the look, huh?” Biggs asks, making conversation while they wait for the tea to steep.

“I became something else because of the former Don. It was necessary to look the part. But no doubt you heard all this from Barret and Wedge.”

He nods. “And so now we’re going straight to the big leagues with this new rebellion.”

“What better time to strike than after they believe we’re all dead?”

“There’s a morbid kind of sense to that. But is this really what we’re doing? Using illegal activity to fund our eco-rebellious activity?”

Tifa’s fingers tighten into a fist. Her natural instinct is to apologize for whatever perceived wrong she did, and try to make it better. She shoves that aside.

“They wiped out our home, killed thousands above and below the plate. They did it, not to prove a point, but to assert their iron fist. To grind into the dirt those of us just trying to do the right thing in the only way we knew how. They called us terrorists. They blew up their own reactors, costing millions, to scapegoat us.”

“Are we going to just let them dictate the rules of engagement, Tifa?”

Tifa’s fist bangs the table, making the tea in the cups jump. “They control everything else, so why not?” she asks coldly. “They want to call us terrorists; I will show them terror. They want to show us no mercy; I will be merciless in turn.”

“You’re kinda freaking me out, Tifa.”

“Good. What we’re doing should horrify us. Just because we’re taking the fight directly to Shinra, doesn’t mean people won’t get hurt along the way. Mostly innocent people. But punishment must be handed out. The heads of Shinra, the Turks, any soldier willingly serving their corrupt masters.”

“Sounds harsh,” Biggs says finally. “What will you do if not everyone chooses to follow you?”

“Is this your way of telling me you don’t want to do this?”

Biggs shakes his head. “I’m committed to Avalanche’s new direction. I am.”

“Eruption. If Avalanche still exists in the city, we are no longer part of it.”

“Call us Tsunami for all I care,” Biggs says. “Whatever we are, we’re painting a massive target on our backs with this maneuver.”

“Bigger than the one where Shinra destroyed Sector 7?”

“Maybe. We thought we knew what Shinra was capable of before that. Knowing they’ll just murder thousands to get rid of a nuisance? Who knows what they’ll do.”

That has the stink of unfortunate truth to it. Tifa nods, contemplating. She says, “Then it’s probably important that we do this quickly. Remove the heads before they can take action.”

“It’s probably not as easy as all that, Tifa.”

“I didn’t say it would be. But imagine how much havoc we can cause when they’re at their strongest, and think we’re at our weakest. When they invite us in with lusty eyes and booze-soaked breath?”

“You’re talking about a coup.”

“Call it whatever you want, Biggs. At least a coup focuses on the people who hurt us.”

Biggs has nothing more to say to this. He sighs, and finishes his tea. “You’re not the Tifa I knew a week ago.”

“She was weak-willed. Do you know, when I decided to go on the bombing mission to Reactor 5, I had some kind of foolish hope that maybe we wouldn’t have to do it. That maybe, just maybe, if I was there as a cooler head, that head would prevail.”

“Shinra had other ideas.”

“It wasn’t just what the Don did, Biggs. There are parts of my life I haven’t shared with anyone. Things I’d rather forget. Things I now know I never will. Each… injustice, crime, whatever you want to call it. Each one just stripped away a bit of the naive girl I used to be. Turned me into a raw nerve waiting for a poke to explode. Well, the former Don was that explosion. What he enabled Shinra to do.”

“Platefall isn’t your fault, Tifa.”

She shakes her head. “I share the blame. And at least you were there. You were able to fight. To give it your best. I was strapped to a table, Biggs. I was listening to it all happen, knowing what it was. Knowing I might have been able to save people. And instead I let myself get caught. I was weak. I couldn’t rely on anyone to save me this time. And when push came to shove, I tripped.”

Biggs reaches a hand out over the desk, as if to comfort her. Tifa pulls her hands back, sits up straight. She clears her throat. “I tripped, and Shinra destroyed a whole Sector.”

“That’s not–” 

“If I’d been faster, smarter, stronger. More ruthless, maybe. If I’d been any of the things I wasn’t, maybe I could have gotten away, helped stop it. I just kept thinking ‘Surely Cloud will find me. He made a promise.’” She tenses up. It’s so strange how thinking of Cloud only fills her with anger now. Not because he failed her, over some childish promise. But because she failed herself, relying on a man who wasn’t even there when Sephiroth burned their village to the ground. Why did she have such hopes for him when they were never proven true? Not once. 

Biggs clears his throat, uncomfortable. “I don’t know what to say, Tifa. You’re shouldering a pretty big burden, and you shouldn’t have to. It’s not all on you. Cloud may not have made it, but you did. Barret did. Jessie, and Wedge. Even that weirdo Carbuncle made it.”

Tifa smiles despite herself, then covers it. “So many didn’t make it, though.”

“We have to focus on the ones who did.”

She nods. That’s true enough. “You mentioned that Barret was tying up some new problem. Anything I can help with?” Maybe she can get a proper update on Aerith without letting Biggs know what she’s doing.

“We recruited a shinobi from Wutai.” 

Tifa laughs at the joke, but Biggs isn’t smiling. She leans forward, elbows on the table, hands steepled together in front of her. “You’re serious.” He nods, and she laughs again. “I don’t think I could have predicted those words from your mouth in a hundred guesses.”

He shrugs. “That’s why I’m here, actually. She’s got talent. And she really doesn’t want to help us until she can speak with you personally.”

“Me? What does she know about me?”

Biggs fills her in on the specifics, including the fight, stealing materia, and Aerith’s hand in tripping her up long enough for Jessie to finally catch her when she tried to flee. That’s my girls, she thinks. “So you think she was working with Avalanche…. You were right not to bring her here yet. We can’t trust an outsider.”

“We trust Carbuncle.”

She waves that away. “Aerith is special.” Biggs grins at her, and she realizes what she’s said. “I mean she’s a special case.”

Biggs nods, but doesn’t lose his grin. Damn, why did she have to let her guard down?

Biggs says, “Carbuncle is hanging back at her house for now. She’s ostensibly helping with Yuffie and coordinating, but I’m beginning to think Jessie was right.”

“Right about what?”

“She’s avoiding you.”

Oh. That makes sense, suddenly. Of course she’d be avoiding Tifa after what she said in the underground lab. 

She waves that away, too, hoping Biggs doesn’t follow up. “Aerith will do whatever Aerith does. Do I need to make a personal visit for this Kisaragi girl?”

“You might think about it. Based on the plan Jessie told us, out of earshot of Yuffie, she could be one of the Honeybees we bring in.”

“She’s pretty?”

“In a spunky sort of way. She’s young, though. Probably not old enough for real Honeybee work.”

“Then we’re not asking her to do that.”

“I wasn’t suggesting she actually do any of it, come on.”

Tifa thinks about how she was tricked, gassed, and tied up. She didn’t think she could be put into a situation she couldn’t control, either. She shakes her head. “I’m not putting people into that situation. Not happening.”

“Whatever you say, boss. We’ll figure out what to do with her if you give the okay. She could be a server instead.”

Tifa nods. That could work. “We need to resolve her quickly, at any rate. I’ll come back with you, figure out what’s what, and we can move forward with the rest of our plans. You said Jessie and Wedge were restoring our comms relays?”

Biggs nods. “If I had to guess, they’re setting up new ones. Platefall caused a lot of damage on the borders of Sectors Six and Eight, and Sector Seven’s were destroyed entirely, so they’re making the rounds.”

Tifa nods. That wasn’t in the initial plan, but having the ability to communicate all over Midgar again would be good, regardless of what happens in the Shinra Building.

“Let’s quit wasting time, then,” she says, standing and cracking her knuckles. “Let me grab the rest of my gear and we can go.”

Notes:

I hope you like the new look for the Donna, 'cause she's gonna rock it for a few more chapters. Enter Yuffie! MENACING INTERLUDES?! Also a wild Elena appears!

Pst, if it's not obvious by now given how I elevate and remix the rest of the female cast, rest assured I have PLANS for the ninja and the littlest Turk.

Chapter 16: Closure

Summary:

Donna Lockhart visits the home of Aerith Gainsborough. Jessie goes rogue. A mission to find her forms.

Notes:

(See the end of the chapter for notes.)

Chapter Text

Aerith held new materia in her hand. She’d seen green, blue, and red. Her white that didn’t seem to do anything. Now this light purple. The only thing Wedge knew about it was that it was supposed to make a person lucky.

What the hell did that even mean?

She slotted it into her bangle, thinking she wouldn’t mind getting lucky. Damn that Donna Lockhart.

Along with that, she also kept the curative materia and her ice materia in her staff. There isn’t much going on at her home, with Biggs, Wedge, and Jessie all out doing things. Barret watches Yuffie, who they gave up keeping tied up this morning when she burnt breakfast for everyone while they were asleep. A weird girl, but interesting. She keeps Barret on her toes, that’s for sure. 

Aerith, meanwhile, works in her garden. It’s around midday. Marlene helped her for a little while, but she got bored and wandered off to play with Elmyra in the house. If Aerith had her druthers, she would be going out to the church to tend those flowers. She hasn’t been back since Cloud destroyed a bunch of them by dying on them. But the Turks know the church. She can’t risk going off alone. They know her home as well, but besides Rude, they’d never attacked her at the house. Even that might be changing.

It’s so strange to think that she spent so much of her life avoiding Shinra and the Turks, and she has barely thought about that aspect for the last week or so. Best not to forget it entirely, especially if they’re going to infiltrate Shinra. Well, maybe she isn’t, but Eruption.

There’s a commotion at the tunnel leading from Sector 6 to Aerith’s home. She wipes sweat from her brow and looks up. Turks? Shinra soldiers? One of the curious orphans?

Aerith’s heart jumps in her chest. It’s Tifa, today wearing a crisp black suit with the white button up shirt untucked and only about half-buttoned. Gosh, that’s a good look. Tifa is followed by Biggs and Lenna, her armed escort. Aerith waves at them all, wondering how Tifa showed up so fast today with Biggs going to visit her early this morning. It takes a couple hours on a good day, and it’s been anything but a good day lately.

As answer, Aerith hears the distinct kweh of a chocobo, which means Chocobo Sam gave them the ride. Pays to have a whole area under your control, it turns out. Aerith throws her gloves in her gardening basket and splashes water on her face. She looks a mess, but she’ll be damned if she doesn’t clean up at least a little in front of the Donna.

Tifa looks everywhere but at Aerith. She’s taking in this little paradise, Aerith realizes. First time she’s seen it. She looks utterly bamboozled at so much green, at the rays of sunlight shining down through the plate, and most of all at the sheer brilliance of colorful flowers. Aerith notes Tifa doesn’t have either of the flowers on her person today. All business. Aerith bets she’d really like the church.

“Welcome to my home, Donna Lockhart,” Aerith says as she approaches. 

“Thank you,” Tifa says, “It’s… almost shocking how lovely it is. I haven’t seen this much natural color since–well, since I came to Midgar.”

“Told you it was going to blow you away,” Lenna says, shouldering past Biggs to smile at Tifa. Aerith watches this happen, and that hot pit of emotion in her gut twists into jealousy. Why is this rank-and-file soldier being all chummy with Tifa? Tifa’s her boss!

The irony of that thought is not lost on Aerith, but she shoves it down. 

Tifa says, “Honestly I didn’t know what to expect, but I guess I should have. Those flowers were too pretty to be grown in Midgar, but of course something like this had to exist. Hey Carbuncle, I heard you have a ninja hiding somewhere around here?”

Aerith swallows hard. Praise and dismissal practically in the same breath. She turns away, gesturing for the group to follow. At the door, Tifa turns to Lenna. “Stand guard, I’m sure this won’t take long.”

“Yes, Donna. I’ll be right out here if you need anything .” There is a little stank on that last word, if Aerith is not mistaken. Tifa follows Biggs and Aerith inside, and Aerith slowly closes the door. The smile on Lenna’s face is sincere. It turns into something of a smirk as she glances back at Aerith just as the door closes.

Aerith locks it out of sheer pettiness. Inside the house, Marlene hides behind Barret, who stands next to Elmyra at the kitchen. Yuffie leans against the stair’s railing. There’s a tense silence as Aerith goes to stand next to her mother.

Marlene breaks it. “Miss TIfa?”

Tifa’s stern gaze breaks the moment she sees Marlene. “Hey, little one. Have you been taking care of your papa?”

“You look so different.” That doesn’t stop her from running forward and clutching at Tifa’s legs, burying her face into the woman. Tifa leans down and lifts the girl easily, pulling her into a deep hug.

“Different good or bad?” Tifa asks through unshed tears. She’s holding it back, but everyone sees them.

“You look like bad men from Shinra.”

“Well, I’m not them, okay? I just have to look the part.”

“You’re still pretty, though, don’t worry.” Tifa chuckles and kisses Marlene on the cheek. 

“How could I worry when you’re around?” She sets Marlene back down. Aerith clutches at her mother, doing her best to contain what her mother always called “unstoppable excitement”. Aerith bites her lip, struggling to hold in the amount of joy and love in her heart seeing Tifa and Marlene together. Tifa may be hardened, but she’s not dead inside.

“Good to see you, boss,” Barret says. 

“Likewise. You’ve been keeping busy, I hear.”

“Oh, you know. Chasing ninjas, the usual.” He grins and Tifa joins him.

Yuffie says, “This is a wonderful scene, but you’re the big boss, eh?” Yuffie steps forward, hand extended, but Barret blocks her with one big arm. “Hey, what gives? You think my mission this whole time was to murder some skanky mob boss? No offense.”

Tifa actually laughs out loud at that while it takes everything in Aerith’s soul not to come to Tifa’s defense. “Oh, come on, Barret. If she wanted to kill me, insulting me in front of you all would be the worst way to do it.” Barret grunts and steps aside. Tifa shakes Yuffie’s hand, and Yuffie glances between everyone in the room rapidfire, gauging looks. Aerith catches it; Tifa definitely catches it. Aerith isn’t sure anyone else noticed, though. What Aerith doesn’t catch, though, Tifa does. 

Tifa says, “I realize we’ve just met, but it’s bad form to steal from a mob boss.” She holds her hand out, where Aerith now notices something missing: the telltale glow of green from her fire materia in her modified knuckles.

Yuffie looks impressed as she hands the orb back over, from under her moogle cloak. “You’re good.”

Barret yells, “Hey!” but Tifa only smiles that hard smile she’s been learning to do.

“It’s okay. I passed her test. I know the story well enough about why she’s here. Let’s have a sit-down, shall we? Excuse me,” she says to Elmyra, taking a seat at the dining room table. “You must be Aerith’s mother. Could I trouble you for some tea, or coffee if you have it?”

“By all means, make yourself at home,” Elmyra says. There definitely is a little stank on that, but Tifa only nods, as if it’s her due. Play the part. “Aerith, join me in the kitchen, would you?”

Aerith nods, and follows her mother the few steps into the kitchen area. It’s not a separate space, really, just distanced somewhat. Barret, Biggs, and Yuffie all take seats at the table as well. Marlene tries to crawl on Barret’s lap, but he sends her off upstairs to play while “daddy talks business”. Marlene huffs, but goes along. She’s so young, but seems to understand when her father won’t brook an argument.

They begin chatting while Aerith stands next to her mother in the kitchen. Elmyra whispers, “So this is your Donna Lockhart.”

“Shh.”

“Oh, come now, they’re not listening to anything we’re saying. They’re making grand plans. And you aren’t part of them.”

“You wouldn’t want me part of them, anyway, Mom. They’re going into the Shinra building.”

Elmyra’s eyes widen as they gather cups and set the percolator brewing. The pleasing aroma of coffee wafts through the kitchen. “Whatever for?”

“Revenge. Justice. Does it matter? I can’t really go in there with them. I’m probably in every database from here to topside, and Junon and beyond. If I go somewhere, they’ll know about it.”

“I can’t say I’m sorry to hear it. Sounds dangerous.”

“It’s super dangerous.”

“So why do you look so upset?” Elmyra asks.

She may not be Aerith’s real mother, but she damn sure knows Aerith’s moods and expressions. “I want to help.”

“You want to help her .”

“Can you blame me? Look at her, Mom.”

They glance back and Aerith sighs a little under her breath. Elmyra shrugs. “She’s beautiful, and tries to look hard. Like that SOLDIER who used to come around.”

“Mom, Zack wasn’t just some SOLDIER.”

Elmyra waves that away. “She’s also vulnerable, and naively optimistic, just like that SOLDIER boy.”

“You know what’s crazy? She met Zack.”

“Really?”

“I’ll tell you about it later.” That’s the second conversation she’s promised to have about Zack in the last couple days. Maybe she’ll actually have this one.

They pour coffee for six, and distribute the cups at the table, where Tifa and Yuffie are just feeling each other out. Yuffie pushes her coffee cup away. “Can’t believe you all drink that. No, it’s fine, I’ll just have water.”

Aerith takes the extra cup, and says, “I’ll see if Lenna could use a pick-me-up.”

Before she can walk outside, though, Biggs’s comm goes off. A burst of static that surprises everyone in the room, and he turns it down. “Be right back.”

He unlocks the door after a brief glance at Aerith when he realizes she locked it, steps outside, and Aerith follows with the coffee. She offers it to Lenna, who accepts it gratefully. “Ah, your mother knows just how to make it.”

Biggs goes off, talking into his comms while traipsing around the garden. Aerith hopes everything is all right, but if Jessie and Wedge were going around fixing the comms, maybe this is their confirmation?

Aerith glances back at Lenna, who sips her coffee while letting her rifle dangle on its strap. Aerith says, “I prefer tea. Far as coffee goes, though? She makes a good cup.”

Lenna grins. Aerith looks at her askance. “What? Did I say something funny?”

“It’s nothing. Shouldn’t you be inside, plotting and scheming?”

Aerith shrugs. “Doesn’t really concern me.”

“The plan, or the woman?”

Aerith’s shoulders bunch up. “She made it perfectly clear it wasn’t a thing.”

“Did she now?” That causes Lenna to cock an eyebrow, and sip her coffee again. “Can I offer you some advice? As a woman used to noticing what others don’t?”

Aerith tenses up. “I have a feeling you’re gonna offer it anyway, so sure.”

“As much as the two of you avoid talking about each other, it’s clear as day that you’re fighting it. She’s a bit broken, and you like to fix. She’s beautiful, and you admire beauty.”

“Sounds one-sided.” 

Lenna shrugs. “I’m not done yet. You’re in need of protecting, and she’s desperate to protect. You’re pretty and outgoing, and she is drawn to that.”

“I like to think I can take care of myself.” 

“Oh, sure, you’re a deft hand in a fight, so I saw last night. But you can’t do what we can do. What she’s desperate to do for those she loves. You could be one of those.”

“I’m all ears for suggestions.”

“I dunno. You’ve known her longer than I have. You’ve been through more, to hear the tales from the sewer. But giving up isn’t in your nature. You’re too chipper and stubborn for that. And she’s too fractured to admit it, but she worries about you. Thinks about you.”

That warms Aerith’s insides. She smiles dreamily. “And here I thought you were out to get her for yourself.”

“Not exactly my type. I was testing a theory, if you want to know the truth. And I think I was right.” 

“So what is Lenna’s type?” Aerith asks.

“Oh, I’ve got my eye on that Biggs. He looks like he can go a few rounds.”

Aerith laughs. “Maybe after he heals up a bit more. Be firm with him. He gets lost in plans, apparently.”

“I’ll get him lost in something.” She nudges Aerith as Biggs comes back to the porch.

“Everything okay?” Aerith asks.

He shakes his head. “Jessie’s gone rogue. She’s climbing the ruins of Sector 7, and Wedge couldn’t follow her with his injury.”

“She’s what ?” Aerith asks, but Biggs enters the house, where deliberations are ongoing. It doesn’t take long for the group to be filled in, for Tifa to form a plan.

“I’m going after her.”

Barret slams a fist on the table, shaking everything inside the house. “It’s suicide. Besides the fact it’ll come tumbling down on you, Shinra’s got drones and helicopters all over it. You go rummaging around and they’ll wanna know why.”

“This isn’t a discussion. Jessie’s parents were on top of the plate. Maybe she thinks they’re alive. She went, so I’m going.”

“Hell, you know I can’t follow you up that rickety shit,” Barret says. “I’m big as an elephant and twice as clumsy.”

“And I don’t think you want me slowing you down as I’m still on the mend,” Biggs says. 

Yuffie interjects. “Climbing around? Tag your girl in.”

“You don’t even know her,” Barret says, “and we don’t trust you yet.”

“No,” Tifa says, considering, “but this is a good exercise in earning it. You can come.”

Barret opens his mouth to argue, but Tifa shoots a glare at him that shuts him up. Don’t question her in front of others. Trust in her new role. Aerith nods. “I can go, too. I’ve been climbing around the slums for years.”

“Aerith, no,” Elmyra says, but Aerith shakes her head at her mother. 

“Jessie’s my friend, Mom. If she’s hurting, I’m going to try and help.”

“What about Lenna?” Biggs asks. “She seems capable.” He has the good sense to blush slightly when Aerith smirks at him.

“Only room for one newbie,” Tifa says. “ If you’re sure you can keep up, Carbuncle?” Aerith nods, resolute. “Okay. Lenna can stay here and watch over the house. Yuffie, Aerith, we leave in three. You want to prove you’re worth it, and trustworthy? Help me save my friend.”

“From herself?” Yuffie asks, indignant.

“From whoever tries to hurt her.”

Aerith says, “I’m ready.” Tifa clears her throat and glances down at Aerith’s legs, visible under her skirt. 

Aerith’s face reddens. “I’ll um. Put on some pants.” Tifa nods, and Aerith rushes upstairs to change into something more useful to climbing. She may have exaggerated her athleticism a bit, but she wants to help Jessie. And seeing Tifa again confirmed one thing for sure.

She wants to stay near Tifa regardless of what the woman said about her.

*****

Using Chocobo Sam’s carriage, they clear a path to the wreckage just outside Sector 7. A little abandoned park. This is a place that pings Tifa’s memory suddenly, while Sam finds their way through the wreckage.

“I saw you here once, didn’t I?” Tifa asks.

Aerith lets out a slight little gasp. “You did. I’m surprised you remembered.”

“A lot is blurry about that day.”

Yuffie glances between the two of them. “We call that star-crossed where I come from.”

Tifa blushes a bit, hides it behind a fist and cough. Sam parks the chocobo carriage and calls out, “Can’t take you any farther, Miss Tifa.”

“That’s quite all right, Sam. We’ll walk from here.”

“As you say.”

Tifa doesn’t wait for anyone else to say anything. She opens the door and hops out, removing the suit jacket as she does. She begins rolling up her sleeves and kitting herself out with the supplies they had on hand. Even after Platefall, Jessie, Biggs, and Wedge proved resourceful. A couple lengths of rope, climbing gloves, some pitons and a hammer in case they actually need to climb. Yuffie claims not to need any. Aerith puts the supplies in her bag, coils the rope around her torso like a bandolier, and stretches a bit, limbering up. Tifa coils the other rope around her the same way.

Aerith had changed out of her dress and into a pair of black tights, a black spaghetti strap blouse, and a high-waisted red jacket. Her oversize brown boots seem to be a staple no matter the outfit. 

Yuffie removes her moogle cloak and tosses it inside the carriage along with Tifa’s suit jacket. Under it, she’s got a ribbed green turtleneck shirt, sleeveless, covering only her upper torso. It actually looks uncomfortably similar to Cloud’s SOLDIER uniform, minus the midriff. She also has a pauldron on one shoulder with a strap going across her chest and stomach to hold it in place. The pauldron is of a piece with a large gauntlet protecting her entire arm. Those two pieces of familiarity to Cloud unsettle Tifa, but she can’t say why. Maybe Yuffie is Wutai’s version of special forces, like Cloud was SOLDIER?

Yuffie’s wearing short-shorts with the top button undone, and thick, knee-length leggings over orange sneakers. If the top half of her looks like a soldier, the bottom half looks like a cheerleader. It’s a wild arrangement, but she looks comfortable and capable. Her many knives, kunai, and that big spiked wheel look deadly, too.

Wedge finds them in the crowd of milling refugees, and calls them over to a likely ascent. “You’re probably gonna have a hard time catching up with her. She’s pretty spry.”

“More spry than a ninja?” Yuffie asks, leaping up onto the rubble and grinning. It shakes under her, and she wobbles for a moment, but it holds and she gives a thumbs up. “Yuffie seal of approval! Let’s do this.”

Aerith and Tifa share a glance, nervousness and chagrin. “Probably gonna have a hard time keeping up with Yuffie,” Aerith mutters.

“Come on, you two! Time’s a-wasting.” Yuffie holds her hand out for Tifa to take it, and Tifa shrugs, accepting the help up. The girl is strong for such a small frame. But then, so is Tifa. Tifa offers a hand to Aerith once she’s up and the piece of wall holds them both. Yuffie runs on ahead, over the piles of rubble, and vanishes beyond the first one. 

Aerith slaps Wedge on the back, “We’ll find her, don’t worry.” He grins sheepishly, and nods. She runs up the rubble, leaping for Tifa’s hand and letting her momentum carry her into Tifa.

Tifa yanks on her and pulls, so that they stumble backwards a bit, but use each other to balance, arms around each other’s waists.

“Easy peasy,” Aerith says, breathing it in Tifa’s ear before she lets go. Tifa runs a nervous hand through the long side of her hair, tucking it behind an ear. 

She says, “We better catch up.”

“Whatever you say, Donna Lockhart.” She moves ahead, leaving Tifa behind. Tifa watches her go, this infuriating woman. What happened to letting it go? Not chasing what can’t happen? Tifa glances back to Wedge, who is grinning like a fool on the ground up at her.

“Shut up.”

“I didn’t say anything!” his gravelly voice calls up to her. She ignores him and scrambles up the wreckage of Sector 7. Then she hears Wedge calling out something else that warms her heart and hurts it in equal measure. He’s calling for his cats, who probably didn’t make it out of Platefall. Good luck, Wedge, she thinks.

Two days ago it would have been unfathomably cruel to Tifa to be crawling over the ruins of her old home. But being faced with it at the mansion, in the underground lab, and with Aerith there to steady her? It is possible to tread this ruin. To walk on the graves of thousands in search of one still alive. 

It mostly reminds Tifa that what Eruption is doing is just. Is right. Shinra did this. Shinra will pay. It takes her a couple of minutes of dedicated climbing, careful walking, and occasional leaps to reach the base of what Aerith and Yuffie stand atop: a section of wrecked highway. Aerith pants and wipes sweat from her face, but she’s keeping up okay so far. 

Buildings, trains, cars. Street signs that no longer lead to anywhere. This will be a sector graveyard from now on. Like the underground lab entrapping spirits, will this place hold ghosts hostage over time? Will it be just one more reminder of all that Shinra has done?

Not if Tifa can help it. She wipes her gloved hands as she climbs the last bit of broken highway to stand beside Yuffie and Aerith. Yuffie says, “I didn’t think anybody could still be alive up here, but look.” She points and there in the distance, in the shadowy ruins of a building not quite destroyed, are people. Refugees from the cataclysmic Platefall.

“Why haven’t they been rescued?” Aerith asks. There are drones and helicopters still flying about, surveying the area.

“Because Shinra doesn’t care,” Tifa says. “They never did, and never will. We should go visit them first, check if anyone’s seen Jessie.”

“If not, any idea where she might have gone?” Yuffie asks.

Tifa considers. “I don’t know how we’ll find it with how everything’s wrecked, but Jessie’s parents lived in one of the nicer employee residential districts just off the highway. If she’s going anywhere, it’ll be there.” She points off in the vague direction she thinks they lived. It’s hard to tell anything with the way it’s all broken now.

Yuffie nods. “Point me in the right direction, and I’ll find us a safe path.” The highway rumbles a little bit under them. “Safe-ish.” It rumbles again, as if threatening them to risk it. “Yeah, I got it, ruins. Dangerous-ish?” The highway under them does not rumble again. Yuffie gives a thumbs up. “I’ll take it!” She darts off down the slanted, broken highway, finding them a path.

“She has far too much energy,” Aerith says.

“Hopefully it’s enough. We don’t want to be up here after night, or we’ll be camping. Way too risky to be hopping around in the dark.”

“Wouldn’t be the worst night,” Aerith suggests, turning to follow their shinobi companion.

Tifa grabs Aerith’s arm and pulls her back. “Did you seriously come on this trip just to flirt with me?”

Aerith glares at Tifa, yanking her arm free and rubbing at the spot she’d been pulled. “Big opinion of yourself, Donna Lockhart.”

“That didn’t answer my question.”

Aerith mock pouts. “So petty. I’m here for Jessie. She’s been a very good friend to me, and I already know I can’t go into Shinra’s HQ with you. I’m too high profile. I’m doing what I can.”

“So flirting is just… extra?”

“Flirting’s free, Donna Lockhart. I know you’re focused on the task at hand, and the one after that.”

“Good. Because I can’t afford distractions, and you’re–”

“–An excellent distraction?”

Tifa scoffs to cover a chuckle. She really can’t help it. “Come on. If we don’t keep up with the ninja, we’ll end up stranded here.”

Aerith nods, gesturing for Tifa to take point between the two of them. Aerith follows, and then Tifa hears her rush forward excitedly. She grabs for Tifa’s wrist, but Tifa yanks her arm back, naked hostility on her face. 

Tifa couldn’t control her facial expressions in the moment. The pure anger and betrayal on her face causes Aerith to back off. “Sorry. I’m so sorry, Tifa. I didn’t think–”

Tifa’s shoulders ease their tension, and she sighs. The moment passes. “You surprised me. I’m a little sensitive to being touched without permission these days.”

“Like I said, I’m sorry. I was going to swap out your fire materia for wind. I think you’ll like what it does. I made good use of it during the arena fights.” Tifa wonders what it can do for her that fire can’t.

Tifa shrugs it off, though. “Fire is useful.”

“Tifa, if you can trust me on one thing, make it about matters of the Lifestream.”

“This is materia.”

“Which is made from the Lifestream.”

Yuffie yells from somewhere ahead of them, “You two should just kiss already, you’re holding up the mission!”

Aerith pouts, and Tifa hides her blush. “Whatever. Give me the wind.”

Aerith hands it over, and Tifa does the complicated little maneuver of swapping the orb out of her knuckleduster and replacing it with the wind. “I like that one, so don’t lose it, okay?”

“I’ll keep it safe in the staff, Donna Lockhart.” She does just that, slotting it in place of the wind.

“Good.” Tifa jogs off after Yuffie, trusting that Aerith won’t be far behind. Then she remembers that Aerith is the least agile among them, the most likely to need help. Tifa waits, then, for Aerith to catch up. This is good exercise being out on the ruins like this, and Aerith maybe oversold her own ability, as she breathes heavily, panting and wheezing, as she catches up to Tifa after that short jaunt.

“Sorry,” Aerith says, “The routes I normally take in the slums are less… vertical than this.”

“Try not to pass out.”

“I’ll be fine. Just. Give me a sec.” Aerith massages her calves and then holds her sides while she walks. Tifa climbs over a shattered window from a storefront, and holds her hand out for Aerith, pulling her the distance. The motion is so automatic, Tifa barely registers the slight thrill she gets when Aerith places her hand in Tifa’s. She avoids letting Aerith wrap themselves up in a half-hug this time, and grunts when Aerith smiles. “See? Nothing to it.”

It takes a few minutes of careful navigation, but eventually the two of them catch up to Yuffie, who has begun questioning the refugees. Most of them are there by choice, as it turns out. Since Shinra couldn’t be bothered to help, the citizens have organized themselves into a loose militia of rescue workers. The Shinra drones are carefully avoiding this area.

When they arrive, Aerith holds up the orb of curative materia. “I’m gonna help whoever I can, okay?”

Tifa nods. “Don’t drain yourself, though. We still have a ways to go before we even get to Jessie’s parents.”

“No promises.”

Tifa scoffs and leaves Aerith to her work. It’s admirable, though. Wanting to help people, even strangers. It’s what they’re all doing, only Aerith is working one person at a time. Tifa catches up to Yuffie, and the teen gives a thumbs up gesture with a wink. “Got a positive hit on your friend. She came through about half an hour ago, handed out some supplies, and kept going. That way.” Yuffie points to a dangerous cliff face that was once a building. “One of ‘em told me there’s a way through, but it’s got patrols for some reason.”

“Good work. We can probably sneak past. That’s on the way to where I remember Jessie’s folks lived, I think, so I guess that’s what she’s doing.”

“Does she really think she’s gonna find them alive? The death toll is pretty high.”

Tifa shakes her head. “I don’t know what she’s thinking, but I know what it does to you when you think everyone’s dead. When you lose everyone.”

“But you didn’t? Like. Everyone around you lived.”

Tifa stiffens at that. Anger flashes through her, but she pulls it back. “You don’t have a lot of tact, do you?”

Yuffie shrugs. “My dad told me to think before I speak, but nothing ever gets done that way. What’s worse, some hurt feelings or festering problems that explode later?”

Tifa smiles her hard smile. “Just because I didn’t lose Barret or the others doesn’t mean I didn’t lose anyone at all.” A spiky-headed SOLDIER flashes in her memory. Then the fire in Nibelheim. A sword through her chest. “Doesn’t mean I didn’t think   I lost everyone. I know what that does, and Jessie doesn’t deserve that. She deserves closure, if she can find it.”

“Whatever you say, boss. I’m gonna scout ahead.” Yuffie doesn’t wait for Tifa’s permission or even acknowledgement. She just hops a piece of rubble, dashes up an angled ruin of a wall, leaps for a piece of broken streetlight, and uses it to swing onto the roof of a mostly-intact business. She vanished in a matter of seconds. Tifa knows has some similar skills, but she isn’t sure she could do that same maneuver. 

Tifa turns to find Aerith, who has a crowd of people around her now, as she works to heal minor wounds and help as best she can. She’s worked up quite a sweat sitting still, and Tifa has just a moment to admire Aerith’s slick-skinned concentration before the woman’s eyes roll up in her head and she falls backwards off the rubble she’d set up shop at.

Tifa is nowhere near enough to catch her, but she has such a crowd of needful people around her that they all gently ease her down while Tifa jogs over.

“Clear a path, I know her,” she declares. Whether it’s her tone of voice, her posture, her clothing, or some combination of the three, the crowd lets her through without any hassle. “Give her some air, she’s overexerted herself.”

The damnable woman did precisely what Tifa asked her not to! So why does Tifa want so desperately to pull her close, run a finger along her face to push her hair back, take care of her? Tifa recovers the curative materia from the crowd of onlookers and injured. She pulls Aerith to her, holds her in her lap to give her time to rest. To keep anyone from messing with her, she tells herself. Lies to herself.

She at first takes the crowd all for upper plate refugees and rescue workers, but listening to them talk, and seeing them up close, she realizes that the ones helping are lower plate citizens. It makes sense, of course. We take care of our own in the slums, and the people on the plate didn’t bring it down. They’re lower plate citizens now, too. Their lives are ruined, their families broken. They’ll pick up the pieces and soldier on. They’ll keep going, because what else is there to do?

Stop Shinra. Make sure they can never do this again. Midgar is not a place to be saved, but it isn’t a place to be destroyed, either. It’s a place that should be changed, fixed. Destroying Shinra shouldn’t also destroy Midgar, and Junon, and all the other places that are still “thriving” under Shinra’s rule. No more Nibelheims. Never another Nibelheim.

Tifa clutches the curative materia in both hands, Aerith nestled in her lap below her arms. The materia glows suddenly, suffusing her hands with the curative light she’s only ever seen from Cloud and Aerith. 

How did she activate the materia without it being channeled through equipment? She doesn’t know, of course; it shouldn’t be possible. Only Aerith has ever done this, to Tifa’s knowledge, and she’s still passed out. That moment of shared flame in the underground lab was surely because Aerith was there to channel it, right?

She reaches her hand out to the injured around her. “Quickly, before I lose it! Someone who’s hurt!” 

A woman comes forward, clutching a broken arm. Tifa grabs the arm, apologizing for the hurt as the magic flows out of her, cooling and warming at the same time. Something saps out of Tifa, going into this woman, but the bone knits together, and the rictus of pain on her face softens until it goes away entirely.

The woman sobs, thanking Tifa, planting kisses on her outstretched hand. Tifa doesn’t know what to do with this, and she tries to pull her hand back in. In her lap, Aerith’s eyes open, dreamy and beautiful. She begins to reach up to Tifa’s face before realizing where they are and what’s happening. 

Aerith sits up, and Tifa stands. She feels drained. Not quite like when she casts fire magic, but deeper, in her very essence: like the part of her that will return to the Lifestream when she dies has already departed somewhat. No wonder Aerith passed out.

Aerith accepts help up, stares around and shakes her head at everyone. “I’m sorry. I guess I’m done for the day.”

She glances at Tifa and Tifa nods, gesturing for her to follow. The crowd watches them go, in a daze at this pair of women who cast healing magic without the aid of materia-channeling equipment. That will likely spread. They shouldn’t spend any more time here, and never return.

The crowd lets them go, though. Too stunned, or too reverent, to ask them to stay?

When they reach the building that Yuffie disappeared over a few minutes ago, Aerith yawns and stretches. “I could have used a few more minutes.” Tifa hands over the curative materia. They can discuss what happened with Tifa casting magic unaided later. Aerith doesn’t even seem to realize it happened. 

Tifa asks, “Sleep when you’re dead, isn’t that what they say?”

“Yeah, right up ‘til they’re dead. Mmm, you were very comfy.”

“Stop doing that.”

“Being cute?”

Before she can even think about what she’s saying, it comes out. “That would be impossible.”

Aerith grins that impish grin and Tifa can’t turn away fast enough. The fiery red flush crosses her cheeks, burns up her ears, turns her whole face into an inferno. Yuffie’s head pops over the rooftop. “Are you casting Knights of the Round down there or what? Come ONNNN.”

“What’s Knights of the Round?” Aerith asks, stepping up next to Tifa. “And how are we supposed to get up there?”

Aerith is very pointedly not looking directly at Tifa, thankfully. She’s just standing there with her arms behind her back, holding her staff and balancing on one foot while the other leg curls around the first, looking up at Yuffie with that knowing, sleepy smile. It’s such a cute stance.

“I can climb up there, I think,” Tifa says. 

“And then you can lasso me and drag me up like a sack of potatoes?”

“I can’t crawl up there with you on my back.”

Aerith huffs. “Fine.”

Tifa steps forward, climbing with some difficulty. She runs, kicks off the angled wall, and a curious thing happens: she feels an almost weightless cushion of air propel her even higher than she expected to go, and fumbles in the air before grabbing the streetlight and clutching it to her chest.

“You two are worthless,” Yuffie calls down. 

“Thank you very much for your observation, Miss Ninja Pants!” Aerith calls from below. “Also that was awesome! Told you the wind materia would be neat.”

Tifa says from her dangling perch, “We’re very out in the open right now, so if we tone down the screaming, that would be great.”

Yuffie drops to the lip of the slanted roof, legs dangling over the edge. “I’ll bet you that fancy materia you can’t leap from there to here.”

In response, Tifa glances down at Aerith, who gives her a great big thumbs up gesture. 

Tifa feels for the connection of the wind materia. It’s in every part of her body, but especially in her arms and legs. Like potential energy just waiting to be released. She tenses up, lets her legs dangle for a moment, and kicks off of the vertical part of the pole with all her might, concentrating on the wind magic funneling through her.

The pole snaps and falls over, barely missing Aerith, who dives to safety. Tifa’s concern for Aerith causes her to spin uncontrollably and shoot up towards Yuffie, who gasps and rolls backwards to avoid being bowled over. Tifa rockets through the air, pinwheeling arms to try and stop. The motion just sends her spinning ass over teakettle, and she drops to the roof next to a very confused Yuffie. For the briefest of moments, that cushion of air settles around her hands and feet, settling her to the rooftop more gently than her trajectory would have caused.

She immediately runs to the edge to look over, to make sure Aerith is okay. The woman chuckles, dusting herself off as she stands. She gives a thumbs up to Tifa, and Tifa lets herself sigh with relief.

Behind her, Yuffie laughs. “Damn, Donna Lockhart,” Yuffie says, sitting up. “You don’t mess around.”

Tifa says, “We’re on the job right now, Kisaragi. So what do I win?”

“Win?”

“You bet me I couldn’t leap up here.”

“Hey now, you didn’t accept the bet and even if you did, we didn’t agree to terms.”

“Weaseling out of a bet?”

“Wouldn’t you?” Yuffie makes a “what are ya gonna do?” face, like there’s no other way this could have played out, and Tifa sighs.

Down below, Aerith calls, “You didn’t turn Yuffie into meat paste, right? Sorry about that!”

Tifa uncoils her rope and tosses one end down. She calls out, “The little ninja’s fine.” To Yuffie in a normal voice, she says, “It’s gonna take both of us to pull her up.”

“You know, I think it’s cute you bring your girlfriend on missions, but she’s seriously hampering our ability to get around up here.”

“She has her uses. She gave me the wind materia, and she’s not my girlfriend.”

“Really? Why the hell not? You two have been doing nothing but bickering like an old married couple, when you’re not making moon eyes.”

“Just help me pull her up. I’m not discussing this with a kid I don’t even know.”

Aerith calls from down below, “Okay, I think I tied it right. You can pull me up now!”

Tifa feels the rope jerk slightly in her hands. She peers over the edge and sees Aerith has tied it around her waist, which can work in a pinch but isn’t really a good idea. “Can you do a better job?” she calls down.

“You’re only pulling me like twenty feet, it’ll be fine.”

Tifa shrugs and coils the rope around herself, and finds a sizable chunk of building she can brace her legs against. “On three.”

They count to three and begin pulling. Yuffie is less helpful than Tifa would hope in a feat of pure strength, and the strain on Tifa’s muscles shows. That earlier display of helping Tifa up onto the ruins of Sector 7 must have been some kind of momentum trick. Tifa knows plenty about using her opponents’ momentum against them, but using it to help? 

Tifa’s arms bulge, the veins popping out on the wrists and up the forearms. So long as they maintain the slack between her arms and the rope around her waist, she’ll be fine.

The rope starts shifting left and right along the rooftop’s edge. “Stop fidgeting!” Tifa calls. They can’t see what she’s doing, but it seems like she’s seesawing back and forth. Every pendulum swing threatens to unseat them. Yuffie sucks in breath while heaving, and Tifa sweats from exertion.

Inch by inch they pull her, until her fingers appear and she grips the lip of the roof. Tifa says, “Pull her up. I’ve got her.”

Yuffie drops the rope and laboriously pulls Aerith up enough that she can climb the rest of the way herself. All it takes is getting one leg and both elbows above the lip, and she drags herself over, panting and holding her waist. 

“Next time we should do a proper harness,” Aerith pants. “Pretty sure I have rope burn.”

“You’re lucky that’s all you have. Why were you swinging around down there?” Tifa asks, coiling the rope back up and slinging it over a shoulder.

Yuffie stares between them, incredulous. “Nothing? Really? I’m a ‘kid’ according to you two, and I’m the one who expected a harness joke?” 

Aerith snorts laughter while Tifa scoffs. She ignores Yuffie’s indiscreet mocking and says, “You made it harder to pull you up.”

Aerith shrugs, rubbing at her backside just above the waist. “After you started pulling on it, it yanked me around. I tried adjusting so it wasn’t cutting off my circulation, but that just made me spin. Trying to stop spinning made me swing. Swinging kept the pressure off, so I just let it happen.”

Tifa sighs at that. It’s exactly the kind of nonsense Aerith would have happen to her. “If there’s a next time, I’ll make sure you’re tied correctly.” 

Yuffie and Aerith smirk, but Tifa ignores them. “Okay, we’re up here, Yuffie. Did you scout ahead again?”

“Yeah, yeah. The path they told me about is for people who can’t climb around, and that one has the patrols. We’re going overhead, which means so long as we don’t break anything and alert the drones to our presence, we’ll be fine.”

Aerith asks, “Is it safe to walk around up here?”

Yuffie shrugs. “Safe enough. Light steps and be ready to leap to safety.”

They proceed over the broken rooftops and shattered remnants of Sector 7. Occasionally they have to duck under cover and shelter behind rubble when a helicopter flies in the distance, or a drone rises up out of the broken structures to go elsewhere. They make decent progress, and only once does the building under them crumble. Aerith falls through the roof, sliding to a stop, but somehow safe and unhurt. Just coughing up dust. She even climbs out without an issue. The sudden feeling of dread in Tifa’s chest when Aerith fell is telling her things she doesn’t want to hear.

“Wow, that could have gone really wrong,” Aerith says, dusting herself off and examining herself for cuts and scrapes.

“Seems like Carbuncle is an apt nickname,” Yuffie says. 

“The Carbuncle’s own luck,” Tifa says, a memory flooding to the surface. It’s a sudden memory that has hooks. Something her father said to her, when she finally woke up after getting hurt, trying to find her mother. Putting all her friends in danger for a foolish, childish notion. The first time she forced Cloud to protect her, without realizing it. The first time he failed, though she doesn’t blame him for that. It was her own stupid fault.

Aerith nods. “Guess so. It’s starting to get kind of late in the day. How close are we to Jessie’s parents?”

Tifa looks around. They’re not far off, she realizes. There’s a broken section of highway in the distance that’s on the way to their neighborhood. With any luck, they’ll find Jessie soon. 

They continue traveling, and eventually make it to the ruined neighborhood. Here, too, are refugees. And surprisingly, a pretty thick Shinra presence. Not just drones and helicopters in the sky, but foot-soldiers on the ground. Of course, there was a Shinra military facility nearby. Wouldn’t do to let all that sweet artillery and all those mechanized units get into the hands of an angry proletariat. 

That makes what they’re doing more dangerous. But Tifa is committed to this course of action. She nearly lost Jessie too many times. She’s done losing people.

So they sneak along the wrecked cars, creeping ever closer. Yuffie scouts ahead once more, and as the pair of Tifa and Aerith crouch behind a broken section of house, waiting for the patrol of soldiers to pass them by, a whirring and beeping issues behind them.

They turn, ready to fight, but Yuffie’s giant spiked wheel slams into the drone’s side, nearly bisecting it, and the whole conglomeration clatters to the ground amid sparks and flames. The Shinra soldiers on their patrol didn’t hear it, it seems, and Yuffie leaps down from a rooftop nearby. She collects the weapon and rejoins Tifa and Aerith. For Tifa’s part, she’s impressed, but Yuffie shrugs it off.

“Never leave home without my shuriken,” she whispers cheerily. “I think I found her. It was at a distance, but I saw a girl with brown hair and a green bandana disappear into the collapsed back entrance of a house. The front was completely cratered.”

That doesn’t bode well for Jessie’s parents, but they’re here to help her, no matter what that looks like. Rescue, burial, revenge. Whatever she needs.

They go stealthily along, and finally make it to the house. Tifa had only ever been here one time, at Jessie’s insistence, but it breaks her heart to see the home destroyed. What must it be doing to Jessie?

They creep through the narrow passage along the side of the house, which is more exposed than Tifa likes, as the barrier wall between the street and house is broken in several places. They slip by when no one is on the broken street, and Tifa wedges the back door open. It’s still on its hinges, but the frame is twisted a bit, and it takes some doing. She calls into the darkened interior, as loud as she dares, “Jess, it’s Tifa. Don’t shoot us, please.”

They hear a click, and a sigh. “Wedge was supposed to cover for me.” Jessie appears from an interior door into the back room, looking haggard and sick. Eyes puffy and red from crying.

Tifa comes into the space and pulls Jessie into a hug. “Wedge did what he thought was right.” Aerith follows her in, respectfully standing back, though.

“I suppose you’re going to tell me I’m an idiot now.”

Yuffie says from the doorway, “You are.”

Tifa glares at their wayward ninja, who rolls her eyes up and stalks away from the door. “I’ll keep an eye out.”

Jessie leans back from the hug, smiling. “You brought the shinobi. Nice.”

“You are an idiot, Jessie,” Tifa says. “But I understand. I’d have done the same thing. Hell, I did  the same thing when I was a kid.”

“I had to know.”

“I get it. Anything?” Tifa lets Jessie go, so glad she’s okay, worried what’s about to come out of her mouth.

Jessie shakes her head. “I can’t find Mom. She was probably in the… in the front when it happened.”

“And your father?” Aerith asks.

“He wasn’t long for this world, already. Mako poisoning, and without power and fresh supplies, even if he’d–if he’d lived through Platefall, he’d have died already anyway. He didn’t, though, it looks like. Thrown from his bed… broken neck. At least he didn’t suffer at the end.”

Aerith comes closer, puts a comforting hand on Jessie’s shoulder. “It’s okay to cry.”

Jessie shakes her head. “I’ve already done enough of that. I had to know about my parents, but that’s not the only reason I came here. My dad had some supplies, experiments and special projects he used to tinker with, before he got too sick. I thought maybe I’d find something useful.”

They let her go at her own pace. She opens the door back to the room she came from, and steps through, waiting for them to come through also.

They follow her, and find a room with broken floorboards, scattered furniture, and a body under a sheet, laboriously lifted back onto the bed, which is not flush against the wall anymore, but Jessie did her best. “I’m so sorry, Jessie,” Tifa says, but Jessie only nods. 

“It’s over here. Everything I could find.”

In a small box are some electronic devices, a couple small orbs of materia that are gray, colorless, and lusterless. As if he had tried to infuse them with Mako–the Lifestream–but failed. Materia in the making. 

But there was one in the box that was the right size. And a vibrant red color.

“Living materia,” Tifa whispers, reaching for it. She remembers that the Hades materia was dangerous, that it was hostile. So she hesitates.

They don’t have time to talk about it, or discuss further, because Yuffie busts into the room, looking around frantically. “Hey, remember how we were on a stealth mission? That’s kinda over now. They found the drone I destroyed. Ooh, shiny.” She reaches for the red materia in the box, but Tifa shoves her back and scoops it up for herself. If they don’t have time to think about it, they don’t have time to bicker about who gets it. She tosses it into her satchel, glances in the box for the other materia, and snags one of those for good measure. 

“Then I guess it’s time to go. Jessie?”

Jessie nods, pulling her sidearm back out. “It might be busted up, but there’s a maintenance hatch over by the Shinra facility. If we can get to it, we can at least hide until the heat dies down.” She holds the door open for everyone to filter back out, and they do, one by one. Yuffie leads them, and Aerith follows close behind. Tifa waits for Jessie, who stands at the threshold looking at her father on the bed. Saying her last goodbyes.

They don’t have time for it, but Tifa waits anyway. It’s the least she can do for her friend. Finally, Jessie closes her eyes, sniffles, and runs a finger under them to wipe away the last of her tears. 

“Let’s go.”

They go, following Yuffie outside, only to find that there’s a contingent of soldiers closing in on their position. They haven’t been caught out yet, but the drones are sweeping and the soldiers are closing ranks. Refugees are hustled aside or tossed to the broken street. One house collapses the rest of the way when a blue-clothed soldier bangs on the side of it, calling for any scavengers to come out with their hands up. 

“This might be a good time to split up,” Yuffie says. “I can lead these jokers on a merry chase and lose ‘em in no time.”

“We can’t just let you go, now that you’ve met me and you know where we’re operating out of,” Tifa says.

“Hey, Carbuncle said it last night. You’ll just have to trust me.” She goes to leap away, but Tifa grabs her ankle and yanks her back. Yuffie spins in the air, putting her hands out to catch herself on the concrete, and kicks with her other foot. Tifa drops away from the kick, letting the girl go in the process. Yuffie grins, slams her palm on the concrete, and a cloud of smoke erupts in her place. “Trust!” she calls as she vanishes, her voice getting farther away.

Another drone drops out of the sky, a kunai sticking out of its optic receptor, and Yuffie dashes in the opposite direction that Jessie indicated they should go. A very good distraction.

Tifa coughs and curses under her breath as they wait for the soldiers and drones to give chase. Jessie says, “She’s a firecracker.”

Aerith grins. “She fits in well with the rest of us weirdos.”

“Whatever,” Tifa says, “Let’s just hope she doesn’t get caught and or decide to betray us for some reason.” Tifa leaps into action, following the backtrail of the Shinra soldiers now that they’ve vacated the area chasing Yuffie. She knows the military site, so she leads them along another ruined street and turns left. Here there’s a military cordon, makeshift barriers manned, and spotlights currently dimmed. With the action headed away, these soldiers appear to be lax in their duty, chatting at the barrier, backs turned to the entrance.

Tifa guides them along, keeping out of sight as much as possible, but before too long, Jessie grips her arm and pulls her back behind the Shinra troop transport. “Place is busted.” She points to the right, where the maintenance entrance should be, but it’s a crater of concrete rubble and twisted steel. 

“What now?” Aerith asks, hands twisting her shirt nervously. 

“Now we go back the way we came,” Tifa says. “Shouldn’t be hard if Yuffie keeps them distracted.”

“We’re gonna run out of daylight following our backtrail,” Jessie says.

“So we’ll go faster.”

“Faster is more dangerous,” Aerith says.

“You said you could handle it up here, Carbuncle,” Tifa says, annoyed and worried. “Are you a hindrance, or a soldier?”

Aerith’s face scrunches up in frustration, but she shakes her head angrily. “I can make it.”

“Then let’s stop arguing and go,” Jessie says. She leads them away from the military site, sidearm drawn, and holds her hand up at the first corner for them to wait. Then she gestures them forward, and they creep away, out of sight of the soldiers and the drones.

All goes well, and Tifa lets herself heave a sigh of relief as they make it back to the base of the shattered rooftops, where the drones are few and far between. They separate, going three ways looking for the best path to climb up on this side. Aerith goes along one side that’s steeply angled, while Jessie takes the perpendicular side of the building, looking for a stairwell or something that can get them up faster. Tifa goes into an alley, but she barely has time to check around before there’s a shot fired, and a yell. A woman screams and is silenced.

Tifa’s whole world crushes down around her as she sprints out of the alley, towards the sound. She bumps into Aerith on the way, whose staff is held at the ready, and they round the corner together to find Jessie standing over a dead Shinra soldier, the barrel of her sidearm lightly smoking.

“Jessie!” Tifa hisses, trying to get her attention. The woman spins, gun coming up, but she drops it back down when she sees it’s Tifa and Aerith.

“She came outta nowhere! Just as surprised to see me as I was her.” She jogs over to Tifa and Aerith, panting and almost hyperventilating. “She drew on me–I had to–”

“No one’s blaming you. You did what you had to do. Did you see anyone else?” Tifa asks. They really don’t have time to litigate Jessie’s feelings now that a gunshot has been fired.

“What?” Jessie asks, dumbfounded. “Sorry, I’ve never shot someone just point-blank like that.” She thinks for a moment. “No. I don’t think I saw anyone else.” A siren sounds, though. Of course someone heard the gunshot.

“Doesn’t matter. Move!” Tifa grabs both women by the wrists and yanks them back towards the alley. Over the rooftops is no longer an option. Too open if they get sighted by a drone.

The stealth mission just became a desperate chase.

Notes:

Who's ready for a chase and boss fight? Cause you're getting one, coming up soon!

Chapter 17: Loss

Summary:

Tifa, Aerith, and Jessie make a desperate escape on the Sector 7 ruins. A choice is made. A secret revealed.

Notes:

(See the end of the chapter for notes.)

Chapter Text

They dip inside a building just as some aerial soldier, like if a unicycle was equipped with a helicopter blade, rises up over some ruins. Tifa doesn’t know if it spotted them.

“Shit! That’s like the ones we fought at the pillar,” Jessie says as they rush inside the alley’s cover, and dart into a broken building. Inside, the floors are cratered, the walls are broken, the ceilings mere suggestions.

Aerith says, already panting from the exertion, “If you have to leave me behind, do it. They won’t hurt me if I tell them who I am.”

“Not happening,” Tifa growls. When Aerith glances at her curiously, with the hint of a smile on her sweating face, Tifa shakes her head. “You know the infiltration plan. Can’t risk it.”

“Oh.” That deflates her a little. It’s not the only reason, Tifa wants to shout, but that’s a distraction they can’t handle right now. “Okay.”

“Keep moving. You two can provide cover fire if one of those flying guys finds us. I’ll handle anyone on the ground.”

They nod and break into a jog, the fastest pace they can maintain safely in the dark interiors of these ruined spaces.

Jessie says, hopping over a splintered desk, “We shouldn’t go on adventures together anymore.”

“Oh yeah?” Aerith asks between huffs and puffs.

“Keep getting into impossible situations.”

“And we’re still here!” Tifa says, helping Aerith down from the desk that Jessie hopped over. “Seems like we make a good team to me.”

“Carbuncle’s own luck?” Aerith asks, smirking.

“Something like that.”

They hear the flying soldier before they see him. He comes barreling down on them from above, spraying automatic rifle fire at any movement he sees. Fortunately there’s an interior wall they dive behind as rounds pepper the drywall above them, creating holes but missing the women.

“Problem,” Jessie says, nodding her head towards the room they’ve taken cover inside. There’s not another exit, even with the destruction all around them. Tifa waits for the rifle to stop firing, and motions to them for cover fire.

She stands up and charges at another wall that now has holes in it from the rifle fire, and jump kicks it just as an explosion of gunfire and ice magic erupts behind her. The soldier screams as he drops to the ground, and his helicopter blade crashes into him, finishing the job in gruesome fashion.

Her kick is prefaced by a torrent of wind, which hits the barrier of the wall before her foot connects, shredding the wall to pieces. She flies through the tattered remnants of drywall out the other side, and drops into a crouch while sneezing from drywall dust and shaking her head to clear it away.

“Made an exit!” she calls back, but she could have spared the words as both Jessie and Aerith come tumbling out of it just as an explosion rips the room apart. Tifa throws her hands up to block the worst of it, and gets knocked back from the concussive force, but the wind materia cushions her fall a bit. She coughs while the other two women help her up.

Tifa says to Aerith, “You were right. I like what this materia does in my knuckles.”

“Told you!” They share a brief grin, but the gunfire and explosion has attracted even more attention. They run off, exiting this ruined building and crossing a shattered street to another one on the route back to the slums. This time a real helicopter blasts overhead, with a laser rifle mounted on its side. At this rate, they’re definitely not going to escape unscathed or unseen.

The laser rifle charges up, and fires just as Aerith trips in her haste to cross this broken street. Tifa yells, “No!” but the laser beam shoots through the space Aerith just occupied, eating away the street just beyond her. 

“What just happened?” Aerith asks, voice quivering. Tifa yanks her to her feet and they keep moving. That rifle isn’t going to take long to charge for another shot, and they need to get into cover again while they figure out what to do.

“You’re basically tripping over your own grave!” Jessie calls helpfully, waving them over to a shattered storefront. They gladly duck inside just as the laser rifle fires again. The whole building shudders from the section of wall that the laser ate through. They can’t stay here long.

“I don’t suppose your pistol is going to be useful here, huh?” Tifa confirms, and Jessie shakes her head. 

“Sorry.”

Something rumbles above the ruins of Sector 7, a deep hum from something much faster than the helicopter’s blades. It soars in and drops to the street, only it doesn’t quite touch down with its large drill underneath. It’s almost a teardrop shape, with a giant, red, mechanical eye darting every which way. It has three different propeller blades above it, sticking out at odd angles, and enough firepower sticking out of its sides that Tifa knows they’re in very serious trouble now.

“We can’t stay in this building with that on the street, and we can’t stay in the street with that laser rifle in the sky.”

Jessie nods. “That’s a Valkyrie. We’re gonna have a damn hard time with it by itself, let alone the helicopter.”

“Weaknesses?” Aerith asks, digging in her pack for materia.

“It’s a robot, so that fancy lightning materia ought to help.”

Aerith nods, changing her fire out for lightning, so that she has lightning and ice in her staff, and a purple materia in her bangle. “What’s the purple one do?” Tifa asks. Aerith hands over the fire materia to Tifa, since she never got around to using it, and Tifa tosses it in with the others.

“Wedge said it makes you lucky.” She grins. “I kinda think it has been.”

Tifa agrees with that. If that’s what it does, no wonder Aerith keeps avoiding harm by the skin of her teeth.

Jessie says, “Okay, if we want to survive this, we need to stop that helicopter.”

“I’d settle for its laser rifle being gone,” Tifa says.

“Well, unless you can get up there, I don’t think that’s an option. All or nothing.”

Tifa considers. Her wind materia has proven damn useful. “If I can get to the roof, I can probably do it.”

“Sounds like suicide,” Aerith says.

“Sounds like our only option,” Tifa replies. “Jessie, spare a grenade?”

“Anything for our Donna Lockhart,” Jessie says, pulling one of her unmarked grenades from her bandolier and tossing it over. “Standard issue shrapnel variety. Ought to really mess some stuff up even if you miss a bit.”

Tifa holds it tight, taking her rope and satchel off before handing them over to Jessie. Tifa needs mobility right now.

“Okay, I’m gonna find my way to the roof. You two, wait here if you can. In sixty seconds, run out of the building. I’m going to need the distraction and you better hope your luck holds, Carbuncle.”

“This also sounds like suicide!” Aerith calls to Tifa as she sprints to the back of the store. 

It won’t be, though. They’ve got this.

Tifa finds a stairwell in the back of the shop that leads to an apartment on the second floor, but the stairwell is gutted, and she has to climb it carefully. Time drains away as she gets to the second floor, and looks for a skylight or ladder or something that leads to the roof. The building shudders again from the impact of another laser shot. From a busted window, Tifa sees the Valkyrie on the ground spin from its searching and take aim with a missile battery attached to its side. Fortunately, the missiles hit the building next to them, but it starts to rumble dangerously. It collapses while Tifa finds a hole in the ceiling and prepares to jump out.

Aerith and Jessie yell from below and charge at the Valkyrie, while Tifa takes a running leap, far overshooting the distance because of her wind-enhanced legs. As she tumbles and spins in the air, she gets a momentary glimpse of the street and sees that this fight can’t last very long, as more soldiers are forming up and coming their way. Aerith and Jessie scatter from a flamethrower on the Valkyrie while firing indiscriminately with gun and magic, drawing the attention of the helicopter and the Valkyrie. The helicopter is maybe fifteen feet higher than the rooftop. Too high, surely. Tifa twists her body and lands in a crouch. The building responds in kind, and begins to collapse under her. 

Like a sprinter on the starting line, she bolts forward, racing the structural integrity of an already ruined building. Her steps are light, airy, and she pushes off as hard as she can with a monumental leap at the edge of the building.

She shoots out much farther and higher than a normal jump would carry her, and her stomach lifts with her. The soldier manning the laser rifle catches sight of her, and draws down on her with a charging laser shot.

Despite her wind-augmented body, Tifa isn’t going to make the jump, anyway, so she pulls the pin on the grenade. The rifle spools up to fire on her completely vulnerable body, and Tifa feels sudden resistance under her feet. She concentrates on that, kicks at spheres of ice under her. Her Carbuncle is giving support from the ground. Normally it wouldn’t matter, but with Tifa’s wind-augmented steps, she can push off the orbs as if she was on the ground. 

The rifle fires just as she does this, and she arcs up suddenly. The laser misses her by centimeters and she feels the plasma burn below her. The soldier on the rifle looks as surprised as Tifa is, but Tifa’s new trajectory brings her to the bottom of it. She grabs the landing skid with one hand and hangs on for dear life. 

She’s got one shot at this with the grenade now that the pin is pulled. The soldier stops using the laser rifle and pulls his automatic rifle from his back, aims down at her on the rail and shoots indiscriminately. Tifa doesn’t wait, though. She’s already swinging back and leaps forward, her one arm straining to hold her whole weight. She grabs the other rail, smoothly transitioning into a full swing, straight as an arrow until she rotates up and around.

She catches a brief image of Jessie and Aerith on the ground, trading grenade and ice volleys with the Valkyrie. The grenade explodes while the Valkyrie spins and shoots; Jessie dives for cover. A ball of ice slams into its back, and it spins again, spouting missiles. They’re hurting it, but barely. 

Tifa lets go as her arc takes her forward, into the open side of the helicopter, and the soldier spins to shoot her, but it’s too late for him. Her boots connect with his chest, and wind-augmented force cracks his breastplate, and the bone beneath from the sound. His body crumples inwards as he flies out the other door, crunching against the laser rifle before he flips and sails away with the rifle tangled up in his limbs. He hits the ruins of the building as Tifa grabs for some netting in the helicopter to stop her forward progress.

The pilot cries out when he realizes what’s going on, pulling a sidearm to shoot at her, but Tifa acts quickly. She spin-kicks the gun from his hand, shattering bones, and grabs for his vest while he clutches his hand to himself.

She shoves the grenade down his vest, releasing the lever on its side, starting the bare few seconds she has before it explodes. The moment she releases the grenade, she realizes the great error she’s made. She’s easily sixty feet in the air now, in a very soon-to-be-exploded helicopter.

She chops the man’s neck for good measure, just in case he fishes the grenade out fast enough, and he coughs and splutters as she throws herself out of the helicopter. Heat and concussive force blast outwards from the helicopter, and she gets slammed away from it even more than she already was, suffering bits of shrapnel in her arms and back as she pinwheels uncontrollably away. She’s spinning and screaming and no amount of kicking or punching the air is slowing her descent. 

Below, Jessie and Aerith scramble in their fight against the Valkyrie. Tifa catches only glimpses of them as she plummets. If they can escape because of her sacrifice, Tifa guesses it was worth it. They can carry on the mission. There’s an odd amount of peace in her heart at the thought. That she would die the way Cloud did, falling from a great height. At least she would complete her mission. She could lay down her burdens and anger, for a friend. For a girl who could have been more.

Ice suddenly shoots under Tifa in a gradual slope, like a slide, and Tifa braces for the impact. She hits and bounces once, then catches herself. Ice breaks but doesn’t shatter, and she spins so that her boots hit it next time. She shuffles backwards, slowing her descent with the aid of wind-augmented limbs, and sees an opportunity. Aerith saved her, yes, but she also twisted this ice slide so that Tifa races down to the Valkyrie.

They have to finish this fight quickly, and thanks to Aerith, they can. Thanks to Jessie and Aerith, Tifa was able to take care of the helicopter.

Tifa crouches and lets the ice slide carry her down, leaning into the curve and concentrating on her wind materia. The Valkyrie’s large robotic eye focuses on Jessie, who throws some kind of voltage grenade at its backside, shocking it and causing its missile battery to explode with the next barrage. Aerith spins with her staff, weaving a complicated magical arc of lightning as well. The crackling bolt shunts the Valkyrie to the side, directly into Tifa’s path. The lightning attack from Aerith holds it in place, momentarily confused. It spins a barrel into place directly at Aerith.

Tifa screams her anger and fury as she nearly reaches the end of the slide. Fire erupts from the barrel of the Valkyrie’s gun, bearing down on Aerith, but Tifa leaps as hard as she can at the end. With a force that will almost definitely crush her body against this metal monstrosity, Tifa yells and holds both fists out in front of her, spinning like a tornado. The wind whips so fast around her and in front of her that she can’t see what’s happening, but she feels steel and circuitry part before her. Some of it shreds her arms as she flies through the center of this strange military drone, but she doesn’t fight it. She crumples it and shreds it with her wind-augmented fists, and suddenly she flies out the other side, tumbling into a roll, covered in oil, wires, and cuts. The Valkyrie’s eye crumples to the ground in front of her.

Her whole body stings as she hits rough ground and bounces to a stop.

The Valkyrie shrieks, its drill spools up wildly under it, and the hole Tifa created right through its robotic eye spins rapidly around. Its AI gives up the ghost, and its propeller blades stop one at a time, dropping it to the ground in a solid kthunk . The drill embeds in concrete below it, and stops spinning.

Silence falls over them again, minus the sounds of the burning helicopter that crash-landed nearby, and the distant-but-coming-closer calls of the Shinra military.

In the moment, though, Tifa can only think of one thing. Did Aerith get burned?

She shoots up from the ground, her entire body groaning and complaining, and looks around. Doesn’t see Aerith at first.

“Aerith! You okay?” 

Jessie pops out from behind the Valkyrie, shaking her head. “I lost her after that insane stunt you just pulled.”

“Aerith!” Tifa calls again. Panic begins to set in. Not Aerith. Please, not her.

A hand rises above a scorched car. Delicate and soot-streaked. Aerith coughs, and gives them an okay gesture from behind the vehicle.

Tifa dashes over to her, scared to death what she’s going to find. And behind the car, singed but otherwise unharmed, is Aerith. Still coughing, but alive. Tifa rushes over to her and drops to her knees, pulls Aerith into a hug. All the pretense of not worrying about her or caring about her doesn’t matter at this moment. She’s just so relieved that Aerith is alive. Shaking arms wrap around Tifa and soothe her. Aerith gave her the best gift of all by saving her life with that ice slide. Clarity. Perspective.

When you almost die, you remember what it means to truly live. To fight. To love.

“I’m good, Donna Lockhart,” Aerith manages between coughs. “Might need an oxygen line from the fumes of that flamethrower, but I’m good.”

Tifa finally lets her go. She’s fine. Everything is going to be okay. Some kind of dam has broken inside her. She stares into Aerith’s eyes, and Aerith stares back, eyes dancing their focus between Tifa’s left and right eyes, and glancing down to her lips before coming back up.

Aerith whispers, “I hate to ruin the moment, but–”

Tifa coughs and stands. “No time for the big romantic gesture.” She holds her hand out to Aerith, though, and Aerith takes it, letting herself be pulled up and into Tifa’s embrace.

Jessie calls over from the Valkyrie. “Hey, this thing’s still twitching, and the soldiers are coming. We should probably go!”

Tifa glances at Jessie, chagrined, and back to Aerith. Aerith smiles, though. “I don’t need some sweeping admission during a moment of weakness.”

Tifa grins. “You might deserve one, though.”

Aerith opens her mouth to respond, no doubt with something quippy and sarcastic, but Tifa leans forward, lips meeting Aerith’s. They’re both surprised, but their tongues entwine as if it’s the most natural thing in the world. As if they’ve kissed a thousand times before. Tifa’s shoulders drop, and her whole body tension releases. Aerith relaxes into Tifa, arms going around her waist. There is no pain. There is no soreness. There is only Aerith.

Her breath on Tifa’s cheek is warm, inviting. They could stay like this forever. 

But Aerith pushes back on her slightly. They break the contact, but barely. Tifa breathes Aerith in, nose to nose, a dreamy smile on Aerith’s lips. Tifa could live her entire life making those lips quirk up in that smile, and it would be a life well-lived.

“I think that makes you a liar, Donna Lockhart,” Aerith whispers. 

“I did just save you from getting barbecued.”

Jessie’s voice interrupts their playful banter. “Hey! I’m happy you two idiots got over yourselves, but we gotta go, now!”

Tifa glances back again. Of course Jessie is right. She always is. But what Tifa expects to see is soldiers in the distance. What she sees instead is the drill on the Valkyrie struggling to spin. The robot is down for the count, but its drill apparatus keeps trying to operate.

Suddenly it kicks into gear, shredding concrete and digging into the road below it. It drags itself along the drill path it creates, digging deeper. The whole area shudders with the disruption. Something much worse than collapsing buildings is happening now.

“Luck’s run out,” Tifa says, grabbing Aerith’s hand and locking fingers with her. “Let’s go, Jessie!”

“Don’t act like I haven’t been saying it for the last minute, Donna Lockhart!” Jessie calls from behind them. They run as the ground shakes and the Valkyrie drills haphazardly around. It snaps something in the section of road they’re on, and the whole thing tilts, begins to slide with them on it.

“What the hell?” Aerith shouts. They climbed up all of this, and now it looks like the whole thing is coming down again. Tifa can’t even begin to think about anyone who might be in the way of their rapid descent, as she clutches Aerith to her, looking for something, anything, to cling to. Jessie catches up to them and they run even as the chunk of street breaks further apart under them. Only now they run back to the top, struggling against sliding rubble and broken chunks of concrete. 

Hand in hand, Tifa thinks stupidly of the slide down the hole to the underground lab. If they die now, it will feel like wasted time. When Tifa finally admits to herself that she likes Aerith and takes that step, only to have her ripped away? Life has been cruel, but could it possibly be that cruel? Of course it could, she thinks, gripping Aerith’s hand tighter. Shinra can take everything away without even blinking. 

They reach the top of the sliding debris, and Tifa helps Aerith over top of it, so that she straddles the broken chunk of road as it falls. Jessie hops up onto it, and Tifa follows. They’re moving at a good pace, but there’s a sheer dropoff into Sector 6 coming and they can’t still be riding this thing when it slides off the edge or they really will die. 

“I’ve got an idea, but it’s gonna take both of us,” Aerith shouts, pointing at Tifa.

“Whatever, let’s just do it!” Tifa shouts back.

“Okay, but maybe we should save ourselves first?” Aerith asks, smirking.

Jessie guffaws next to them and Tifa glares. Aerith continues, “Okay, okay. When I say jump, you jump. You trust me, right?”

They both nod at Aerith. Trust is hard-won, but they’ve lived through crazier thanks to her. “What am I supposed to do?” Tifa asks.

“Slow us down with wind!”

Tifa nods. She has no idea what’s coming, or how she needs to employ the wind materia, but she trusts Aerith.

The woman points her staff at the ground behind them, and that sheet of ice shoots out of it, forming a protective layer over the ruins, thick and smooth, but barely wide enough for all of them. Before Tifa can protest, Aerith shouts, “Jump!” and they all push off with their arms, dropping a few feet to the slick surface. It’s cold and provides no handholds or methods of stopping, but at least it’s not the rumbling, dangerous ride of before.

They collide together into a dogpile and slide uncontrolled behind this avalanche of steel and concrete. Aerith creates their ice slide as fast as she can, and Tifa realizes something. They’re moving faster than the rubble in front of them now. 

Tifa holds out her hand, concentrating on the wind materia. If she can create a buffet of air in front of them, it should slow them down.

She’s still not great at manifesting the magic like Aerith does, but she has to do this. If they slide over the cliff after this rubble, it’s very unlikely Aerith can save them from a couple hundred foot drop.

So she concentrates, pushing with all her mental energy at the space in front of her. The wind materia, like the fire materia, just wants to do what it was designed for. It wants to be used. She urges it to create a vortex in front of her. The magic responds, but so does her body. It feels like ice and fire slide across her, and her stomach sours. She’s pretty sure she’s going to throw up trying to channel this magic for some reason. It feels oddly like the moments after she would drink one of those SOLDIER restoratives. 

She does manage to slow them a bit, so that the rubble and ruin in front of them outpaces them, and then it all suddenly silences. The chunk of street slides over the precipice and glides down to the Sector 6 ruins below. Aerith screams, “Now!” and arcs her staff upwards in front of them, so that when they reach the bottom, they will slide upwards, like one of those halfpipes for snowboarders Tifa’s seen on TV. It’s not perfect, though, and it looks like it’s going to shoot them over the chasm.

Tifa mutters, “To hell with casting spells,” and throws her arms out in front of her in a palms-open technique designed to knock the wind out of an opponent by hitting them squarely in the solar plexus. The wind shoots out of her palms skyward, pushing her back like a rocket. Aerith, already clutching her now that she stopped casting, slows with her. Jessie grabs for Tifa as she slides past uncontrolled, and manages to hook her ankle. Their combined dragging weight trying to slide into the ramp is almost too much for Tifa’s tornado palm technique to slow, but at last, they come to a stop just before they would ramp up. They all collapse, breathing heavily, and Tifa lets the force of her tornado palm dissipate lest it push her back the other direction. 

“Seriously never going on an adventure with you two again,” Jessie jokes.

Aerith sits up, hair a bedragged mess that not even her braid can do anything about, and smiles. “We keep things interesting, don’t we, Donna Lockhart?”

Tifa raises a hand to Aerith’s face, cups it in her palm. She smiles back at this woman, this irritating, beautiful, woman. “You can call me Tifa.”

“Damn right I can.”

Jessie clears her throat. They both glare at her, but she shrugs. “Stop trying to make out in dangerous places, I don’t know what to tell you.”

Aerith scoffs playfully. “Fine. We should probably keep going, though, huh? Those soldiers can’t be too far behind, and we’re awfully in the open.”

Tifa nods, sitting up as well. The sun is now dangerously close to setting, so they better move quickly. “Jessie, you know how to get back? We were kind of following the ninja.”

“Hope she’s okay,” Aerith says.

“I’m sure she’s fine,” Jessie responds, standing and looking around. “Okay, yeah, I think we can make it down if we go over here. At least get into cover and put us a little closer to Wall Market.”

Tifa shakes her head. “We should probably go back to Aerith’s house first. I think I can trust Leslie for one whole day, but we need to let the others know we’re safe, and check to see if Yuffie comes back. Also, we should probably check to see if Yuffie has been compromised and gives away your house.”

“She wouldn’t,” Aerith says.

“We don’t really know her yet. And Shinra has a dark history and no scruples. They’ll torture it out of her if she does get caught. Probably best to go back and check in.”

Aerith nods, worried now. “I guess I didn’t think about that.”

Jessie hands back over Tifa’s satchel from before and Tifa slings it over her shoulder once more. There’s red materia in there, and that weird gray one. Questions for later, when they’re safe and sound. They follow Jessie, and it takes some time, but eventually, the sun sets completely over the upper plate, and they drop into the Sector 6 slums without being seen. They’re hurt, and dirty again, but nothing an orb of curative materia and a shower won’t fix. They make it back down without getting caught, and all heave a giant sigh of relief as they head back towards Sector 5.

Jessie tries her comms, and after a minute of static, she shrugs. “Guess we need to establish some new relays since repairing the old ones keeps failing.”

“We did send a bunch of rubble into Sector 6,” Tifa reminds her. “Who knows what kinds of problems that caused.”

“Right.” Jessie’s shoulders slump and she says, “I’m sorry you got dragged into my stuff.”

Tifa shakes her head. “Hey, none of that. I wish you’d told us before you went and did it, but it’s the kind of thing that needs to be done. Goodbyes are hard, not getting them is harder.” She thinks of her mother. Of all of Nibelheim. Of Cloud. Of all the people in Sector 7. Yes, goodbyes are hard, but losing them in the first place is harder.

Jessie nods, a sad smile on her face. “It was nice to say goodbye. I wish I could have found Mom’s body.”

Aerith says, “Was your mother’s name… Roslin?”

Jessie gasps, hand to her chest. “How–how did you know that?”

Aerith shakes her head. “I… I have–”

Tifa interrupts, “A sense about these things?”

Aerith nods. “I suppose I should really tell you a thing or two about that, huh?” She sighs, closing her eyes briefly as they walk. She glances around, sees that no one is close enough, and nods again. 

She says, “I can hear the voices of the dead sometimes.”

Jessie’s eyes go wide. “Like those ghosts in the underground lab?”

“Not quite like that. That was… that was unique. I can hear them on the wind. Your mother came to me while we were at your house. She whispered that it’s okay. That she’s going to be with Rowan now, and that you’ve always made them so proud.”

Jessie’s eyes well with tears. “You… you actually heard her?”

Aerith nods again. “She’s going back to the Lifestream. Most of the souls lost in Platefall are, too. Some stayed behind.”

“Some?”

“Some are angry, or haven’t been able to tell their loved ones goodbye. They’ll go before too long, though. It takes a great anchor to hold a spirit, and with Hades dimmed, nothing like that exists here now.”

“Why do you hear the voices of the dead? Or the voice of the planet?” Tifa asks. 

“Because I’m also of the planet.”

Jessie shakes her head, wiping her tears. “I don’t get it.”

Of the planet. That’s a very specific phrase that pings Tifa’s memory. “The Ancients are of the planet,” Tifa whispers, quoting a storybook fable Barret would read to Marlene.

“That’s right. The Cetra.”

Jessie’s eyes go wide again. “What?”

“I’m not quite human,” Aerith answers.

The silence fills out between the three women. So many things make sense, suddenly. Her affinity with materia, and magic. Her connection to the Lifestream. Those wraiths that haunt her sometimes. All weird things with no explanation. The explanation is: Aerith Gainsborough is Cetran.

Tifa says, “That’s why Shinra had a babysitter on you. And why the Turks are after you. They know.”

Aerith nods. “I got away from them, but they never stopped keeping tabs. It was strange. So long as they knew where I was, they seemed happy to leave me alone. Until recently. Something’s changed. They want me back.”

“To experiment on?” Tifa asks. Her fists clench at the thought. 

“Likely. They experimented on me and my mother a lot until–until we escaped.”

“This is a lot to take in, Aerith,” Tifa says. “It changes things.”

“It doesn’t really. I wasn’t going on the mission with you, anyway. I can support from afar.”

“No. If you’re a Cetra, if you’re truly one of the Ancients, then it’s more important than ever that you stay alive, and safe. Shinra wants you, and we don’t let Shinra have what it wants.”

Aerith smiles. “My knight in shining fisticuffs.”

Tifa blushes a bit at that. 

“Best not to tell anyone else this,” Jessie says, “right?”

“Probably not for the time being,” Aerith agrees. “I had to tell you, though. It wouldn’t be right to kiss and not tell, in this case.”

“About that–” Jessie starts, but Tifa cuts her off.

“None of your business.”

“Aw, come on. I practically played matchmaker for you.”

Tifa says, “Says the woman who flat out denied it yesterday.”

Aerith grins, though. “Yuffie was rooting for us, too, up on the plate ruins.”

“I knew I liked that girl. But fine.” Jessie huffs good-naturedly. “What if I… run ahead? Let them know we’re okay, and give you two some privacy.”

Tifa nods, swallowing hard. Privacy with Aerith suddenly seems daunting. Aerith only grins, looping her fingers into Tifa’s once more.

“Then I’ll see you in a bit!” Jessie hugs them both and jogs off into the night. 

They walk in silence for a while. Awkward silence. Aerith carries her staff behind her back, walking one foot in front of the other. She glances once at Tifa, and catches Tifa watching her. She averts her gaze, and her face scrunches up in barely-contained laughter. “This is so silly. Why did it have to get weird?”

Tifa runs a hand through the long side of her hair and pushes it behind her ear. She’s self-conscious in front of Aerith, after that unexpected display of affection on the upper plate’s ruins. She doesn’t answer.

Aerith sidles up close, nudges Tifa’s shoulder with her own. “Come on, Donna Lockhart. Don’t make me drag another confession out of you.”

“I’m not–” Tifa shrugs her shoulders, digging her hands into the pockets of her slacks. “It was easier when we were in immediate danger. When I thought I was going to lose you.”

“All that does is tell you what you care about. All this posturing, and hiding behind your vengeance, and looking oh so good in a suit. You like me, Tifa Lockhart.” Aerith taps Tifa’s nose with a finger, making a little boop   noise as she does. Tifa’s head turns away from that smiling, cheerful, beautiful face. Those emerald green eyes that see everything, and impolitely ask for more. 

Aerith skips forward while Tifa’s head is turned. They enter the slums of Sector 5, and are skirting the outside edge. Jessie would have gotten back a while ago and reported in, so there’s no hurry.

Tifa follows the flower girl’s skipping gait, increasing her own pace so Aerith doesn’t get too far ahead. Aerith glances back occasionally, grinning, and she hums pleasantly as they pass through her town. Aerith smiles at her friends and neighbors; makes brief conversation with elders and orphans alike; Tifa knows some of them from Sector 7, she realizes, but none of them seem to recognize her in her dusty, tattered mob boss getup. Just as well.

Aerith is a bright, cheerful beacon in the darkness. She makes friends and allies wherever she goes. She could probably charm her way into anyone’s pants if she wanted; why has she chosen Tifa as the object of her affection? Why is this towering bastion of kindness and sarcasm gunning for her? It makes no sense to Tifa. She’s just a bartender with a grudge. A scared little girl playing pretend. 

What does an Ancient want with some boring old human girl? Tifa shakes her head as they pass beyond the orphanage and old folks’ home, into the tunnel that leads to her sanctuary. Halfway down the tunnel Aerith stops, turns to the busted railing looking out over the darkened slums, and waits. Tifa joins her there, walking beyond her and stepping to the railing on Aerith’s left. 

Aerith sighs heavily. “It’s hard being positive and cheerful like that all the time.”

“Not just your usual disposition?”

Aerith’s lips turn up into a slight grin. “I suppose it probably is my usual disposition. When you see all the beauty in the world, you tend to have a kind of beatific outlook, I guess. Everything grows into a flower eventually.”

Tifa doesn’t know what to say to that, so she chooses sarcasm. “Even curmudgeonly mob bosses?”

“Especially those.” Her grin fades, though, and she looks down at the pool of moonlight in a clearing near her house. “There’s something else you should know, about the Cetra.”

Oh no. There’s always another shoe that drops. In this life, nothing good happens without something bad following it.

“What? Do you turn into a butterfly or something?”

Aerith doesn’t answer, just reaches up to her neck like she swats at a mosquito. She stares at her hand for a moment, and Tifa scoffs. “Okay, I was joking, but your silence isn’t reassuring.”

Aerith suddenly loses her balance, dropping backwards. Tifa catches her and supports her, confused. At first she thinks Aerith must have just overexerted herself; after all, this woman cured people to the point of passing out earlier today and then they had a desperate fight and flight. 

Then she hears it. The rapid thump of racing boots behind her. Her back is to the Sector 5 slums. Someone is coming for her. Did Corneo finally muster an army? Did Palmer recognize her and send a hit squad?

But as she spins, Aerith in her arms, a man she doesn’t recognize sprints out of the shadows, an electric baton against his shoulder. His black suit and bad attitude tell her everything she needs to know, though. This is a Turk. And moreover, he’s pretty, sure of himself, and has a shock of brilliant red hair on his head. This is Reno, the Turk who came for Aerith the day that Cloud died. 

So not after Tifa after all. They’re after the Ancient. Aerith. Tifa has to protect her. Get her to safety. They’re so close to the house, just another thirty feet before they round the corner. If she yells, they’ll probably hear her. Reno is easily twenty feet away; she’s got time to warn them, to get help.

Only she suddenly doesn’t. Tifa’s mouth opens to yell, but Reno suddenly blasts her in the chest with a charging elbow. He closed the distance in a split second! She collapses back, struggling to breathe, and Aerith drops from her arms. The woman has not passed out yet, but she’s getting there.

Tifa tries to lift Aerith from the ground, but Aerith pushes her off with the last of her strength. “You have to let me go,” she whispers.

Tifa tries to yell back at her, fighting her own fatigue and shortness of breath. She can’t even whisper back.

Reno makes a tsk tsk   sound at them. “Listen to your planet bitch, stranger. This isn’t your fight. Or we’ll have to go for the little one. What was her name? Marlene?”

What’s Marlene got to do with any of this? Tifa glances at Aerith, who has fully fainted now. Not like this. Not when they’ve just accepted each other.

“You leave us alone,” Tifa manages. She gets a couple of halting breaths inside her, and opens her mouth to yell again. She’s ready for it this time, though. Reno rushes her, moving faster than her eye can track. She throws herself backwards, and trips over something previously unseen in the darkened path.

She topples to the ground and her eyes adjust to the unconscious form of Jessie in front of her. She’s breathing, but she’s definitely been knocked out like they did to Aerith. Tifa gets her feet under her, ready to sprint back towards Reno, who kneels down beside Aerith, checking her unconscious body.

More boots come from behind her again, this time from the tall grasses in Aerith’s flower field. It’s an ambush, and this Shinra lieutenant in red rushes forward as silently as she’s able to, but Tifa hears it and spins in place. The woman makes a tiny whoa-oof   sound as Tifa uses her momentum to throw her to the side, banging against the rusted metal railing.

She knows better than to try and yell. Reno is too fast and she won’t manage it. But she can still make some damn noise. She rushes Reno and throws a haymaker at his smug face, but he easily dodges the wind-augmented strike, smacking her across the back of the head with the baton for good measure. She drops to a knee behind him, vision going gray and hazy, but brings her fist up for an uppercut. The Shinra lieutenant comes from the side, though, and knees her in the chest, sucking all the air from her lungs again. Tifa collapses to the ground in front of this duo, fighting with every last ounce of her strength to draw breath, to fight back. She was so focused on rescuing Aerith that she messed up.

Reno ignores her now. This fight is over. He goes over to Aerith, lifts her unconscious body like a sack of potatoes, and tosses her over his shoulder. “We’re done here, Alanna.”

“It’s Elena, si–Reno.”

“Whatever. You’re just lucky they came back tonight. I cannot believe you lost a chocobo carriage in the crowd today.”

“Have you seen those crowds? There’s hundreds of people milling around in the middle of the day.”

“Excuses,” Reno says, walking past Tifa. She reaches for his leg, but Reno lazily swats Tifa with his shock baton, driving all thought from her mind as electricity courses through her. There is only pain and loss in this moment. In this world. This unjust, cruel fucking world.

The lieutenant, Elena, asks, “What are we doing with these two?”

“They’re gonna be down for a while. We’ll be long gone. Leave her. It’s funnier that way.”

“Funnier?” Elena repeats.

“Yeah, she’ll wake up knowing she couldn’t do anything for her precious girlfriend, and knowing if she does anything about it later, we’re the fucking Turks and no one fucks with us for long.”

“Right.” Elena glances down at Tifa. Tifa’s vision begins to fade. She can’t see the woman’s face, but there’s a shock of blonde hair sticking out from under the goggles and mask. Her mouth is a thin line of disapproval. A Turk but not? A new recruit? Her vision dims and her brain goes foggy from electrocution. 

“You’re not getting away with this,” Tifa manages, reaching for Aerith to no avail.

Reno says, “Oh, sure we are. I don’t know what your little band of misfits is up to in there, but we know about the little girl, that she’s special. She’s like your princess here. If you want us coming for her, too, you’ll put up a fight.”

Not Marlene. Barret would never forgive her. Tifa quits struggling. Better if they think she’s weak now. They won’t see her coming later when it really matters. When she finds Aerith and beats the everloving shit out of everyone who helped abduct her. 

Godsdamned Shinra. It always comes back to them.

Aerith is mine. Donna Lockhart keeps what is hers, and scorches the earth if someone denies that.

Her eyes close to Aerith being carried away by Reno and Elena.

Notes:

You're welcome slash I'm so sorry.

This is the last chapter for now! In the next update I do, the Resolution, the Plan, the Infiltration. Tifa will not suffer Shinra to take what's hers.

Notes:

Updates whenever I have time to get new chapters written!

You can follow me on Twitter @rick_cook_jr https://twitter.com/rick_cook_jr for updates and noisome fanfare about the ships I like.