[fic] Space Troopers 10/?

[jameva]

I mention going the drabble route and look what happens. *sigh* This thing will never let me rest.

Title: Space Troopers 10/?
Rating: PG-13
Pairings: Cid/Vincent, more or less explicit Cloud/Aerith and any combination Zack, Cloud and Sephiroth. And maybe Aerith. -eeeeeeeeee OT4-
Warnings: AU, some violence, yaoi, maybe smut. AU.
Summary: Space mechanic Cid Highwind was having a wonderfully crappy day when he happened to stumble upon an old Shinra-issued cryogenic pod. His kind heart forbade him not to wake up the poor bastard. His cursing brain knew he was getting into a heap of trouble.
Notes: Almost two years! Aaaaaaaaaaand it's a new record!

Kalm was as tranquil as Cloud remembered. He had been here only a handful of times during his time as a Shinra grunt and while most of those memories were hazy, he could still recall the feeling of the place. Sleepy, slow-paced Kalm, happy to just be and consciously not looking further than that.

The topography of the moon was flat, the fields swept by cold, dry winds. Although the land was slowly changing under the effects of mako energy consumption byproducts, becoming fragile and brittle, the difference was not as startling as on Sector Three and Cloud could still find some peace in it. It had been a long time since he’d felt alone. It was strange, but he’d missed it a little.

Cloud had unearthed a proper sheath for his replacement sword and a set of whet stones and oil in the few Kalm town shops. He set to work at oiling and sharpening his equipment to higher standards. They wouldn’t be able to stay here long before Shinra tracked them down, but for now the mothership seemed content to remain a few systems away.

A hedgehog-like animal poked its head out from behind a faraway bush. Cloud stopped his work and stared back it. The animal seemed happy to just look forward blankly, ears twitching, until a shuffling noise made it duck for cover again.

Cloud knew who it was from the steady footfalls. Tifa stood beside him for a moment before sitting down on the bare ground, leaning back on her hands and stretching her partially healed leg. It was a long time before she spoke.

“Nothing’s been decided yet,” she started quietly. “Most of them are still nursing their drink, mulling over your story.”

His sword was as sharp as he could get it. Cloud double-checked the state of the leather before slipping it in the harness.

“Are you ok?”

This wasn’t a question Cloud was overly fond of. He normally replied with a noncommittal shrug or dismissal, but not with Tifa. She knew him too well and didn’t let him get away with it.

“Hey Strife, you ok?”

“Fine.”

“Obviously. Come on, up we go. Let’s get you patched up so we can keep sparring.”

He shrugged nonetheless, but allowed himself a sigh. “I can feel him in my head.”

Tifa looked askance at him, open and honest, simply waiting.

“It’s like having him looking over my shoulder all the time,” he elaborated, unsure himself of what he was feeling. “It started when I came to in the mothership.”

“Do you think he can also feel you?”

“Perhaps.” A pause. “I was sure he was dead.” His voice was miserable and he didn’t try to hide it.

Tifa folded forward enough to start plucking idly at the grass. She remained silent for a while.

“When he met us –me and Cid--, he said that he would find you. I was a bit too angry to pay more attention, but he sounded really sure.” Tifa smiled humorlessly. “He said he wouldn’t hurt you. And it doesn’t look like he did.”

Cloud considered her words for a moment, mentally poking at the strange sort of link he was sure connected him to the unexpectedly alive General. He stopped quickly. He couldn’t face him.

“That’s what I don’t understand.”

Most of his memories of the Nibelheim incident were not crystal clear, but a few of them were as sharp as if they had happened a few moments ago. The worst of them was Sephiroth striking down Zack before putting Masamune through Cloud’s stomach. His eyes had been mako-cold and entirely empty, a man alive but destroyed.

“None of us do,” Tifa said. “Only Sephiroth knows, I think.”

He’d already reached that conclusion before, but it did not ease the churning in his stomach. He put a hand over the scar on his abdomen. Sephiroth had not held back then. What could have changed this time? They had never been able to extract any clue from Hojo about Sephiroth’s sudden rampage, seeing as they were being experimented on. Could it really have been mako-poisoning? So suddenly? And did it mean he was now cured?

“I have to find Zack,” he said instead, keeping his thoughts to himself.

Tifa inhaled noisily. “We don’t know if he’s even alive.” She reached over and plucked the fire materia from his bracer. It was warm even when deactivated, pulsing with higher levels of magic that Cloud could not use quite yet. Tifa leveled it up against the sky and it seemed to glow faintly, a core of red lost in the green. “Sephiroth, we now know for sure.”

Cloud looked at her in surprise. “You want me to chase after him? And abandon Zack?”

“Us,” she corrected. “And no, I really don’t. But I can’t stop you.”

Cloud shook his head. “Zack—“

“—might be alive or dead.” He flinched a little every time she said it, but she refused to let him forget the possibility. It would hurt him too much otherwise, she said. “Perhaps you’ll find a clue about Zack while going after Sephiroth.”

Knowing their history, it was not stretching logic to assume that they would be linked somehow.

Still . “I don’t know where to find him, either.”

“What about that link you mentioned?”

Reluctantly, afraid of what he might find, Cloud looked more attentively at that heavy, spike-edged shape that was Sephiroth at the back of mind. He couldn’t begin to make heads nor tails from the feeling, but confusion didn’t mean it couldn’t work if he figured this out.

“Maybe,” he finally conceded.

Tifa bumped her shoulder against his and stayed there, rolling the materia in her palms. He could hear the strained smile in her voice. Always so understanding, so supporting. She had already picked him up in pieces and put him back together. He couldn’t ask her to do it again.

“Just be careful,” she said simply. She didn’t bother to clarify.

Now he did shrug, but didn’t jostle her off. “I’m not giving up on Zack.”

“I’ll miss the others, though,” she continued as if he hadn’t spoken. Or rather, like she implied that one course of action did not exclude the other.  “They were fun to be with, even if we were running for our lives.”

“Yeah,” he replied noncommittally, staring at the Kalm landscape.

“That helmet makes you look so serious.”

“I am serious.”

“So am I. C’mon, I’m telling you, I cleared it, you won’t get in trouble.”

“No.”

“Uh-oh, not the tone. Fine. If you won’t come to the surprise, I guess I’ll just have to bring him to you.”

“What are you talking about? Who’s him?”

“Guess you’ll just have to find out! Be right back!”

“Zack--!”

xxx

“And where else do you think I’ll go? My business’ as good as gone and the Highwind’s in pieces. I owe a couple of someones a knuckle sandwich.”

“I’ve been rottin’ here long enough. I’m gonna go crazy if I don’t do somethin’!”

“Your objectives concern me very little, but as long as our trajectories match, I will help you.”

“The UNPP isn’t safe for me right now. Besides, I think I can help.”

“If there’s a party somewhere, then I’m going!”

Cloud’s mixed expression of dismay and affection for his friends was quite comical. He looked more lost as each of his companions found reasons to tag along in his chase after Sephiroth, no matter his protests towards their safety. It really was a hopeless case. Even that cat AI had decided to follow, even though of all of them it had the least motives of following. It made it very suspicious, but as Shinra had not descended upon them yet, Vincent was content to simply keep a sharp eye open.

“What about you, Vincent? You coming?”

The question came from Cid. Vincent looked at the gruff pilot, brimming with pent-up energy now that he had recovered from his ordeal on the mothership. He had lost everything again, his ship, his business, but instead of looking depressed he just seemed to have even more energy, as if a crisis was really what brought out all of his motivation.

Vincent nodded slowly. “I would like to meet Sephiroth.” He could see in the others’ stares that they expected more. “I have unfinished business.” And that was all he was willing to say for now on the matter.

“You guys.” Tifa smiled enough for all of them. “Alright! Let’s figure out our next move then!”

What followed was a busy session of brainstorming, cheerful and energetic. This Barret person had come to meet them, hiding them in a warren of caves dug in a small Kalm hill, right underneath the main shops (and within easy reach of their power lines). Although Vincent could not trust him yet, he thought that he could be a useful asset. Unless so much time had passed that he’d lost all his skills at judging characters, he was fairly certain that Barret might be reliable enough.

“What’re you brooding over now?” Cid prompted as he came to sit beside him, playing with his lit cigarette.

“Brooding?” Vincent couldn’t help but repeat.

“Yeah. Haven’t said a word, but I’m sure you have something or other to say about this plan.”

“Perhaps,” he replied noncommittally. “As long as I get to Sephiroth, I do not care.”

Cid stared fixedly at him, his eyes slightly squinted, as if he was trying to physically see one of Vincent’s secrets on his face. Eventually he growled and huffed.

“Ok, sorry, I ain’t usually one to pry, but I gotta ask. Why?”

Vincent raised a surprised eyebrow. After so much, he hadn’t expected such a straightforward question. He felt compelled to answer, a least a little, but it would only raise questions about matters that he was absolutely not willing to discuss.

Cid took it as a negative sign. He backpedaled, flapping a hand. “It’s just. You’ve been tagging along all this time, and ok, strength in numbers and all, but now? You already knew about Sephiroth when you woke up but that pod was ancient.”

Perceptive. A slight exaggeration on the cryogenic pod’s virtues, or lack thereof, but the fact remained. Vincent was fairly sure that the pilot had no clue how close he was to the truth. That his looks belied his age and that he’d heard of Sephiroth before the General’s birth, before his cryo-sleep. A few calculations using the pod’s model and Sephiroth’s age would reveal some possible overlaps in time.

“Shinra recycled older technology,” he said in lieu of answer.

Cid harrumphed his opinion of that. “You kidding me? The company has a record of liking shiny new toys.”

Vincent shrugged. “I have been asleep for some time.”

The pilot gave him a shrewd look. His grumpy demeanor made it easy to forget that he was a smart man.

“Sure. Throw me a bone, why don’t ya.”

Still reluctant, Vincent recalled the Highwind’s carcass and the injured crew. Me, Cid had said, not we. He dropped his voice.

“I need to speak with him.” He inhaled deeply, because it was going to come up eventually if he stuck around. “About his mother.”

Cid grimaced rather comically, all things considered, which helped to alleviate the acid rising up in his throat, burning.

“Women! Aw shit, I get it. Sorry I asked. Except no, I ain’t, but anyways. I don’t want to mix up in that kind of problem, so. Yeah.”

Bringing forth the memories of Lucrecia, even this briefly, was too painful, so Vincent concentrated on Cid and couldn’t help but smile a little at his babbling. It seemed he was getting all sorts of strange and quite erroneous ideas about this.

“Hey!” His smile earned him knuckles in the bicep, but it was more force than precision and did not do much to hurt. “You’re a creepy-ass bastard, you know?”

“Yes.”

The straightforward answer had the desired effects, but Cid’s spluttering got the others’ attention. Vincent sobered.

“Looks like we missed a joke,” Aerith said cheerfully, peering at each one in turn.

“No, you really didn’t. So, did you kids get your shit straight or not?” Cid answered grumpily, crossing his arms.

“Almost.”

And, strangely, it involved chocobos again.

xxx

Cid wasn’t keen on admitting it, but he had a trained eye for decent bird-flesh and he made sure it stayed that way. He wouldn’t trade a bike for a chocobo, but he could appreciate their mechanics. It was all about balance, really, just like with two-wheeled vehicles. A heavy-chested bird that spent half its energy compensating backwards would never make it big on the race-track.

And that’s why he knew that the stock in the surrounding plains were average at best.

The chocobo jerked against the reins, but Vincent had a good grip on it and wasn’t letting it go. It was small, with a weak chest and missing feathers. The way its spine’s curve was too pronounced, it was unlikely to be able to bear anyone for too long. Cid said so.

Vincent shrugged. “It doesn’t matter. We’re not going to ride them far.”

Cid huffed. “It won’t have an easier time of it.”

Faced with a raised eyebrow, he threw his hands up and began leading his own mount away. “Whatever! We don't have time to be picky. Let’s just get back to the ranch.”

The chocobo ranch was unsurprisingly isolated from everything else on the Kalm moon. It ran a business of renting stalls and caring for other people’s birds. Kalm seemed to enjoy the sport enough that the farmers could scrounge a small living out of it.

It was still surprising to find ranches like this, planets away from the Gold Saucer and in a growing mako-energy world. Considering the installations, Cid smelled smuggling. He was curious as to what.

They were not the first to come back with their birds, but Aerith and Barrett were still in the fields. A ranch hand came to meet them and take the chocobos. His face was openly unimpressed when he took the reins.

“Lucky you’re not going far,” he grumbled, herding the unwilling beasts to the corral.

“You should’ve picked a better place to set up shop, then. The herds are crap,” Cid countered, which was only one more argument supporting his smuggler theory. He followed the ranch hand to see the ones Cloud and Tifa had brought back. He was vindicated when they were hardly better. In fact, looking attentively, Cid was sure the smaller one was blind in one eye. It was a miracle it wasn’t dissolving in something’s guts.

“They used to be better,” the kid mumbled as he coerced the chocobos inside the pen with their brethren.

“Sure,” Cid replied noncommittally, because he was not going there. “Will they manage?”

“Guess so.” The ranch hand walked away as RedXIII came to them. His presence unsettled the chocobos, but he was careful to stay a distance away and as much downwind as he could so they wouldn’t bolt. He’d been unanimously rejected from the hunting expeditions the moment they’d seen his lolling, hungry feline grin.

Aerith had asked where the feathers in his mane came from. Nobody had much liked the answer.

“These are sorry beasts,” RedXIII remarked as he stood beside them, tail swinging in lazy arcs from side to side.

“How would you know?” Cid couldn’t help but ask, immediately knowing that it was a stupid goddamn question and that he didn’t want to know the answer.

RedXIII was far too obliging for that, though. He cocked his head, considering the question way too seriously.

“They’re good for training youngsters. They’re weak and fragile. But their meat is stringy and only good in an emergency.” The feline beast moved closer to the corral, hunching minutely forward as the birds caught his scent and raised their heads nervously, crests twitching. “For a true hunt and proper meal, these would not do. Seek a wild black.”

Yep, most definitively not liking where this was going. Chocobos were not food (unless you’re starving). They were transportation and entertainment.

Vincent, the sneaky bastard, didn’t let the matter drop there.

“Wild black?”

RedXIII nodded. “Rare, fast and vicious. To catch one was to celebrate with the whole tribe.” His stance uncoiled and he lost his predatory edge.

Something was going on here that was more complicated than it seemed. Cid figured it was about time they stopped talking of chocobos and food in the same sentences.

“You ever been to the Gold Saucer?” he asked Vincent instead, because he’d never seen a black chocobo in the wild, but Joey was mighty famous for a reason.

Vincent nodded. “A few times.”

Cid didn’t wait to see if more would be forthcoming. There usually never was more to come. So instead he occupied the silence by trying to imagine gloomy, secretive red-dressed Vincent in the chocobo race crowd, or better yet, outside the holographic boxing pen, swinging around at an imaginary foe. He didn’t bother holding back a snort of laughter.

Vincent raised an eyebrow at him. It was cool on the Kalm fields and he’d tied up his coat (face-flap? Coat-scarf?) up all gazillion buttons, leaving only his eyes visible between that and his hair. It didn’t matter. Between Cloud and now Vincent, Cid was getting a goddamn degree in eyebrow-speech. The guy was laughing at something. Good, so was Cid.

“You any good at the bike races?” he asked, turning away from the coral. Aerith and Barret should be back soon.

“I’ve never had a chance to try them,” was the steady reply.

“Deal. If Sephiroth ever stops by the Gold Saucer for some fun and games after all that rampaging, we’ll race.”

“Very well.” Vincent paused and became very still. He stared forward at the empty fields fixedly before speaking again. “What do you two know of Sephiroth?”

Cid exhaled heavily. Goddamnit. Before he could speak, RedXIII inclined his head, his beads clicking together. He’d forgotten the beast was there.

“Cloud knows more than any of us. For my part, I only know what the news would spread. My hometown isn’t close; we received little and late. But he seemed to be a great warrior and a fearsome tactician, especially for his age. As for the right or wrong of his actions, that’s harder to say.”

“How old is he?”

RedXIII shrugged. “There was never an official statement. Mid twenties, maybe older, I’d guess.”

“Cid?”

The pilot shrugged. “I guess that sounds right. I never worked with him directly. He was a cool customer, though. Maybe even worse than you.” He added the last as a joke, but it didn’t seem to have too much impact.

“We’ll see,” was the simple answer.

Thankfully, Aerith and Barret showed up on the horizon at just about that time, each leading a bird and distracting everyone from the gloom that had just settled. Their birds were in slightly better shape, but not by much. Cid couldn’t quite believe that he was going to put his life in the hands of these sorry animals.

“We’re all doomed,” he grouched. “Alright, might as well get this over with.”

xxx

The cell was walled all in glass, its slight outward curve reminiscent of the more single-purposed mako tanks. Hojo made his way to it within six steps. The outer room had not been designed to be spacious, quite the contrary. As far as the mothership databases (and everyone but himself) were concerned, this room did not exist and was just a span of floor in his more open-spaced lab.

The figure inside was stretched out on the floor, hands to the side and still as a corpse except for his expanding chest. That was exactly how Hojo had left him and how he expected to find him. Hands clasped behind his back, he leaned forward pensively.

He had managed to keep this little piece of experiment hidden for a very long time, funneling funds from other projects and polishing hacking skills he'd never had any interest in to keep it all in shadows. If he let him out now he assuredly would not be able to keep it secret from the meddling Turks, much less Shinra.

Most importantly, however, was the experiment even ready?

Tests were conclusive. His responses and inhibitions to physical and psychological stimuli all functioned within optimal parameters. Susceptibility was exclusive and his physical condition had adapted and stabilized so that no negative symptom outside regular side effects had arisen for over 200 days.

Yes, but how would any of that hold in the face of what would assuredly come?

Hojo allowed himself only the briefest moment of hesitation before rapping once on the glass. Immediately the man inside rose to his feet and waited.

The tests had reached the limit of what could be determined within controlled laboratory conditions. If he wished to learn more, the next logical step was to let him out. All results, including failure, would only serve to further his research and perfect the next subject.

Hojo opened the door to the glass cell and gestured for his experiment to step out and follow him. He had him outfitted and armed in short order, with the necessary authorizations to take a small space shuttle for an undetermined amount of time. Finally he gave him a sheath of paper.

"These are you targets. Find and neutralize. Do not contact me until you have them," Hojo ordered. Although absolute secrecy would be an exercise in futility, he would benefit from discretion.

The experiment nodded, mako-bright eyes empty. He listened as Hojo gave him a few more directions, absorbing it all with an impassive face. Hojo bemoaned not being able to follow and record all the changes, if any, that would occur once he reached his targets. For sure it would be fascinating and very informative.

Nevertheless, this remained the optimal course of action. It had become evident after Sephiroth's murder of President Shinra. That he didn't seem to have died as he should have five years prior was a complete surprise, but what a delightful one. It created an ever-expending list of new research opportunities.

Hojo had lost himself in his thoughts. He blinked and looked up, but his looming experiment was simply waiting for further orders. Suddenly irritated, Hojo snapped for him to go. The experiment saluted, a habit Hojo had not seen worth his time to remove, and strode away purposefully.

Hojo watched him disappear around a hallway before setting in motion. He made his way to a more remote part of his laboratory. Everything had been cleaned already and there were no more traces of the blood and dead bodies that had littered the area.

The containment unit was still pulsing with light. Although he knew already what he would see, Hojo stretched his neck to see what lay within. The original discovery had been partly annoying, partly thrilling. That Sephiroth would do such a thing, hone in on this one part of the lumbering mothership, was telling. Genetics.

Pinkish red light coated the walls of the containment unit labelled Jenova. Where a full body had once been restrained, only bits of flesh now clung to the drooping restraints.

The unit was empty; Jenova was gone.