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Chapter Text

Angeal loitered in the ferry terminal's shop for as long as he thought he could get away with before he finally took his basket to the register. The clerk checked him out in a desultory fashion, apparently unimpressed by what Angeal thought was a respectable haul of junk food for a four-day trip.

Then again, people who came through here probably did this all the time.

"Y'all know you can buy this stuff on the ship, right?" the clerk drawled.

Angeal shrugged. "It costs more, doesn't it?"

The clerk shrugged back. Perhaps it was Angeal's imagination, but she did look somewhat less unimpressed. It didn't hurt that Angeal gave her exact change, either.

Stepping out onto the cracked and weathered asphalt of the wharf was like walking out onto a frying pan. The humidity was suffocating, the paltry breeze had died away, and Angeal could have sworn his sandals were sticking to the blacktop. Even the gulls' cries seemed lethargic. Immediately, he worried about the ice pops he had bought. If Genesis and Sephiroth had given up on their scrap of shade and gone in search of better, the ice pops might be long gone by the time Angeal found them.

Fortunately, they were still in the same spot. Genesis was keeping the precarious heap of their luggage from falling over by way of lounging insouciantly against it and Sephiroth was to one side, crouched over the map. While Angeal had been gone, one of them had scrounged up a pair of tattered umbrellas to use as parasols, and as Angeal approached, Genesis wrangled open a third. He looked only slightly impatient; Angeal probably could have stayed in the air conditioning for another ten minutes or so without risking complaint.

"They were out of regular apple ones," Angeal said, setting down his huge canvas sack of goodies and rummaging through it, "so I got you some kind of apple-yogurt thing."

"My savior!" Genesis exclaimed, trading an umbrella for the ice pop. "But at this point, I'll take anything that's cold."

"Here you go," Angeal said to Sephiroth, holding out another pop. "Orange cream."

Engrossed in the map, Sephiroth did not react in the slightest. Under the pitiless noonday sun, his slit pupils were hair-thin and almost invisible against the sea-green of his irises.

"You're not gonna change our route again, are you?" Angeal asked placidly.

Genesis groaned. "Please don't!"

"No," Sephiroth said. Finally, he looked up and took his frozen treat from Angeal. He blinked, then let out a barely-perceptible sigh. "...Maybe."

"But why?" Genesis wailed. Not for the first or last time, Angeal was both impressed with and disgusted by his friend's ability to turn a monosyllable into a whole phrase worth of vowel sounds.

His other friend, by contrast, had the equally but differently vexatious tendency of explaining things in fully-fledged paragraphs, especially things that pertained to this trip. He seemed to consider it his baby. So Angeal sat back on his haunches, sucked on his own ice pop—mixed berry; it would probably turn his mouth purple—and waited patiently for Sephiroth to compose his manuscript. 

It was no skin off his nose if Sephiroth changed the route again. Content to let Sephiroth point them in the direction of the cheapest transport and sights that the guidebooks claimed were interesting to see, Angeal had long since quit keeping track of where they would be passing through on their way to Midgar and why. This was to be their grand tour of the whole wide world; getting lost and into trouble along the way seemed like half the point.

No explanation was forthcoming. "Perhaps I should wait," Sephiroth said finally, "until my brain is not boiling inside my skull before I decide." He reached over his shoulder and tried to unstick the fabric of his t-shirt from his sweaty back.

"Reasonable," Genesis pronounced. "That is completely reasonable. Does the ferry have air conditioning?"

"I don't know," Sephiroth admitted. "But I don't see why it wouldn't."

"Showers, then?" Genesis said. "I love chocobos as much as the next person, but there's a limit to how long I'm willing to smell like one."

Sephiroth folded over the map and opened up the ferry brochure that was under it.

"Third-class berths have private toilets in each cabin and access to cubicle showers—" 

Genesis winced.

"—and a public bath."

This brought them all up short.

"Huh," Angeal said. "On a ship."

Sephiroth fingered the edge of the brochure thoughtfully. "I wonder," he mused, "how they keep the water from sloshing out in heavy seas."

Genesis slurped up the last of his ice pop and bit the stick in half. "I suppose we'll find out soon enough," he said. "'Ripples form on the water's surface': the ship's arriving."

Chapter Text

Having deposited their luggage in their cabin and watched from the stern railing until the harbor had receded from view in their wake, a trip to the bath left them smelling less of bird but no closer to answering the question. Afterward, they split up. Angeal didn't need to blow-dry his hair at all, and, for all that Genesis enjoyed lingering in front of a mirror and chit-chatting while he sipped his traditional post-bath bottle of milk, he still didn't take nearly as long as Sephiroth, who had to blow-dry his hair and then subdue the explosion of frizz that resulted.

Angeal was browsing the magazines in the ship's gift shop by the time Sephiroth caught up with him.

"I am going to make the company tell me what shampoo they gave me as a child whether they hire me or not," Sephiroth declared firmly and without preamble. "And I know what you're going to say, so don't."

Angeal snorted. This was well-trod territory for them; despite Sephiroth's preemptive complaint, Angeal had long since given up suggesting that Sephiroth cut off his labor-intensive mane. Even Genesis no longer brought up trimming the split ends, even though all of the ends were split at this point.

Angeal waved a hand toward the souvenir section of the shop. "They've got big stickers with pictures of the ship on them," he said. "For your scrapbook."

As Angeal half-expected, they came away from the shop not just with two full sets of stickers but also postcards, a t-shirt, a bandana, and a palm-sized die-cast model of the ferry.

"The money is only half the problem," Angeal grumbled as they headed down the passageway toward the third-class berths. "We've also gotta carry this stuff with us for however-many weeks or months it'll take us to get to Midgar, and we're already way overpacked."

"Thanks in no small part to that sword of yours," Sephiroth said coolly. He stuck the handle of the shopping bag in his mouth, tugged the tag off the bandana, and tied it over the frazzle that haloed his head despite his best efforts. "This, at least, I will carry on my head."

It made him look like Angeal's mom when she did the spring cleaning, but Angeal held his tongue. If Genesis wanted to start that fight, he could go ahead—Angeal would be happy to spectate.

Angeal punched in the code to their cabin door. "I'm just gonna grab my wallet."

The narrow cabin was darker than they had left it, and Angeal saw that the curtain had been drawn over the porthole. He stepped inside only to be startled when there was a sudden convulsion of sheets and blankets on Genesis' bunk.

"Dammit, Angeal!" Genesis yelped as he squirmed around to face the wall. He clawed at the covers, trying to pull them back down over his bare ass, but they were partly trapped under his body.

Angeal paused, then exclaimed, "Don't do that when we're sharing a room!"

"Well, why can't you knock first when we're sharing a room?" Genesis retorted. "I'm trying to get rid of a headache, so either piss off or lend a hand!"

Angeal shot out the door and yanked it shut behind him, wallet abandoned.

Sephiroth looked amused. Clearly, he had heard the whole exchange.

"Let's just go!" Angeal said, flinging his hands in the air in exasperation and stomping off back the way they had come.

Sephiroth trailed after him.

"Does that really work?" he asked as they stepped out onto the deck. It wasn't nearly as hot as it had been on shore, thanks to the wind washing over the ship as it churned along. High above, towering cumulus clouds blazed white against the silky blue of the sky.

"What, having a—a climax to cure a headache?" Angeal said. "Never has for me, but I don't get as many headaches as he does. The shop had potions, didn't it? Damn, I knew I should have bought some on the dock."

Sephiroth arched an eyebrow. "No other nineteen-year-old on the planet would use the word 'climax' in that context," he said.

Angeal blushed. Once upon a time, it had been Genesis alone who poked fun at Angeal's bashful turns of phrase. But in the last couple of years, Sephiroth had joined the fray, and his deadpan observations were harder to combat. At least when Genesis was being a pest, you knew before he ever opened his mouth.

"We're in public!" Angeal said. "And there are families around!"

Sephiroth made a point of slowly looking about. This section of the deck was deserted. It may not have been as hot out, but it still wasn't cool or comfortable. And relatively few people had boarded where they had; it seemed like the bulk of the passengers would be getting on at subsequent ports.

"Fine," Angeal relented. "Getting off has never worked to cure my headaches. Happy?"

He half-expected to turn around and find that a gaggle of snooty grandparents and impressionable toddlers had magically appeared behind him, but thankfully they remained alone.

"I really didn't care that much," Sephiroth said, feigning diffidence.

Angeal rolled his eyes. "Anyway, we should leave Gen alone for a bit before we take him a potion."

Sephiroth smirked. "And we will knock first this time, won't we?"

Between his phrasing and his tone of voice, Angeal couldn't help himself: he slugged Sephiroth in the shoulder.

Chapter Text

Although it began to rain steadily the next morning, there were plenty of things for three backwater teenagers to do on the ship: it had an arcade, a café with a whole case full of baked goods, and a television lounge. Hilariously, since Sephiroth was a month and a half shy of eighteen, he was not allowed to even unwittingly stray near the handful of slot machines. The forcefulness with which the attendant had accosted him, ascertained his age, and chased him off became all the funnier when the bartender served all three of them that same evening without so much as blinking.

They gambled outrageously on billiards until midnight, mostly with each other, to make up for Sephiroth's indignity. (The billiards tables, they observed, utilized some kind of gyroscopic mechanism to keep them level.)

In the early hours, Angeal was roused by the brilliant flicker of lightning through the porthole. Rain was still lashing at the glass, but the sound of it was muted by the thickness of the double panes and the bulkhead. He rolled over and would have gone right back to sleep, except that he saw the dark silhouette of Genesis climbing down from the bunk above.

Across the cabin, Sephiroth was sitting upright under the tent of his covers. The dim light of his flashlight peeked out from beneath them.

Genesis crouched next to the bunk. "Are you all right?" he whispered.

"I'm fine," came the muffled reply. "Go back to bed."

Genesis, never one for obedience, crawled under the blanket next to him.

Angeal had the reputation, mostly deserved, of being able to sleep through anything short of a Mega Flare. If Sephiroth had sounded especially upset, though, Angeal would have gone to him. But he really did sound fine—Angeal could usually tell when he was lying nowadays—and Genesis seemed to have things in hand. So Angeal let himself drowse to the sounds of their murmuring.

"You're still worried about this," Genesis said. There was a rustling of paper, presumably the well-thumbed Shinra recruitment packet they had written away for.

"I have read the medical criteria a dozen times," Sephiroth said, "and can only come to the conclusion that they override all other aptitude tests. No matter how skilled I am in combat, a 'serious finding' on the physical—"

"That means a heart defect you didn't know about," Genesis interrupted. "Or a weak blood vessel that could burst in your brain. Something that would suddenly strike you dead one day. Not a cutting-edge robotic arm that any idiot can see works just fine. It's got its own materia slot now, for pity's sake."

Sephiroth's voice grew even quieter. "Still," he said.

"It's not like they're going to deport you back to Banora to become a beekeeper. We have four backup plans for a reason, Sephiroth," Genesis said. "If any of us doesn't get in. And we're not even certain we'll apply to SOLDIER in the first place. If Professor Hojo wasn't the only—if the company really is rotten through and through.... We'll do our own thing. Be fighters for hire."

Sephiroth was silent for some time. "It would be a very different lifestyle for—"

"For a coddled brat like me?" 

"For all of us. Even Angeal. Especially Angeal. Money aside—"

"We'll burn that bridge if we come to it," Genesis said breezily.

Sephiroth sighed, but it sounded more fond than anything else. After another lengthy pause, he said, "Four backup plans? What was the fourth one again? I may have tuned you out..."

But Angeal was asleep before he heard the answer.

He dragged himself out of bed late, when the sun was streaming down through the porthole from a high angle, but not so late that Genesis wasn't still cocooned in his own bunk.

"Go 'way," Genesis moaned and curled in on himself. "Got a hangover."

Angeal scoffed. "You had all of two highballs."

"Five more minutes?" Genesis tried instead, feebly.

"Do you really wanna put off coffee for five whole minutes?"

Genesis groaned again, but the noise turned into a petulant gurgle and Angeal knew his question had struck a nerve. Still, it would be a bit before Genesis reconstituted himself, even if he wasn't hungover in any conceivable way.

Sephiroth and his kerchief were gone, but his pillow was still warm to the touch. Angeal took that as a sign that he had slept a decent amount after his late-night heart-to-heart. Not that it particularly mattered: if Sephiroth needed to catch up by napping the afternoon away on a deck chair, he could go ahead. It would be a cheaper way of killing time than the arcade, at least.

Chapter Text

Angeal did their laundry in the ferry's laundromat the morning before they reached the final port on the ship's itinerary, not because he had allowed his friends to foist off their laundry on him—though he wouldn't put it past them to try—but because it really was his turn.

But also, just a little, because he relished having some peace and quiet to flip through a magazine while he listened to the rumble and swish of the machines and made sure nobody dumped their wet clothes on the floor the moment the cycle finished. Or before the cycle finished.

People could be such jerks.

The schedule for the evening was going to be tight. They had awkward baggage to grapple with, an unfamiliar bus system and railway station to navigate, tickets to buy, and a train to catch. And if they missed it, they would have to spend two nights and gil not in their budget waiting for the next departure in a place where they didn't speak the language.

Sephiroth was confident they could make the connection; Angeal was doubtful in equal measure. Genesis seemed to be hedging his bets: he had sworn to the Goddess, whom they all took very seriously now, not to dawdle; but Angeal had spotted him scoping out the ferry's brochure rack for points of interest in the town they'd be stuck in.

A washing machine buzzed.

Angeal tried to finish the paragraph he was reading. To his astonishment, though, a woman whose presence he hadn't even noticed was already making a beeline for the machine.

"Excuse me, ma'am," Angeal called pointedly. "Allow me to get my stuff out of your way." He shot her the most plainly insincere smile he could manage as he darted in front of her.

She didn't even have the good grace to mumble an apology as she scuttled away.

They caught their train.

"By the skin of our teeth!" Genesis declared as he collapsed backwards onto the worn bench-bunk. Or tried to. His overstuffed backpack was in the way, so instead he slithered out of its shoulder straps and slid limply to the floor of the compartment. "Actually, no, I hate that phrase—it's disgusting. If either of you have skin on your teeth, go brush them this instant."

Sephiroth watched him from the opposite bench of the sleeper compartment with amusement. "It wasn't that close," he said mildly. "Angeal, would you really have picked me up and slung me over your shoulder?"

Angeal shot him a rueful look. Sephiroth had gotten sidetracked during their mad dash by a road sign that appeared to point to the railway terminal, except that the station had been plainly visible up the street in another direction. Angeal had dislodged him only with a heated threat. "I'd have tried," Angeal said, "but I don't think I would have been able to carry you, your stuff, and my stuff. Not while running."

"Even the mighty man-mountain Angeal has his limits," Genesis said from the floor. "Ugh. It's filthy down here. There is gum under the seats."

He made no move to get up.

The car lurched and rattled loudly as the train traversed a set of points and began to pick up speed. The clamor of a crossing bell rose in volume and then faded away into the cobalt dusk.

Angeal got free of his own backpack and pulled out their tickets. "Here, we should each hang onto our own. You need 'em to get tokens for the showers and dining car vouchers," he said. "And the baggage claims, too, in case we get split up."

Sephiroth dug through his pockets and pulled the claim tags out.

"The clerk didn't fill them in, so I don't know whose is whose," he said, fanning them out in his hands. "Oh."

What he said next made Angeal cringe from head to toe.

"Was I supposed to check five things or six?"

"That's not funny, Sephiroth."

Sephiroth looked apologetic as he hunted through his pockets more carefully but turned up nothing. "Perhaps I merely dropped one in the rush," he said. "Or the clerk bundled together two of the sword cases and gave them one tag."

Angeal ran a hand through his still-sweaty hair. "Either way, we'll have to make sure that is what happened. I guess I can talk to the conductor. They probably deal with lost baggage all the time."

"I'll do it," Genesis said, heaving himself up off the floor. "I want to get my shower token before there's a rush anyway."

"Especially now that you've been making friends with the dust bunnies," Sephiroth said. He plucked a bit of fuzz from Genesis' shirt hem and scrutinized it before blowing it away.

"Don't heckle him, he's helping."

Genesis could hear the unspoken for once perfectly well, and he gave both Sephiroth and Angeal a surly look as he brushed himself off.

"Right, so," he sniffed, "I suppose all the suitcases made it. You'd have noticed if one of those were gone. So it's probably one of the sword cases."

Sephiroth nodded solemnly.

"Everything has name tags on it," Angeal said. "And my suitcase has a name tag sewn into the liner in case the outer tag gets ripped off. There are tags on the outside and inside of my sword case, too, and if the case has been lost somehow, there's a tag threaded through one of the materia slots of the sword. In the worst case, they can unscrew the grip—my surname is etched on the tang of the blade."

He realized, too late, that he had landed himself in it. Sephiroth's expression of concern had flattened into studied neutrality, and Genesis was staring.

Perhaps the tag in the materia slot had been overkill.

Genesis pressed his hands together in front of his chin. "It was you who put your name on your sword in four separate places," he said flatly. "Not your Ma."

"Well," Angeal said. He scratched the back of his neck awkwardly. "...Yeah."

"Sephiroth, Sephiroth," Genesis lamented, clasping Sephiroth's shoulders and shaking him, "what are we going to do with this boy? He's nineteen going on fifty!"

"Considering," Sephiroth said in a tone as dry as parchment, "that I may be responsible for having lost said sword, I imagine I will commend him for his prudence and then apologize and compensate him if it isn't found. And if it is yours that is missing, of course—"

Genesis snatched up the baggage claims and flung aside the faded curtains that led to the aisle. "'Commend him for his prudence'? Who talks like that? Nobody!" he accused over his shoulder. "Nobody talks like either of you."

Then he was gone in a flounce, and if he muttered "nobody talks like any of us" under his breath, only Sephiroth could hear it clearly.

Chapter Text

After breakfast in the dining car the next morning, they found a note from the conductor safety-pinned to their compartment curtain informing them that their missing baggage had been located and already forwarded to their destination on a mail train along their route.

"It will be held at the cargo terminal in your name, Genesis. Apparently," Sephiroth said, sounding intrigued, "the mail train will arrive more than four hours ahead of us on the same route. I wonder how."

Angeal settled into his seat, relieved at how easily their problem had been solved, pleasantly ballasted with sausage and hash browns, and ready to spend a few hours watching the scenery roll past. "You could ask the conductor," he said, not particularly seriously. How could it be more complicated than the mail train just going faster and overtaking them at some siding or other?

But Sephiroth's eyes took on a familiar gleam. "I will do that," he said.

Genesis leaned out into the aisle, watching until the gangway door slid shut behind Sephiroth, then pulled the curtains closed. "So," he said, a certain gleam of his own in his eyes, "how much do you want to bet he'll be a complete nerd about trains by the time we arrive? Twenty gil?"

"No bet," Angeal said easily. "I saw him staring at the timetable last night, and not just because he was sizing it up for a page in his scrapbook."

Genesis grinned. "He's getting so predictable in his old age."

"Mmm, I'll tell him you said so."

Genesis' grin only widened. "I'll let you be the one whose ear he fills with whatever minutiae he finds out about the mail train, then."

"Hey, who knows?" Angeal said, shrugging. "Maybe it'll be interesting."

Minutiae about the mail train did not turn out to be interesting.

The expressions on Genesis' face as he listened, on the other hand, were more than entertaining enough to make up for it. Why he had neglected to make himself scarce, Angeal could not guess. Fortunately, Sephiroth was leaning forward in his seat, so captivated by his topic that he didn't notice the silent farce going on beside him. His enthusiasm was almost infectious—almost.

Sephiroth decided to have mercy on them—or ran out of mail train lore; it was hard to tell—some time before lunch. It was then that Angeal found out why Genesis had opted to stick around and make faces instead of finding something else to do: there simply was nothing else to do.

"There's an observation car and a lounge car and that's it," Genesis said. "No room in a railcar for a bath, I guess."

"To the contrary," Sephiroth said, "there is a luxury sleeper train on this same route with foot baths. The water is supplied by a famous hot springs resort along the way. But the tickets cost almost ten times what ours did and are said to sell out within minutes of becoming available."

Angeal shot Genesis an exasperated look. If he had opened up the floodgates on train trivia again, and so soon...

But Genesis ignored Angeal with practiced ease. "Ah," he sighed. "Aspirations for the future, then. Once we're rich and famous, we'll have our armies of assistants score us tickets so we can come back and splash out."

Sephiroth fixed him with a weird, unblinking stare. Then he said, with pernicious intent, "No, I think if you splash water out of the bath, they will kick you off—"

Genesis belted him in the shoulder.

They dispersed after lunch to what few entertainments the train had to offer. The landscape sliding past was now one of mountains draped in plush greenery, and the other cars of the train frequently came in and out of view from the windows as the rails snaked through valleys and passes. The occasional tunnel plunged them into darkness lit by eerie, rhythmic flashes of mako torches speeding past.

Angeal found himself compulsively pressing his face against the glass each time they passed over a bridge to see down into the yawning chasm below. Sometimes the rivers were so far down and so shrouded in trees that only the briefest flicker of a silver reflection could be seen.

There was an hour-long halt to take on fuel and let off passengers—quite a lot of passengers, for this was the famous hot springs resort Sephiroth had mentioned—and the air outside was startlingly cool, crisp, and fragrant of resinous evergreens.

Angeal found Sephiroth on the end of the platform where it looked out over an incline so precipitous that the tops of the nearest trees were below the level of their feet. His eyes were shut and his angular face was pointed into the breeze.

Sephiroth's last growth spurt had not been kind to him. He was almost as tall as Angeal now and taller than most people on the damn planet, but while Angeal's breadth had mostly kept pace with his height, Sephiroth had become distressingly gangly. He towered over strangers, and often over the course of a day in public he would develop a self-conscious slouch. But today, though there were plenty of people milling about on the platform, Sephiroth was standing straight enough.

Perhaps the trees were setting a good example.

"Smells good?" Angeal asked.

Sephiroth nodded slowly without opening his eyes. "Minerals from the hot spring... rush floor mats in the inns... some kind of incense. It must be a local specialty, because there is only one kind and the aroma is pervasive. Ah, someone is frying alliums, too."

Angeal sniffed the air more carefully. "Hmm. I can't smell anything over the cedars and pines. Maybe onions."

Sephiroth turned to him, a modest little smile on his face. "You will be able to soon," he said, "assuming we are able to execute Plan A. I think you will like being able to smell all these things."

Angeal gazed back at him pensively. Sephiroth seemed to live in his own world sometimes, and Angeal expected that gaining enhancements to his own senses would let them share that world. Apparently, Sephiroth felt the same way.

"I'm looking forward to it," Angeal said.

Understanding passed between them, and Sephiroth's smile widened subtly. Then he turned away from the railing. "That incense," he said decisively. "I want some. Do you suppose they sell it in the station shop?"

"Aw, man," Angeal groaned. "Another shop? Like we don't have enough to lug around already!"

Chapter Text

Genesis waited with such uncharacteristic patience for the train to lurch into motion before he delivered his line that Angeal almost didn't have the heart to tease him when the car eased to a standstill again just a second later.

Almost.

"The wandering soul knows some rest," he said wickedly.

Genesis shot him a disgruntled look.

"They are decoupling the front half of the train so that it can continue west to Junon," Sephiroth said, perfectly oblivious to the mood. "Our half will not depart south until it has cleared the block safely."

"Do we have to sit in here until then? I grow weary of sharing such a narrow space with irreverent louts who think they are witty," Genesis sniffed.

"The conductor will be rechecking the tickets," Sephiroth said. "So yes, you will have to put up with the lout for a little while longer."

Angeal put on a betrayed expression, but Sephiroth wasn't having it.

When the conductor came past their bunks to punch their tickets for the second leg of the journey, she brought along a present for Sephiroth in her satchel: a full-page commemorative photo of their train, emerging from a tunnel and charging 'round a mountain bend.

"We gave these out for free at the twentieth-anniversary festival earlier this year," she said. "I knew we still had some lying around the supply cabinet so I dusted one off for you, seeing as how you're such a fan."

Sephiroth accepted this new treasure with both hands, and Angeal saw Genesis look away in haste, unsubtly stifling a laugh—also with both hands.

The pupils of Sephiroth's eyes were hugely rounded out, like those of a cat about to pounce.

"Thank you, ma'am," Sephiroth said with nakedly possessive zeal. "I'll put it in my scrapbook."

The conductor tittered, clearly charmed. "A scrapbook, goodness!" she said. "Are those back in fashion with the young folk now? My nan had a shelf full of 'em, stuffed with playbills and doilies mostly 'cuz her family weren't worth the page space after we stopped being cute kiddos. Anyway, I got a few cars left to go before we can get rolling, so you boys have a nice rest of your journey."

Then she was gone, leaving poor Sephiroth to face down the obnoxiousness of his bunkmates alone. But first, he fastidiously tucked away his prize in his backpack, between two hardcover books where it would be protected from damage until he could secure it properly.

Genesis' shoulders were shaking with the effort of containing his mirth.

"You are going to rupture something," Sephiroth observed with immense disdain. He reached for a rumpled pillow and slung it at Genesis with enough force that it spat a tuft of down into the air. "Not that I care at all, but if you would rather not be heard being a complete ass, use that." He rounded on Angeal. "And you—if you are going to tease me, you should get it over with while I am still trapped in here."

Angeal tried very hard to master his expression. "I don't—I mean, she just about covered it, didn't she?" he said, his own voice half-choked with hilarity. "I can't really top grandma's doily collection or back in fashion with the young folks now, can I?"

Sephiroth puffed up with indignation, but before he could give vent to it, the car jolted and they heard the low, throaty howl of the locomotive's whistle. The train was moving again, and they were free to go about. Sephiroth shot to his feet and then had to pretend furiously that an ill-timed sway of the car hadn't nearly sent him hurtling into Angeal's lap. He glared down first at Angeal, unrepentant, and then Genesis, who had by now curled into a ball in the corner of the bunk with the pillow bent double over his face.

"Me and my scrapbook," Sephiroth said, shouldering his backpack and flinging back the curtain, "will be in the lounge car. You two may find some other way of keeping your small minds amused."

"Have fun," Genesis burbled into his pillow.

Later, Angeal made a little white flag by carefully tearing off the corner of a piece of looseleaf paper and punching a stray disposable chopstick through it. He took his creation with him to the lounge car—now much less crowded than it had been—where he found Sephiroth at one of tables near the far end of the car, bent industriously over his neat array of supplies and materials. Early afternoon sun was streaming through the windows of the car, interrupted periodically by dense stands of trees along the track.

Sephiroth detected his presence immediately and squinted dubiously at him, but his expression softened to amusement once Angeal waved his little flag. Angeal slid onto the seat opposite him.

"I forgive you for winding me up on purpose because you were bored," Sephiroth said archly.

Angeal shrugged. "I assumed you were letting us wind you up on purpose because you were bored."

Sephiroth ducked his head, but not quickly enough to hide his smile from Angeal.

"Not making much progress?" Angeal asked. Normally, Sephiroth pasted things into the book first before labeling them and decorating the pages, but it looked like he had lined everything up—menus, ticket stubs, receipts, the ferry stickers, and his new commemorative photo—and then reached for the colored pencils instead.

Sephiroth pointed an accusatory finger at his glue stick. "Completely dried up," he said.

"Oh, that'll do it," Angeal said.

They settled into a companionable silence. Angeal pulled out his book and rested his feet on the opposite seat next to where Sephiroth was sitting, and eventually Sephiroth gave up, tidied away the scrapbook stuff, and pulled out a novel of his own.

Sometime later, Angeal woke facedown on the table with his book mushed flat under his cheek.

"Wha—?" he mumbled, jerking upright and scrubbing his face.

"Damn, Angeal, you were out," Genesis marveled. "Aren't those potboilers of yours supposed to be exciting? One of these days someone is going to think you've keeled over and died, and you're going to wake up to a phoenix down to the face."

"Where'd you come from?" Angeal asked dopily.

"The lower deck," Genesis said. "Listen. Listen, Angeal—there's a card game going on down there—" 

"I'm not staking you," Angeal said, abruptly clear-headed.

Genesis scoffed. "No, not that kind of card game! Or at least, I don't think—never mind that. The point is, it's better with more players and I think you both would enjoy it. Sephiroth, you especially."

Sephiroth slotted a bookmark between the pages of his novel and set it down. "What kind of card game is it, if not a betting game?"

Genesis frowned. "You'll like it," he insisted. "I know you will—it's just your sort of thing."

Angeal exchanged glances with Sephiroth and shrugged.

They followed Genesis down the steep, cramped stairs to the bottom deck of the car. The ceiling was lower and the windows shorter, so it was dimmer down there. In the winter, it might have been cozy, but in the summertime it felt closed-in. The faint waft of stale beer didn't help.

At one of the tables there were two girls about their age, one with hair trimmed tight to her scalp. They had folded a piece of scrap paper into thirds and stood it up on the aisle side of the table like a tent: it had the entreaty "Play cards with us!" written on it in chunky block print.

"So you convinced 'em," the short-haired girl said to Genesis, grinning. Her accent was unfamiliar but about as broad as accents came while still remaining comprehensible.

"My powers of persuasion never disappoint," Genesis said, flourishing a hand in the air as he slid into the seat next to her.

Angeal squeezed onto the end of the same seat while Sephiroth took the opposite side. The other face of the paper sign had the same message written on it except in a less tidy hand and with a question mark, making it look somehow more plaintive.

"So," Angeal said, "what is this mystery game?"

The long-haired girl rapped the edge of the deck against the table and began to shuffle and bridge it with an expertise that would have put Angeal right off if he thought there was even a sliver of a gil at risk. Sephiroth looked impressed—too impressed. That boy was going to get taken to the cleaners someday, not because he couldn't tell he was being ripped off but because he would be too busy appreciating the skill with which it was done.

The long-haired girl began to deal.

"The only rule that you may be told," she said portentously, "is this one."

Chapter Text

It was over breakfast the next day that Angeal realized something.

"Did... did we ever get those girls' names before they got off the train?" he asked. "We played cards with them for half the night."

"And Genesis played for hours before that," Sephiroth noted wryly. "Did you know their names and not introduce us?"

Genesis mopped his plate awkwardly with a sliver of pancake and cleared his throat. "We kind of jumped right into the game both times," he said. "And you know how I am with names and faces."

"Genesis, your social graces are as bad as mine sometimes," Sephiroth said.

"Well, I didn't hear anyone else at all leaping in to ensure that the formalities were taken care of," Genesis retorted.

Angeal drained his coffee cup and signalled the waiter for a refill, only barely resisting the urge to beat his head against the table.

In the early afternoon, the train made a several-hour stop, this time in a bigger piedmont town whose railway station served as a local hub and therefore had shops. Lots of shops. Sephiroth was adamant that he didn't plan to buy any bulky souvenirs, only glue and a pack of cards, and Angeal... well, Angeal was ready to give up on him at this point.

So, naturally, it was Genesis this time who turned up with a shopping bag full of books.

"Hey, if you can fit them into your backpack without bursting the seams, who am I to complain?" Angeal said calmly. Then he climbed up into Genesis' unmade bunk, slapped the reading light switch off, and yanked the covers over his head.

The compartment was silent for a good minute before Sephiroth said, "I think you will be paying for the chocobo cart next time, whether it's your turn or not." There was a gratifying note of consternation in his voice; it wasn't often that Angeal indulged in a good snit.

"Mmm, I think you're right."

By the time Angeal got over his sulk-slash-nap, Genesis had with rare judiciousness absented himself and any trace of his new books. Hopefully, they would be able to package up the books and have them shipped onwards rather than having to carry them the rest of the way. In the meantime, Sephiroth had set up his scrapbook stuff on the tiny compartment table and both of the lower bunk-benches.

Hearing the rustle of sheets and blankets above, Sephiroth glanced up. "Are you feeling better now?" he asked dryly. "Do you want me to move my things so you can come down?

"Yeah, I've got an idea for where Genesis can shove his stupid books—a post office pick-up bin," Angeal said. He sat up and stretched, using the ceiling above for resistance until it creaked. "You can leave your stuff. I'll just peer down at you from my roost like a bird of prey sizing up a kill. This is kinda nice—maybe I should fight Gen for the top bunk next time. Not up to the lounge car today?"

Sephiroth's brow furrowed. "For a self-professed normal person, Angeal, you sometimes say very odd things. There weren't any seats. I think a lot of people boarded at the last stop—beachgoers, from the looks of them."

Angeal looked over the array of mementos laid out on the bunks below. Sephiroth had also set out a few of his guidebooks, perhaps so that he could sketch a copy of a map into a blank space if needed. Carefully, Angeal hooked his foot into the railing of his bed and swung himself precariously over the edge, reaching down for one item in particular.

Each of Sephiroth's scrapbooks had a carefully-lettered title page and a table of contents laid out at the start and filled in as he went. But this one was different, because it was the first one Sephiroth had ever made. So when Angeal pulled it into his lap and flipped open the cover, he found a yellowed newspaper article front and center, the headline of which he knew very well:

R&D CHIEF OUT!

Shinra Electric commissions
unprecedented external audit

The edges of the well-worn, deeply-creased clipping were grungy—Sephiroth, just turned twelve at the time, had carried it around in the pocket of his school uniform for weeks until his foster father had bought a blank album from the general store for him to enshrine it in before it inevitably made its way into the wash.

The history of the scandal, as reported by Mideel's least-terrible newspaper, unfolded across the pages of this same album. To this day, Angeal reflected wryly, none of them could explain how an off-balance-sheet vehicle worked, why the difference between a "capital expense" and an "operating expense" was so important, or what a round-trip transaction was meant to accomplish—nor was Sephiroth in particular able to figure out where Hojo had found the time to orchestrate the whole swindle. Did the bastard not sleep?

"I thought you decided not to bring this one with you," Angeal said. "In case it got lost or wet along the way."

"I changed my mind about it several times," Sephiroth said. "At least if it gets wet, that itself will be a story to tell. I tried to get the school secretary to make me a photocopy, but she couldn't get the pages to lie flat against the glass, and the articles are too fragile to unstick."

Angeal nodded. Even now, one could see how Sephiroth had gone overboard with the glue back then. Interspersed with the newspaper clippings were the occasional field trip permission slip, page corners clipped from school essays containing favorable comments from their teacher, and a photo here and there, some of which Angeal had taken himself.

Sephiroth glanced up again, as if aware of what page Angeal was looking at. He probably did know the thing back to front. "That reminds me," he said briskly. "I am going to be extremely annoyed with you if you don't get your camera out of your suitcase once we get our luggage back."

Angeal grunted. "I just don't want it to get—"

"I know, Angeal, but what's the point of even having it with you if it just sits in your suitcase wrapped in underpants? At least Genesis reads the books he burdens himself with. As it is, we will have no photos whatsoever of the first three legs of our journey."

Just then, the train entered a tunnel, plummeting them into near-total darkness. The overhead lights came on in the car a minute later, but even they were relatively dim. Sephiroth huffed in annoyance and carefully set aside the glue-backed ticket stub he was attempting to affix. Shiva forbid the edges be misaligned.

"Nah, that's not true. We'll have the one the chocobo wrangler outside of Mideel took after we got mounted up," Angeal said. He plucked at the edge of a page absently, well aware that Sephiroth would assume he was dodging the issue. "He said he'd make sure our folks got it. Anyway, the camera's wrapped in socks, not underpants."

Maybe Sephiroth had a point.

"I'm sorry, I don't believe I heard a 'Yes, Sephiroth, I promise on my honor I'll take out my camera' in any of that," Sephiroth said coolly. Then, in a lighter tone, he added, "And yes, I have set aside a page for the chocobo picture, should a copy find its way into my hands."

Angeal snorted. "You're a stubborn pain in the ass when you want—all right, all right—yes, Sephiroth, I promise I'll take out my camera. On my honor, even. Happy? Don't point scissors at me, idiot. What are you, ten?"

"Who is a stubborn pain in the ass?" Sephiroth muttered under his breath.

Perhaps he timed it for the emergence of the train from the tunnel and the abrupt return of brilliant daylight or perhaps he timed it to make his own contribution to the conversation, but it was at this point that Genesis reappeared in his typical fashion.

"I'm not allowed to answer that question, am I?" Genesis mused as he swept aside the swaying curtains and sidled inside. "Sephiroth, were you threatening to stab our sweet Angeal? With lefty scissors? I understand the impulse—believe me, I do—but given all the cheap detective novels you read, you really ought to know better."

Chapter Text

In the end, it turned out to be Sephiroth's sword case that had gone astray.

"The cargo clerk said was found kicked under the floor heater of the bus," Genesis said with a grimace as he handed it over. "It looks like it's been... rather thoroughly stepped on."

The faux leather case had dusty shoe prints down one side and scrape marks up the other. Someone had made a cursory effort of wiping it with a rag or sponge that seemed to have deposited more grime than it removed.

Chagrined, Sephiroth took it from Genesis. "It must have slid off the seat during the ride," he said, swabbing hopelessly at the grunge with the hem of his t-shirt and then immediately regretting it. "And then I became distracted trying to figure out which stop to get off at. So it was my fault after all."

"Eh," Angeal said. "All's well that ends well. It's not like you had to pay an extra fee or anything."

Sephiroth and Genesis exchanged wry looks.

Not far from the rail terminal, they checked into a real hotel, albeit a cheap one. Still, this would be their first time sleeping in non-bunk beds since they had departed Banora, and Angeal was looking forward to being able to stretch out full length, even if his feet still stuck out past the end of the mattress. Sometimes he wondered if Genesis wasn't right about having had the good sense to quit growing while he was ahead. 

The timing of their arrival allowed them a sufficient interval to deposit their stuff and settle in a bit before they headed out in search of dinner. Angeal, under Sephiroth's green gimlet eye, did as promised and dug his camera out of his suitcase.

"How much film did you bring?" Genesis asked.

"Two rolls of color and two of black-and-white," Angeal said, shaking the canisters out of the sock he had packed them in. "Which do you think I should load first?"

"Color!" Genesis said.

"Black-and-white," Sephiroth said simultaneously.

Angeal rolled his eyes. "As if I expected anything else. Genesis, flip a coin. Sephiroth, call it in the air."

That Genesis won the toss turned out to be a lucky break; whoever sold house paint in that particular town must have had a silver tongue—and one hell of a nest egg. Months after, when Angeal finally got around to getting the film developed—finally got around to unpacking—he would barely remember what was on it, despite the jewel-toned streetscapes and the exquisite clarity of the golden afternoon they spent exploring them. But the pictures would bring it all back: two dozen shots of bemuraled shops and houses right out of a child's playset, one picture of the gorgeous grilled whole fish he had eaten for dinner, and several pictures of the three of them, taken by polite fellow tourists.

The last shot was Angeal's own: Genesis and Sephiroth looking out over the harbor, facing away from the camera, their hair streaming in the freshening breeze. Sephiroth had been reaching out for the boardwalk railing, and his prosthetic hand was limned in the molten-copper glow of the setting sun. Genesis, in profile, was wearing a rare look of tranquillity—though perhaps it was unfair to think of it that way. He did sleep, after all.

Angeal hadn't meant to shoot the entire roll, but... what a day. It was a genuine surprise to him when the film advance lever caught short on his thumb.

That night, as he cleaned his lens and waited for Sephiroth to finish in the shower, Angeal annoyed himself by remembering all of the photogenic things he had missed while his camera had been snuggling safely with socks. Sephiroth had been right, but Angeal knew he didn't dare admit it—not when he could imagine the exact contours of the sly, self-satisfied look he would get as a reward. Instead, with Genesis' gleeful exhortation, he fed a black-and-white roll onto the take-up spool, snapped the back shut, and staked out the bathroom door for a nice, congenial ambush. If Sephiroth wanted pictures to commemorate their grand tour, he'd get some.

It was too bad the camera couldn't capture sound; still, the expression on Sephiroth's face alone was worth it, not to mention the crappy plastic shower cap.

Given that they had arrived on a train stuffed with beachgoers, it was a surprise and a relief how uncrowded the shore was the next day. As they traversed the boardwalk that surmounted the dunes sheltering the candy-colored beachfront houses, Sephiroth explained his feat of planning and timing: there was a festival starting that day, on the opposite side of town, which Sephiroth had correctly expected would draw off a significant proportion of the other tourists.

The tawny sand was hot beneath their feet, so they rented an umbrella from a stall not far from the entrance and quickly staked out a spot to lay down the towels they had pilfered-slash-borrowed from their hotel room.

It ought to have been impossible to improve on yesterday's sublime weather and magical scenery, but somehow today managed it. The surf was just strong enough to look fun rather than challenging; gulls were wheeling overhead and sandpipers were racing along the edge of the water; and Angeal dimly remembered Sephiroth informing them that the water temperature was just right this time of the year—too much later in the season and it would be blood-warm.

Sephiroth had really outdone himself.

"Maybe we should add a—what are we at now, E?—a Plan E," Angeal mused aloud. "Sephiroth launches his own travel agency."

The look on Sephiroth's face was indescribable.

"I like it," Genesis said decisively. "I'll do the bookkeeping and you take pictures for the brochures?"

Angeal grinned. "How about I do the bookkeeping and the brochures and you be the gaudy spokesmodel who handles all the publicity stunts?"

"I thought we already had a Plan E," Sephiroth said, perplexed. He began to peel off his clothes; the guidebook hadn't said whether there were changing huts, so they had put on their swimsuits underneath before they left their room. "Weren't we going to...?"

Genesis mimed being blinded by the paleness of Sephiroth's torso, earning himself a grumpy look in return. But even Angeal had to admit Sephiroth was looking a bit pasty. Usually, by this time of year, everyone in Banora had more than just a farmer's tan.

"My friend," Genesis chortled, "you are going to need a whole bottle of sunscr—Sephiroth, is that your school swimsuit?"

Sephiroth froze, one foot lifted so he could step out of his capris. He was indeed wearing the swimsuit, plain, navy blue, and covering him to mid-thigh, that had been required for school swim classes. "Yes? Why do you ask?"

Genesis threw his hands in the air. "Even Angeal bought a new one!"

"Angeal replaced his swimsuit because the old one did not fit," Sephiroth said. "This still fits. As I'm sure you can see for yourself." Belatedly, he put his foot down.

"Like I need an excuse to leer at your ass," Genesis scoffed.

Angeal sighed. This was the point at which he ought to step in, say something sensible, and get smirked at times two for his trouble. "I suppose if we get really strapped for cash," he said instead, "once he turns eighteen, we can always sell pictures of him wearing that."

"Angeal!" Genesis exclaimed, delighted and scandalized in equal measures. "What a filthy thing to suggest!"

Sephiroth cocked his head to one side and blinked several times. "I don't understand. Given how modest the suit is, why would such pictures be either filthy or worth buying?" he said. "I am not saying I'm opposed, only—only that I don't get it."

"I don't know what the appeal is and can't say I'm that interested in finding out," Angeal said, shrugging. "A gil's a gil, though, and if you're of-age and willing..."

Sephiroth seemed no less baffled, but he managed to say, dryly, "How very mercenary of you."

Chapter Text

The bus from the town center terminal to the chocobo outpost was bright yellow, which was really a pity because Angeal's camera was still loaded with black-and-white film. On arrival, it was also stuffed to the gills with inbound adventurers, dust-caked but ebullient, mostly packed light and lightly-armed, and smelling strongly of bird even at a distance. Up close, they stank of days' worth of camping and bathing in rivers—if they had bothered to bathe at all.

Sephiroth edged upwind of the unloading area, doing a poor job of keeping his nose from visibly wrinkling, while Genesis wandered off in search of a vending machine.

Angeal didn't believe it at first, but as the throng got their bearings and began to disperse and the outbound departure time approached, it began to look like the three of them would be the only ones boarding. 

"Beach is thataway, boys!" one of the last of the adventurers said boisterously to Sephiroth. "Y'all are headed in the wrong direction!"

"Um, we already went?" Sephiroth replied; awkwardly and too late, for the woman had already rejoined her companions and was headed off, laughing uproariously.

Angeal winced inwardly and prepared to head over and task Sephiroth with something that would keep him from ruminating over the interaction for the next hour or so. But Genesis was already on a collision course with their youngest friend, no doubt with similar intentions if perhaps a less productive method. Sure enough, the two were soon squabbling over something that Angeal didn't bother to listen to.

They did break it off long enough to help Angeal hand up their luggage to the bus driver as she loaded it onto the roof rack of the bus.

Once she strapped down the last of the sword cases, she stepped off the side ladder and studied the three of them for a long moment, chewing thoughtfully on a grubby fingernail as she did.

"Y'all headed long distance," she said, more as a statement than a question. "Got armor and bracers to go with those swords?"

"Bracers, yes," Genesis said. "And a few materia, mostly curative." 

The caveat was true in the strictest sense, but Angeal snorted at it anyway. People tended not to react well to teenagers carrying around Fire materia as cavalierly as Genesis did.

The driver nodded to herself with grim satisfaction. "Well, armor shouldn't be no problem. I'm gonna have you boys talk to Hugh when we get there. He might have more than just a discount for ya."

As they settled into the middle-most row of seats and the bus ground into motion with a crunch of gears, Genesis picked up precisely where he had left off the argument. Possibly even his sentence; for Sephiroth looked mystified. Then he smiled sheepishly.

"Genesis, it's all right," he said. "You don't have to—"

"Don't have to correct your wrong opinions?" Genesis said. "You're right, I shouldn't have to!" But he was grinning as well, and Angeal shot him a tolerant look.

"So anyway," he said to Sephiroth, "what's this I hear about a discount?"

As it turned out, the fact that they were the only ones on the bus wasn't a fluke. As with the beach day, Sephiroth had calculated their route to take them west on this particular chocobo trail at a time of the season when most people were headed east. Extra seasonal fees at the western end of the trail helped keep birds from running short there while discounts encouraged riders to deal with the glut in the east. Rumor had it that if the outpost was really desperate, they'd arrange to have your entire fee refunded when you checked your birds back in.

Presumably, that was what the bus driver meant by "more than just a discount."

The urgency of the situation did not become clear to Angeal and his companions until the bus turned down the lane onto the grounds of the chocobo outpost. Right away, the bus driver was obliged to stand on the brake—for the ancient bus was as reluctant to stop as it was to accelerate—as several chocobos darted across the road. Hot on their knobbly heels were what looked like the entire rest of the flock, and within moments the bus was completely mobbed.

"These fuckin' birds," the driver said, vexed and affectionate in equal measures. "Guess I'll just park here, then, won't I?" She spun the key in the ignition, putting both the engine and the air conditioner out of their misery, and turned in her seat to face her trio of passengers. "You guys sit tight—I'mma see if I can find some greens and draw them off. Oh, and feel free to crack a window. S'gonna get real hot in a second, and the birds'll only bite if you happen to have eaten salad for lunch."

Then she cranked down her window and climbed out of it, first sitting and then standing on the sill before she stepped gracefully onto the back of the nearest chocobo. From there, she hopped from one bird's back to the next like they were stepping stones before finally vanishing from sight as she leapt down to the ground. In her wake sounded a series of offended kwehs.

Angeal and Sephiroth exchanged glances.

Genesis wrestled open his window and, for his trouble, immediately got punched in the stomach by the head of the hugest draft chocobo any of them had ever laid eyes on.

He sprawled back in his seat, winded and watery-eyed, but within seconds had recovered and was crooning, "Lovely girl—what a great big girl you are!" and other nonsense at the bird as he scratched and nuzzled her enormously fluffy head.

Three pairs—four, now—of beady black eyes were peering in through the window on Angeal's side of the row. He tried to open it just a crack, but one of the birds wedged its bill in and had it as wide as it would go forthwith. It thrust its head past Angeal, pressing him back and down into his seat with its powerful neck, and began to investigate any part of Sephiroth it could reach. Sephiroth tried to pet it, but then his eyes widened in alarm and he found a better use for his hands: protecting his groin.

The bus jounced heavily.

"I think there is one on the roof now," Sephiroth said, looking about as grave as a person could while squirming the way he was. "At least one."

Angeal grinned. "We're all gonna die," he said. "But what a way to go." His face fell as Sephiroth's bird lost interest in thumping his delicate bits and pulled back to try to gently-but-insistently relieve Angeal of his shirt instead.

"Are they hungry? Bored?" Sephiroth asked. He moved to help Angeal, only to get trilled at peremptorily. "In a bad mood?"

"They're adorable is what they are!" Genesis exclaimed. By now, he had the draft chocobo's head tucked against his side and halfway under his shirt. Judging from the breathy whootling noise she was making, this situation was exactly to her liking.

"D'you think he'd be saying that if that bird had nailed him in the crotch?" Angeal said. "C'mon, birdy, you can't eat cloth! It's not even green!"

"Maybe it just wants to see you topless," Sephiroth suggested.

Then, as quickly as they had arrived, the chocobos were swarming away again. Angeal could hear the driver and someone with a much deeper voice yoohooing some way up the lane; presumably, they had buckets worth of greens, or even a cartload, otherwise the birds wouldn't have given them a second look.

The three collected their backpacks and lined up in the aisle.

"Not much pecked, I hope?" the bus driver called as she elbowed open the passenger door. "Let's hurry up and get your baggage down while the flock has their beaks full."

As Angeal slung his backpack down into the soft pine straw that edged the lane, he saw Genesis glance up and recoil. Angeal followed his gaze and let out a startled noise of his own: there was still a chocobo on the roof of the bus, stooped down and peering curiously at them.

"Shoo, boy!" the bus driver said. "Creepy bird! You're scaring the customers again!" She palmed the bird's head and gave it a gentle shove until he straightened up and made a noise that sounded damn near to a cackle. Then he turned around, defecated with intent onto some of their baggage, and leapt down from the other side of the bus.

"Aw, Bean, no!" moaned the driver. "You little asshole! Why you gotta do stuff like this?" She turned back to Angeal and his party, sighing heavily. "Don't worry, guys. I'll get that cleaned up right away for ya. Might as well head inside, though; Hugh'll want to talk to ya. Y'all ain't got any, um, private items in those suitcases, have ya? Might have to unpack you a bit; wouldn't wanna get'cher business all over the yard."

Angeal blushed and shook his head vigorously, then avoided looking anywhere near either Genesis or Sephiroth. But the bus driver's amused chortle told him everything he didn't want to know.

Chapter Text

If it weren't for the torn-up moonscape of a former garden that surrounded the main office of the outpost on all sides, it might have made for a charming photo. The heavyset building had an unusual hexagonal layout and elaborate brickwork in red, dun, and black that was far beyond its station in life. But the chocobos were obviously a scourge; their droppings were also much in evidence, and the corner nearest the front door even showed signs of chafed bricks where chocobos had used it to scratch out old feathers.

"It looks like a cyclone hit the place," Genesis said. He reached out and picked at the splintered stump of what used to be a post for the handrail of the porch. "'When the war of the beasts brings about the world's end'...."

"Loveless," Sephiroth responded, "Act—no, the prologue?"

"That's an easy one," Genesis sniffed. "You'll have to try harder than that."

Angeal ignored them and went in. If they wanted to stand on the porch and sweat while they bickered, they could feel free.

It was refreshingly cool and dim inside. There were rough-hewn tables with bench seats for travelers to sit, eat, and rest for a while at the end of their journeys. The door to the office was wide open, but Hugh was nowhere to be seen, so Angeal poured himself water from the sweating pitcher set out for guests to use and sat down. The water was cold enough to make his teeth ache.

Genesis and Sephiroth, apparently unable to come up with enough material for a proper literary debate, meandered in shortly after.

"I think we are going to get our rentals for free," Sephiroth confided as he sat down opposite Angeal. "If I were them, I would want as many of those birds as possible out of my hair, so to speak."

"If only because your hair is ridic—" Genesis said, interrupting himself to dodge Angeal's elbow and scoot to the far end of the bench.

The door banged open and a powerful baritone laugh preceded the man who was presumably Hugh. "Ha ha ha!" he said. In contrast to the robustness of his voice, though, he was lanky if not downright thin. "If you three didn't look so different from each other, I'd say you boys were brothers!"

"If we were brothers," Genesis retorted, "that would make me the middle child. No thanks!"

Hugh laughed again, practically shaking dust from the rafters. "My name's Hugh, as you've no doubt already guessed," he said. "No, don't get up. I can spot you country kids from a mile off—y'always too damn polite for your own good."

He poured himself a cup of water and sat down on the bench next to Sephiroth, generating an outsized thump. Angeal gave the introductions.

Hugh nodded seriously. "Right, so, I hope you won't mind if I jump straight into business, but I'm sure you noticed on your way in here that we have a bit of a problem on our hands," he said. "The guy who drives the truck for our produce supplier is starting to honestly hate our guts, and unfortunately we're down to just me and Lor—that's Loretta, she drove you in—for mucking out."

There ensued a lengthy explanation—Sephiroth's favorite kind—about how this state of affairs had come to pass. Some of it they already knew, such as about the seasonal ebb and flow of travelers in each direction. Like anyone else, they also knew that chocobos were among the smartest non-human creatures on Gaia. What they didn't know was how chocobos' sociability came into play.

"Y'see, they egg each other on," Hugh said grimly. "I swear I've seen one bird run interference while another gets into mischief. With this many of them playing off each other and so few of us supervising the little shits, they know they can get away with just about anything."

"Murder," Sephiroth said, more to fill in the expected idiom than anything else. Angeal winced at how it sounded, though, especially since it was the first and likely only word that Sephiroth would contribute to the conversation.

But Hugh only sighed. "Not sure I'd put it past one or two of 'em, to be honest."

Astounded, Genesis caught Angeal's eye and mouthed what at him, and Angeal could only shake his head in consternation.

Who knew chocobos could be terrifying?

Hugh noticed the atmosphere in the room and put up his hands defensively. "Now, don't get me wrong," he chuckled, "it's damned rare for them to get dangerously aggressive. Most you'll get from the vast majority of birds is a nip or a kick, and then it's usually an accident or you deserved it."

"So," Genesis said, trailing his finger along the wood grain of the table, "would you normally hire seasonal workers to handle the surplus birds?"

Hugh made a face. "Oh, yeah," he said. "It's a bit of a complicated dance to put them in the right place at the right time. Hard to predict the big groups. But the three wranglers who were supposed to be here now all went and got themselves laid up doin' stupid shit. And there's a reason this is a chocobo trail and not a highway, so even if Cala sent people out by van..." He shrugged.

It was at this point that Loretta, the bus driver, came stomping in. Her overalls were soaked down the front and she was hopping mad.

"Can we eat Bean for dinner?" she demanded. "That nasty little asshole!"

"Bean stew it is," Hugh said without missing a beat. He turned back to the table and winked. "I was just telling these fine young men about our personnel issues."

This only made Loretta madder. She started waving around her finger furiously. "Damn them! Cala recruits girls 'cuz she says they're more level-headed and responsible at that age—well, I ain't convinced! This year's batch might as well have tried out for rodeo clowns!"

"Now, now," Hugh said. "Nadine hurt herself surfing—no recklessness involved. And rodeo clowns are there to protect the riders—they're safety professionals is what they are."

"Aw, Nadine's a goon too! Built like a brick and has about as many brain cells!"

At the phrase "built like a brick," Genesis and Sephiroth swiveled their heads towards Angeal. His mouth pressed into a fine line and he deliberately avoided making eye contact with either one. Once, just once, he had admitted to an appreciation for muscular women. The beer they had been drinking had been stronger than expected, and it had seemed like such an innocuous thing to mention to the two people he trusted most. More fool him! If he was lucky, they would wait until there weren't other people around before they started in on the Nadine-sounds-like-just-your-type nonsense.

"Well, anyway," Loretta said, thankfully oblivious to Angeal's plight. "I got your luggage sorted out, and I can help you haul it inside whenever Hugh's done talkin' you to sleep."

"Thanks for that, Lor," Hugh said dryly. "Why don't you wash up and change? I can shift their stuff; you could use a break."

"Damn straight I can," Loretta said, then headed into the office and shut the door behind her.

Hugh turned back to them once again. "So, all that is to say, if you boys are amenable, I'd like to pay you a certain fee per bird to escort some of the flock west to Cala's joint. Say, six hundred for each chocobo, seven each for the draft birds, and two or three carts at seven hundred apiece? That'll include the ones you ride and the cart your baggage goes on, of course."

Angeal thought back to how the bus had been surrounded by chocobos. He couldn't even estimate their number. Whatever the exact figure, though, it had to be a hell of a lot of birds, which translated to a hell of a lot of gil at those rates. It could pay for a not-insignificant chunk of the entire trip and leave them with a cushion of cash once they arrived in Midgar.

Anyway, how hard could it be to herd chocobos? They were chocobos, for pity's sake.

"Angeal, no," Genesis pleaded. "Angeal. Angeal."

The lazy bum.

"How many birds are you willing to let us take?"

Chapter Text

They spent the next hour hashing out the details over coffee strong enough to give even Genesis the jitters. Or rather, Angeal hashed out the details while Sephiroth pored over the contract, marking it up in his minuscule block print to reflect their particular situation, and Genesis intermittently let out the kind of dejected sighs that Angeal hadn't heard since they had been fourteen.

At some point, Genesis got up, ostensibly to go to the latrine, and did not return. Angeal briefly entertained the mental image of him being pushed in by a cackling gang of chocobos.

Then it was Angeal's turn to answer the call of nature. And hopefully not get bullied too much.

Once outside, Angeal could tell right away that something was awry. Somewhere just out of sight, the flock was audibly in an uproar. He could also hear at least one bird insistently making a sound that was almost but not quite the harsh wark-wark-wark of a feral chocobo.

Angeal went around the main building. Down a shallow rise in the back stood a magnificent oak tree with low, stout branches, and it was at the foot of this that the flock was tightly clustered. Angeal couldn't see what had them riled up at first, and he couldn't see which bird was warking away until he circled around slightly. It turned out to be the gigantic draft chocobo that had pummeled Genesis through the bus window; despite her size and the volume of her calls, the other birds were largely ignoring her.

Angeal could certainly relate.

As he got closer, movement in red caught his eye from higher up in the foliage.

"If you go get your camera, I'm going to strangle you with the strap the next chance I get," Genesis called down to him from where he was perched on a branch, feet pulled up and one sandal missing. Just below him, the heads of six or seven chocobos bobbed and waved with ravenous intent.

Angeal chuckled. "I wasn't going to, but now that you mention it...."

It was at this point that Sephiroth caught up.

"Should I go ask for some greens to lure them off?" he asked, brow furrowed in earnest concern.

"Nah, he'll keep," Angeal said mercilessly. "As long as he doesn't put his feet down. I'll be back in a second; just look after 'em."

By the time Angeal returned, the big draft girl had given up squalling at her flockmates and decided to give ramming a try. This was only marginally more effective, as her sheer bulk made her less agile, and most of the smaller birds dodged her readily.

Genesis aimed a middle finger at Angeal's lens, but soon enough had to put his hand down to keep his balance on the branch, and it was then that Angeal took the shot.

"I hope it's out of focus, you bastard," Genesis griped, albeit without much conviction. "Now will you find some way to get me down from here?"

"Hey, I could just walk away right now," Angeal sniffed. "I'm sure Sephiroth would take pity on you sooner or later. What did you do to provoke them, anyway?"

He expected Genesis to bristle at any or every word of this, if only out of long-conditioned reflex, but Genesis only shrugged. "Everything was going just fine until I ran out of apple quarters," he said whimsically.

From his vantage point, Genesis was the one best positioned to sense the shift in the dynamic of the flock. Sephiroth, ever observant, noticed it next and moved to tap Angeal on the shoulder; but Angeal was no slouch, and he had already detected the subtle tension as well

Angeal turned instinctively in just the right direction to spot what could only be described as a furry missile on a trajectory to flank the birds from the far side of the oak's trunk.

Angeal and Sephiroth beat a hasty retreat up the hill as the flock jolted into motion as a body—all but the big draft chocobo, which had at last collapsed in a comically despondent heap of feathers and refused to move, chocobo dog be damned.

The dog was a joy to watch as it skillfully wheeled the flock around and away from the tree. Within minutes, only a cloud of dust and the forlorn draft bird remained.

Angeal and Sephiroth exchanged glances. "That dog may be the only thing keeping them from leveling this place altogether," Sephiroth said, impressed.

They got Genesis down by having him step onto the palms of their hands as they braced themselves against the trunk.

"Well, then," Genesis said, retrieving his trampled sandal. "I suppose we had better get back to—oh, shi—!"

Angeal had turned away for half a second and whirled about just in time to see Sephiroth dart out of the way of the draft chocobo, wings a-flap, as she nearly flattened him on her way to tackling Genesis. Genesis just barely managed to stay upright under the feathery onslaught.

"Genesis!" Sephiroth exclaimed. He reached out to help—what he thought he could do, Angeal couldn't guess—only to get trilled at sharply for his trouble.

Angeal started to laugh.

Once she decided that Sephiroth was far enough away, the bird began to coo at Genesis like an oversized pigeon. She draped her neck over his shoulder and tucked her head under the opposite arm, the closest thing a chocobo could get to initiating a hug. And Genesis was just standing there, arms stiff and mouth agape, trying to figure out what the hell was happening to him.

"For pity's sake, Gen, hug her back!" Angeal said.

"What?" Genesis squeaked. Nevertheless, he haltingly reached his arms around the chocobo's lofty shoulders. She began to warble happily and rock side to side in his embrace, her enormous feet treading in place. Vastly outweighed, Genesis could do nothing but cling to her.

Sephiroth came over to stand by Angeal's side, so transfixed by the sight that he stumbled on a tussock of grass. "Does that mean—when she was trying to chase away the rest of the flock, was she trying to rescue him?"

"I guess so!" Angeal said. "Seems like your first adoring fan has found you, Genesis."

"Congratulations," Sephiroth said impishly.

"You've got to be joking!" Genesis wailed.

The draft chocobo followed Genesis to the latrine, where he had been headed prior to getting distracted and waylaid, and Angeal and Sephiroth coordinated to keep her from following him in. They did so less out of any regard for Genesis' privacy than out of a conviction that she would demolish the already-battered outbuilding altogether if she tried to get inside it.

Then she trailed him back to the office, where Angeal and Sephiroth again managed to fend her off. She backed away from the porch, hooting mournfully, before turning aside at last.

There were only a few more finishing touches to put on the contract negotiations anyway.

"I still think this is a questionable idea," Genesis said when the paperwork came to him to sign. He crossed his arms and glared at Angeal.

"You don't have to if you don't want to," Hugh said easily. "Chocobo herding ain't dangerous or tricky, but it is work, and you young folks have plenty of that ahead of you in life. Even if you only take the birds you need, it'll be a load off our backs. How 'bout I leave you be, so you can talk it out amongst yourselves?" He took their empty coffee cups into the office and headed out into the yard.

Genesis picked up the pen and tapped it on the table, then tossed it down again.

"He is right," Sephiroth said mildly. "I only meant to get us free rides, not part-time jobs. We will not hold it against you if you choose not to sign." He aimed a pointed look at Angeal, which Angeal thought was somewhat unfair, given that he wasn't the one who took every opportunity to spend their scanty budget on things like incense.

Genesis let out a gusty sigh.

Just then, Loretta emerged from the office, wearing fresh clothes and with a towel draped over her shoulders. "Hey, did Hugh mention?" she said offhandedly. "You guys can use the indoor staff restroom once you sign. And the shower if you want."

"Deal," Genesis said. He slapped his hand down on the pen and dashed off his signature without further ado. "When can we start?"

Chapter Text

"Angeal, correct me if I'm wrong," Sephiroth said, "but don't some of these chocobos have names that are rather strange?"

"I think," Angeal said, turning in his saddle and surveying the ragged line of yellow birds that was strung out over the trail beside them, "that it's more accurate to say that some of these chocobos have names that are normal."

Sephiroth looked puzzled for a second. Then he caught the nuance and nodded. "'Pip,'" he said tentatively, "sounds like a reasonable name for a bird."

It was getting late in the morning, but it wasn't hot out yet. Chocobos, they had learned yesterday during their intensive wrangler training course, needed ten to twelve hours of sleep per day and liked to get more—especially the lazy ones, which were pretty much all of them according to Loretta. So they had loaded up their carts the previous evening with their luggage, a hodge-podge of rental camping gear they were to return to the western outpost, mail and supplies for the waystations along the way, and fodder for humans, birds, and dog. And then they had slept late since, like chocobos, none of them were early risers.

"'Ryka' isn't bad, either," Angeal said. "And 'Ganache' is pretty, if a bit fancy. It sounds like something you'd name the kind of long-haired cat that needs its own satin pillow."

"There's nothing wrong with Bean's name," Genesis added from on high. "It's his hygiene and manners that are deplorable."

"Bean has been nothing but trouble—" Sephiroth said.

"—and Trouble is a sweetheart, of course!" Genesis finished.

Trouble was a sweetheart so far. Angeal refused to trust it; there had to be a reason she was named that. The chocobo called Mud was even more concerning, for the weather forecast that Hugh had had them listen to on the radio called for rain within the next few days. It didn't take much imagination to guess what a mud-loving critter of that size could get up to given half a chance.

"Ah," Sephiroth said. "Genesis, he is making that face again. The one where his mouth is smiling but his eyebrows are angry."

Genesis snorted. "One of these days his face will get stuck like that for good."

"I sure am glad I brought my dad along on this trip," Angeal said, rolling his eyes. "Anyway, yeah, the rest of these birds have some odd names. Who names a chocobo 'Splat'? Or 'Lumpy'? Seems kinda mean."

Splat, Sephiroth's mount, turned his head avidly upon hearing his name. Angeal reached out and ruffled his head crest, earning an appreciative kweh in return. Then, just as eagerly, Splat turned back to Sephiroth in clear expectation of pets from him as well. Sephiroth secured the reins to his saddle so that he could dutifully scuffle his fingers through Splat's cheek feathers until the bird's eyes crinkled shut in delight. Soon enough, Angeal's own mount Dynamite (and wasn't that an alarming name) was craning his neck around to nudge at Angeal's hands with undisguised jealousy.

Peculiar names, filthy habits, and shameless thirst for attention aside, the birds were all right. Certainly, they were less out-of-control now that they were separated from the larger flock. Angeal and his party had been assigned eleven of them altogether, two carts, and the chocobo dog, whose name was Pickle. Pickle's job at the moment was to range back and forth along the line to keep birds from getting too far ahead or behind. Hugh had taught them the basics of how to work with a chocobo dog, but, to be honest, Pickle probably could have escorted the flock on his own if only he could read a map or scold birds for taking more than their fair share of the greens.

Two carts, but three draft birds—for the huge girl Ryka refused to let any of the other chocobos get near Genesis and refused to let Genesis out of her sight. It wasn't exactly convenient to have him ride a bird so tall that even Sephiroth or Angeal would have needed a leg up to mount her, and Genesis looked and felt somewhat silly perched atop her saddle, but other than that, it was simply easier to go along with it.

"What time is it, Genesis?" Angeal asked. "Those sandwiches are starting to call to me."

Genesis looked at his watch. "It's barely eleven, you bottomless pit. What happened to all those eggs and bacon you put away for breakfast?"

Well, that was fair. "Guess I'll starve, then," Angeal grunted. He glanced at Sephiroth, and was gratified to see a look of unabashed disappointment on his ordinarily inscrutable face. Maybe Angeal was a bottomless pit, but at least he wasn't the only one.

Sephiroth pulled his map out of his saddlebag and unfolded it against the back of Splat's neck—something that didn't impress Splat much. "There should be a mile-marker coming up, and after that it is about a half hour to a spot marked for picnicking," he said. Then he tugged the edge of the map out of Splat's beak and put it away. Splat duly ignored the reproachful look on his face.

The mile-marker came and went, and Angeal started to look out for the picnic spot. Genesis had ranged ahead, otherwise Angeal might have been tempted to pester him for the time. For a while, he occupied himself with thoughts of buying a watch once he started to collect regular pay.

In the end, it was the birds who chose their lunch spot, and Angeal had a hunch that this would hold true for the rest of the trip. What chocobos wanted, chocobos would get. Perhaps more experienced wranglers would have been able to chivvy the flock onward, but when Angeal came upon the first few of them bedding down for a nap on a broad grassy verge beside the trail, he didn't have the heart to roust them out. Or, more realistically, the guts.

"This seems to be the place," Sephiroth said. "The birds know this territory well."

"Whether it is or isn't, I don't think we have much of a choice," Genesis said. "Waking them up will set the tone for the rest of the trip by making us extremely unpopular."

"Whatever," Angeal said bluntly. "It's sandwich time." He ignored the wry looks his friends gave each other and dismounted. Dynamite appeared to be already fast asleep on his feet, though he did stir himself long enough to tuck his face under one wing and raise a leg to his feathered undercarriage.

While Sephiroth helped the dog round up the stragglers and Genesis unhitched the cart birds, Angeal spread out a coarse blanket from the collection of rental stuff and began to unpack lunch. Rather than preprepared sandwiches, they had been given a cooler of fixings, kept chilled by a little disc of Ice materia, and a sack of dark brown bread rolls that were gloriously fragrant of herbs. In the back of one cart, there was also a huge barrel of water with a miniature orb of Ice embedded in one of its staves.

Angeal was amused to note that they had been furnished with easily ten times as much lettuce as they ought to have needed. No doubt whichever birds weren't snoozing would drop by soon to hassle them for it.

"Remind me to refresh those spells before we leave," Genesis said as he threw himself down on the blanket. "You know, I could see us doing this for a living."

"We have barely been doing this for four hours," Sephiroth said dryly. "Just wait until it starts raining."

"Then it will be moody and atmospheric!" Genesis insisted. He put his hands behind his head, closed his eyes, and sighed, no doubt envisioning some romantic tableau in which wet socks and chafing had no part to play.

"Water-logged and wind-blown," Angeal muttered under his breath as he began unscrewing jar lids. "Do you want cream-cheese-and-chive spread or garlic mayo on your sandwich?"

"Yes," Genesis and Sephiroth said simultaneously.

Chapter Text

Many of the waystations along the trail doubled as fire lookout towers or lighthouses, and many of the tower keepers were permanent residents who supplied each other with homemade products that ranged from beer to rag rugs to vegetables.

This, unfortunately, meant that the draft chocobos were vocally displeased each morning to find their carts heavier rather than lighter. Even Ryka, who had only Genesis and his surplus of personality to lug around, joined in the cranky chorus out of solidarity. But Angeal soon realized that this was a routine annoyance for them, and they were cheap to bribe into silence with scratches under the chin. Especially if it was Sephiroth administering the sweetener with the hard plastic fingernails of his prosthetic hand.

On the morning of their third day in the saddle, the weather turned "moody and atmospheric"; but because Sephiroth had dutifully listened to the radio forecast the previous day, they were able to get the chocobos ready with brightly-colored leg wraps and raincoats. Pickle the dog also had his own raincoat and little paw boots, which were so adorable Angeal struggled to contain himself.

And so it was that Angeal was forced to admit, even as he listened to Genesis complain about having stepped in a puddle up to his shin, that the steady drizzle and looming skies were oddly pleasant, especially in comparison to the exhausting heat of the previous two days.

It would have been a different story if the fleece jackets and waxed canvas ponchos they had been given weren't so cozy—or if Mud had lived down to his name.

Late that afternoon, the next waystation keeper welcomed them in with warm, woodsmoky towels and a snack of mushroom-and-potato hand pies with buttery crusts to tide them over until supper.

"You're just gonna have to trust that I know what I'm doing," the keeper said with a wink. "With those wild mushrooms, I mean." Then she stepped outside to lock up the gate to the chocobo shed for the night.

Angeal stared at his already half-eaten pie. "Well, that's reassuring," he grumbled half-heartedly.

Genesis said, in between licking his fingers clean, "I wasn't even going—to question it—until she said that!"

"My enhancements should protect me," Sephiroth said complacently, "so I will be ready to cast Poisona on you both if need be."

Genesis couldn't help but roll his eyes, and for once Angeal couldn't fault him for it. Sephiroth was only marginally more resistant to poison than either of them, but, more to the point, there weren't any poisonous mushrooms that acted so fast the victim didn't have time to cast on their own. To the best of Angeal's knowledge, the only natural thing that did was the sting of a jellyfish that inhabited waters off of a single flyspeck island in the far west.

Anyway, it had obviously been a joke.

Angeal stuffed the rest of his pie into his mouth defiantly. Questionable jokes aside, it was scrumptious.

Over dinner that night—homemade ravioli in a summer squash cream sauce, which Angeal wouldn't have been too proud to beg for the recipe of—the conversation turned to their destination.

"So, I'm sure someone's told you," the keeper said slyly, "but Midgar, y'know—Midgar's thataway." She gestured expansively towards what might have been north.

Genesis shot her an unamused look, but, unusually, Sephiroth piped up before he could say anything too sarcastic. "We are touring the world," Sephiroth explained. "I—we wanted to see the sights while we have time on our hands."

"Ooo, he speaks!" the keeper teased gently. "But I gotta say, that's a damned good idea on your part. There are too many kids running off to Midgar these days like their hair's on fire. Cala's girl Nadine almost did, but she missed the cut-off—won't turn eighteen until after the second round of tryouts. Y'all are eighteen, right? Shinra takes that age thing seriously, now—and I heard fake IDs won't faze 'em one bit." She chuckled, drank off her bottle of cider, and pried open another one.

"My birthday is a week before testing starts," Sephiroth said. He had obsessively checked to make sure, and had even floated the idea of spending eighty whole gil on a long-distance phone call to ask, just in case the schedule had changed without notice. "We expect to be in Midgar just before then."

"So you got some time on your hands," the keeper said. "Whaddya gonna do next, sign on as deckhands with a tramp freighter or something? That'd get you to the Western Continent, and some gil besides."

"I considered that," Sephiroth said with a barely-perceptible grin, "but our families disapproved of the idea."

Genesis snorted. "Strenuously!" he said.

In all honesty, their parents probably wouldn't have been too sanguine about them herding chocobos, either. Especially not if they knew how Hugh had taken Angeal aside before they left and given him three tufts of phoenix down for them to wear on lanyards under their shirts, just in case. But at least there was no chance of them getting kidnapped by pirates, or whatever other outlandish scenarios parents tended to dream up.

No, they were far more likely to get headbutted to death. Affectionately.

Angeal excused himself to go to the outhouse, and by the time he got back he regretted not taking his jacket with him even for such a short trip.

"That cold already?" the keeper said, astonished. "This front coming through is no joke! Damned unseasonable, if you ask me. Guess you're gonna hafta bundle up for a couple days."

"The weather's been weird where we're from, too," Angeal said, swiping droplets of drizzle out of his hair as he sat down. "Barely any snow for three winters in a row, but this spring we were knee-deep in it almost into May."

The keeper nodded. "I hear from travelers—a lot of people are saying it's the planet starting to come back into balance."

Sephiroth looked up from his plate with sudden, uncanny intensity. "Because of the new reactors?" he asked.

"Mmm, I dunno," the keeper said, folding her arms over her chest. "Seems too soon, you know? They've only replaced a few of the things so far. A lot of the old nasty ones are still chugging away. But then, I'm no scientist or mystic, so what do I know?"

"Nature," Sephiroth said solemnly, "is resilient."

The keeper shoveled a fresh serving of ravioli onto her plate. "True enough," she said. "I've seen green shoots coming up after the ashes of a wildfire have barely stopped smoking. If the planet can do that, who knows what else it's capable of?"

Chapter Text

The rain stopped, but they did have to keep their jackets on for the next day or so. They also had to armor up, using the lightweight mail that Hugh had lent them, and keep their swords at the ready, for this region was infested with venomous, alligator-like monsters. Few of these were as dangerous as the monsters they had fought exploring the caverns back home, but they traveled in large packs and had a talent for appearing without warning from the swampy thickets that hemmed in this section of the trail. The chocobos were happy to get a few judicious kicks in before they scuttled ahead to gawk as their intrepid wranglers defended them from harm.

"See, now this is satisfying," Angeal grunted as he dispatched the last two of a group of 'gators in a single sweep. "We ought to do it for a living!"

It was midmorning, and they had already had three solid encounters with and countless other sightings of the local fauna.

Sephiroth gave the area one more scan for anything they had missed, then bent to wipe noxious ichor from his blade with delicate care. "We are going to do this for a living," he said primly. "Plans A, B, and C all revolve around killing monsters, merely for different employers."

Angeal gave him a dirty look, only to receive a nonplussed tilt of the head in return. After all these years, Sephiroth could still be too literal by accident sometimes. Angeal sighed.

"Oh, I don't know," Genesis said as he caught up to them, waving away a faint waft of smoke. "I admit to a certain fondness for the backup plans that will result in us paying for our groceries in bundles of one-gil bills. Plan G, for example."

Angeal rolled his eyes and began to clean his own sword. Its sheer breadth—which he had yet to get fully accustomed to—necessitated huge swipes with a rag, or else the surface would show nasty streaks. He said, "You can wear butt floss if you want to, Genesis—I'll pass!"

Sephiroth sheathed his blade once it was clean, but continued to face away from his friends. Angeal glanced up at him and smiled to himself. Sephiroth's shoulders were shaking with barely contained mirth. He had caught that joke, at least.
"I hope you aren't laughing at the idea of me wearing a thong," Angeal said, feigning offence.

"Not at all, Angeal," Sephiroth rasped. "You have a very—I think I will stop talking now."

"Ah, prudent!" Genesis murmured, as if he had any meaningful concept of the word.

After lunch, they ran into the first eastbound travelers they had seen so far: a pair of sturdy-looking older women riding matched blue chocobos and carrying polearms for self-defense. The blues, despite the overwhelming odds against them, made an enthusiastic attempt to mob the rental flock, and the joyful cacophony of beak-clicking that ensued sounded like a Mideel pachinko parlor at full swing.

"Well-met, travelers!" one of the women hailed in a rich contralto voice that had Angeal's undivided attention from the first syllable. "Is there any room in your itinerary to do a little 'gator-stomping with us?"

Hell yes, there was.

For the first hour or so, Angeal and Pickle kept watch over the chocobos and the carts on a bit of defensible high ground while Sephiroth and Genesis accompanied the women on their rampage along the shore of a small, roughly triangular lake not far off the trail. From his vantage point, Angeal could see the occasional wisps of smoke rising over the treetops as Genesis and one of the women stomped 'gators in their own preferred manner. Then it was Sephiroth's turn to birdsit, and finally Genesis'.

As the afternoon wore on, they started to run low on the weaker and smaller monsters, but the fighting seemed to get easier nevertheless—not that it was very hard to begin with, especially given their impromptu party members' experience.

"Once you get a good rhythm going, it's just like batting practice!" one of the women said. She sent the shaft of her polearm zipping through one encircled hand to pierce a monster's head, killing it almost instantly. "Crick, crack, dead!"

"We do this kind of thing to keep limber," the other added, barely breathing hard. "You'll get old one day, believe it or not, and then you'll see what I mean. Use it or lose it!" She pivoted neatly on one heel and batted a monster down just as it was leaping to attack her.

Angeal and Sephiroth exchanged glances across the battlefield. Then Sephiroth stepped through a graceful move that finished off the monster in question in a single stroke. He made a point of catching Angeal's eye again as he readied his blade for the next assault, wherever it came from.

"What is 'batting practice'?" he asked in a voice pitched so that only Angeal could hear.

Angeal shook his head. He had no idea. Some kind of Western Continent thing, possibly.

The two women charged onward, and Sephiroth and Angeal followed quickly on their heels.

It was only when Angeal began to hear barking that he realized how much ground they had covered.

"Wait!" he called. "We're getting too close to the flock!"

To their credit, the two women stopped right away.

"Shit!" one said. "We have to push the gators away from the hill!"

"Or lure them," the other offered.

"We should flank them from the west and drive them back," Sephiroth said. As always, and rightly so, he sounded perfectly confident in his tactical assessment; but, as always, he looked to Angeal for confirmation, and it was only after Angeal nodded his approval that Sephiroth continued. "There are too few of us to safely split up for complex maneuvers, and together we are more than strong enough to defeat the last of them head on. Genesis will be ready to assist if necessary—I will run ahead and signal to him to keep the flock from scattering."

The two women looked at each other and shrugged.

"What he said, I guess!" one said.

"We are agreed, then," Sephiroth said, then broke into a run. His ground-eating strides made his pace look deceptively easy, but Angeal knew he would reach the flock with plenty of time to spare.

Angeal and their companions fanned out slightly to cover more of the lightly-wooded ground as they followed. After a few minutes, Angeal could hear Sephiroth calling to Genesis. There was a concerning moment where Angeal thought that they had forgotten how to direct the dog, but then he heard Genesis' piercing whistle, first telling Pickle to circle the flock one way and then the other.

Sephiroth reappeared a few minutes later.

Just in time to be past the gigantic swamp creature as it reared up from what Angeal had thought—what they all had thought—was just a big slick of mud.

"Sephir—!" Angeal shouted, his voice half dying in his throat.

Things began to happen all at once, and Angeal would later wonder how he had managed to follow any of it, as unenhanced as he was, let alone react usefully. The memory of Sephiroth pivoting to parry the creature's savage talons with such preternatural dexterity and swiftness was going to replay in his head for years. In the next split second, Angeal was face down on the ground before he was even consciously aware of Sephiroth having shouted at them to duck.

There was a ringing whoosh overhead.

Angeal regained his feet in a flurry of wet leaf litter and flung himself into battle. One of the women was swearing as she cast Fira, so overcharged with adrenaline that it winged off of the monster and would have ignited the swamp if it weren't a swamp. Angeal realized that Sephiroth wasn't attacking—or participating in the battle at all. With his eyes focused on the monster, Angeal couldn't tell why. Had the monster disarmed Sephiroth?

In that moment, the Buster sword felt light in Angeal's hands for the first time since he had picked it up at the swordsmith in Mideel.

As he landed three ferocious blows in a row, blows that struck precisely where he intended them to rather than overshooting from the sheer momentum of the giant blade as they so often did, he felt claws whisking through the sleeve of his jacket. But before the pain could even register, cool green magic washed away the injury.

The monster went down hard just as Angeal had settled the blunt edge of Buster into the palm of his left hand, readying for a lunging thrust.

He sprang away to avoid the tidal wave of foul, greasy mud—swamp monster guts?—that gushed forth from the creature as it died.

"I—uh—what?" he said, bewildered. "Is—is that it?"

One of the women whistled.

"Ho-ly shit," the other said. "Damn, kid! Where the hell did that come from?"

"Angeal!" Sephiroth said. Unusually, he sounded just as shocked as Angeal felt. "Was that your limit break? Angeal, sit down—there is a log over here. It is finished. Sit."

Angeal let himself be steered towards and compelled to sit down on the huge fallen tree. Sephiroth pried one of his hands off of Buster's hilt and reclosed it around an already-open potion.

"You're wasting it. I'm not hurt," Angeal protested.

"I know. I healed you myself," Sephiroth said wryly, tapping the Healing materia equipped in his prosthesis. "You need the electrolytes. Genesis will be sorry to have missed this—you overdid it spectacularly."

Angeal stared up at him. "But that thing was—"

Sephiroth's mouth twisted. He patted Angeal's shoulder awkwardly. "Large and it startled us all, but it stood no chance. It was dead before you even hit it the third time, never mind that stop thrust. A pity... it would have been a superbly-executed technique, and I would have enjoyed seeing it."

"Oh."

For lack of anything better to do, Angeal drank his potion. Satisfied, Sephiroth wandered off, first towards their battle companions, who were gawking at the smear of filth on the ground that was the last lingering remnant of their foe, and then back in the direction from which they had come. By the time he returned, Angeal's faculties had mostly come back online. One thing was nagging at him about the battle.

"Hey Sephiroth," he said. "What made you drop back, anyway? It weirded me out for a second."

"Ah," Sephiroth said diffidently. His face was even harder to read than usual. "I should have signaled my intentions. I apologize. It was because of this." He picked up his sheathed sword from where he had leaned it against the log and drew it from the scabbard.

Angeal's jaw dropped.

Only a handspan of the blade remained.

Chapter Text

Genesis was practically vibrating from the suspense when they crested the rise and rejoined the flock. The sun was heading for the horizon, however, and he had to settle for the short version of the story (Sephiroth's notoriously laconic after-action report) rather than the long version (Angeal's equally notorious rambling yarn) while they hastened to get the flock back on the road. What really placated Genesis was the souvenir: one of the monster's vicious talons, which their impromptu party members had salvaged from the rapidly decaying hulk before parting ways.

"I wonder if it could be made into an earring," Genesis mused, running one finger over the inner curve of the iron-hard claw.

"Do you want a leg up or not, Gen?" Angeal said tetchily. "It's way too heavy. It'll give you a headache—or gouge a hole in your neck."

"Don't be crude, Ange," Genesis sniffed. He finally put his prize away in his saddlebag, then grunted as Angeal hoisted him onto Ryka's back. Ryka wheeled around in a loop and flapped her wings to celebrate having her favorite person back where he belonged.

They were riding along at a brisk clip by the time Genesis circled back to the one key detail that Sephiroth had edited from his account.

"So why was it that you fell back to support Angeal's assault?" he asked.

Angeal glanced over just in time to see Sephiroth wince uncharacteristically.

"It was," Sephiroth temporized, "a good assault." He looked over to Angeal, and Angeal tried not to look too unsympathetic in return.

Genesis made a skeptical noise. "Really," he said. "Not that I doubt Angeal's tactical prowess, of course, but... really?"

"Really."

Genesis flicked a bit of his hair back. "Don't worry," he said with breezy insouciance, "I'm not your mother. If you came within a hair's breadth of being gored to death or disemboweled, I'm not going to get overwrought about it."

Angeal snorted. What a terrible liar.

Sephiroth also raised an eyebrow at this. After a long pause, he said stiffly, "It is somewhat embarrassing. Please don't overreact."

"Who, me?" Genesis said, placing a hand on his chest.

Angeal glared at him.

Finally, Sephiroth relented. He reached down to where he had strapped his scabbard to his saddle like normal and thumbed the guard to release it. For a second, he caressed the hilt with equal parts wistfulness and chagrin, then drew the broken blade out.

No doubt Genesis' inarticulate squawk could be heard for miles around.

Ryka immediately came to a halt and craned her neck around so that she could shove her forehead against Genesis' chest in a placating gesture. She burbled as if trying to soothe a distressed chick in the nest.

"Oh, for pity's sake," Angeal muttered to himself.

"I said not to overreact," Sephiroth said peevishly. "Why do you always overreact?" He snapped the shorn-off blade back into its scabbard. "It doesn't really matter anyway."

This, combined with Ryka's fussing, failed to assuage Genesis. "What do you mean it doesn't matter?" he demanded, gesticulating with one hand and petting Ryka's neck with the other. "That sword cost half of your Shinra settlement money! You spent months deciding what to ask the swordsmith for!"

"It did not cost anywhere near half," Sephiroth insisted. "And I only spent months because I didn't have enough experience to know what I needed. I have tried to like it and adapt to it, but ultimately it wasn't the correct blade for me."

"Sephiroth!"

"I was going to sell it in the next town anyway!" Sephiroth snapped. Now it was Splat who turned his head to his rider, chirring softly in concern.

Genesis gawped.

They rode on in tense silence for a few minutes. Then Genesis began to declaim:

"The fox has a longing for grapes:
He jumps, but the bunch still escapes.
So he goes away sour;
And, 'tis said, to this hour
Declares that he's no taste for grapes."

Angeal choked on his own spit trying not to laugh, not at the limerick but because, for a moment, Sephiroth looked so absolutely perplexed. He opened and closed his mouth a few times and his hands wobbled on his chocobo's reins. Quickly, though, he gave up trying to make sense of it.

He fixed Genesis with a harrowing stare, stooped over without breaking eye contact to murmur something into Splat's ear that had the bird's immediate attention, and straightened up.

"Loveless, Act V," he said with silken rancor. He waited just long enough for Genesis to process this, then spurred Splat into an explosive gallop before Genesis could actually do anything about it.

Genesis spluttered. "You—you—you uncultured swine!" he roared. Ryka trumpeted riotously in sympathy, and they took off in heavy pursuit.

Over the thundering footsteps, Angeal could hear what sounded weirdly like hooting laughter: Splat helpfully filling in for his undemonstrative rider. If he shaded his eyes against the steeply-angled sunlight, he could also see Genesis trying to root around in his saddlebag as he was jostled by Ryka's headlong sprint. Hopefully, instead of a Fire materia, he would only turn up that silly flea-market Transform that could intermittently be persuaded to turn someone into a toad. If that someone was occasionally the caster rather than the target, it served Genesis right. On the other hand, Sephiroth probably deserved it this time, too. It wouldn't have killed him to cite any act other than five.

Angeal sighed. He ruffled his chocobo's head crest. "Sorry, Dynamite," he said ruefully. "Looks like we're gonna be camping out after all."

Dynamite sighed, too.

"I can't help but wonder," Angeal said as he unloaded a fresh armload of blankets from the cart later that evening, "what it feels like for a chocobo when it gets turned into a toad. Do you think they have any idea what's going on?"

It seemed like a perfectly reasonable question to Angeal, but both Sephiroth and Genesis took time out of their camp chores to look at Angeal like he was out of his wits. Genesis shook his head in mute despair and went back to nursing the campfire to life.

Sephiroth, on the other hand, became more thoughtful. "I suppose," he said, "that it depends on whether the chocobo knows what is going on to begin with. Loopy, for example...."

They both turned to gaze at the draft bird in question, who happened to be enraptured at that moment by the sight of an inchworm dangling on a strand of spider web from a nearby tree. This was all well and good, except that his bill was hanging slackly open and he was swaying his head from side to side in a way that made Angeal feel dizzy just to watch. And while the rest of the flock had dug into their dinner with a gusto that verged on derangement, Loopy had been doing this without pause since Genesis had unhitched him.

Angeal grunted and turned back to the contents of the cart. "Well, your birds certainly seem to remember something about the experience." Ryka and Splat had not stopped hopping around—or ribbiting at each other—since the spell effect had worn off. "Ugh. Who the hell packed this cart last? It's a disaster! We don't even use most of this stuff!"

Without missing a beat, Genesis and Sephiroth chorused, "You did!"

The annoying thing was, they were probably right.

Chapter Text

Somewhere along the way, they had been supplied with a tin filled with several bars of chocolate, honeyed crackers stamped in the shape of a chocobo's face, and plush homemade marshmallows.

This, inevitably, provoked an argument.

"You can't make marshmallows at home, Angeal!" Genesis said, leaning so close to the fire as he toasted his treats that Ryka was tugging nervously on the back of his t-shirt. "They're inflated in a factory with vacuum extruders or something!"

Angeal poked a pair of marshmallows—obviously hand-cut—onto a stick and passed it to Sephiroth. "Inflated? What on Gaia are you talking about?" he said incredulously. "Look, they're not exactly easy, but the only thing special you need is a good mixer and a candy thermometer."

Genesis scoffed. "'Not exactly easy'—that's what you said about soufflé!"

Sephiroth shot Angeal a sympathetic look across the fire as he settled down against Splat's side and applied himself to finding the optimal angle for toasting his marshmallows without blistering his knuckles.

"That soufflé failed because the motor in Ma's hand mixer is gutless," Angeal said, spearing marshmallows for himself, "not because it's mysterious witchcraft. One of these days, I'll get a stand mixer just to show you how this stuff works. Chiffon cake, marshmallows, mochi... there are even attachments for making pasta or sausage."

Angeal sensed Sephiroth's piercing gaze turn on him from across the fire. "Pasta?" Sephiroth echoed. "You can make pasta?"

Angeal's shoulders sagged.

"Your marshmallow is on fire," Genesis said placidly. "It's going to fa—oh, there it goes."

From there, the route grew hilly for a short while as they crossed the spine of a peninsula that ran due south. Then they rejoined the coastline and the muggy, buggy heat that went with it this time of the year. One morning, Sephiroth got fed up with sweating all day, stripped off his shirt, and refused to put it back on.

Genesis had no trouble healing the sunburn that resulted, but there was nothing to be done for the bumper crop of mosquito bites. Sephiroth just had to endure them.

"Aren't you supposed to be immune to these kinds of things? Unlike us mere mortals?" Genesis teased.

Sephiroth huffed. "I am enhanced, not omnipotent," he said. "Anyway, I seem to remember an experiment that found mako infusions made the individual more enticing to mosquitoes rather than less."

"Hojo fed you to mosquitoes?" Angeal said, affronted. It wasn't the worst thing he had ever heard about Sephiroth's earlier childhood, but it still sounded pretty objectionable. "How old were you?"

"Just samples of blood and unlaundered exercise clothes," Sephiroth said with a shrug. His lip curled in amusement a moment later. "Thinking about it, I might have been the same age as you were when your parents figured out you were faking fevers to get out of going to the family picnic. The one held at Cidermill Pond every June even though it's massively infested?"

"...That's different," Angeal sniffed.

"It is, because he didn't actually have to get bitten—or eat your Uncle George's salsa!" Genesis crowed.

On the evening of their arrival at the final waystation on the route, the flock went into their shed uneventfully, all sleepy whuffling and affable kwehs. Even Ryka let Genesis kiss her beak goodnight and leave with no more than the usual amount of flapping and carrying on.

In retrospect, the chocobos' manageable behavior since their departure—relative to the mayhem at the eastern outpost—ought to have made them all wary.

"Angeal, we're missing one," Genesis called. It was some time after the last of the morning haze had burned off, but before the real heat of the day set in. It was normal for individual chocobos to range in and out of view, but Genesis had been shifting restlessly in his saddle for a while now, and some cue had transmuted his unease into certainty.

Angeal signalled a halt to Sephiroth, who was riding some fifty paces ahead, and wheeled Dynamite around.

Genesis was standing in his stirrups to get a better vantage point, and he glanced down as Angeal approached. Not for the first time, Angeal wished they had a pair of binoculars.

"Which one do you think?" Angeal asked.

"I'm reasonably sure it's Chicken," Genesis said. "She's usually in the rear, and I've accounted for the other slow birds. Sephiroth will be able to say which ones are up front."

Angeal tentatively stood up to see if he could see for himself, but the terrain was too uneven and Dynamite wouldn't stand still.

"They are straying more than usual today," Sephiroth said as he approached. "I sent Pickle ahead to regroup the vanguard."

They decided that Angeal would backtrack alone while Genesis and Sephiroth worked to organize the rest of the flock, and if Angeal didn't return or signal after half an hour, they would all follow.

Angeal didn't have to search long before he found traces of the lost chocobo: shed feathers, and quite a lot more than the flock ordinarily left behind in its wake. Perhaps the rear guard had had one of their many squabbles here, and Chicken had been left behind in the fuss. He looked around for a minute, not finding other clues, but then heard a low but hopeful hoot from much closer than he expected.

"There you are, Chicken!" Angeal said. "What have you gotten yourself into, bird?"

Down a short but rocky cleft in the ground just out of view from the trail, the missing bird perked up immediately upon seeing Angeal and Dynamite. She limped forward a few steps but came to a shuddering, weary halt. There were dribbles of blood in the scuffed-up dust beneath her feet, but thankfully not too much.

The scrape up her right leg looked shallow but long, ragged, and encrusted with dirt and sand—not a serious wound, but no doubt it stung like hell.

Angeal sucked a breath through his teeth. "All right, take it easy," he murmured soothingly.

Angeal had curative materia equipped, but he knew the injury would need to be at least rinsed first, so that the skin wouldn't heal over grit. He had learned the hard way how horribly that could itch. He dismounted and got Dynamite to sit, lest he fall victim as well to the loose and treacherous gravel all around, then signalled using two weak bursts of Lightning aimed at the sky. Then he went back and slowly guided Chicken around a shallower, less perilous part of the slope and back towards the trail.

Once Angeal let Dynamite up, he rushed to his flockmate's side and began to preen her. For lack of anything better to do while he waited, Angeal took up Chicken's other wing and parsed through its feathers with his fingers. As tired as she was, Chicken was gravely concerned by this at first, but soon relaxed once she realized Angeal knew his way around a wing.

Sephiroth and Genesis were slow to show up, but once they arrived they wasted no time.

Well, they wasted some time.

"Anything I touch will get—" Sephiroth said, unaccountably hesitant.

"That's not important right now!" snapped Genesis. "We'll clean it up later. Just bring the water and rags."

Chapter Text

Aided by the illustration of a chocobo's leg anatomy in the wrangler's handbook, which Genesis had been monopolizing since day one, Genesis came to essentially the same conclusion that Angeal had.

"It's not severe," he said. "It probably stings ferociously, but a simple spell would easily suffice to get her back on the road with little discomfort or risk of infection."

"But?" Angeal said, sensing that there was more to it.

Genesis sat back on his haunches and crossed his arms over his knees, scrutinizing Chicken's leg once again. "I think," he said slowly, "I can do better than that. But it will take extra time, and you'll have to keep her still throughout the process."

"What would be the benefits and drawbacks?" Sephiroth asked, ever willing to ask the incisive questions.

"A basic spell will almost certainly leave a scar, which would be stiff for several days," Genesis said. "If I use more precise casting, there will be neither scarring nor stiffness. But I'll likely chew through my mana doing it."

Sephiroth considered this seriously. "This area is not supposed to have any monster activity. However, that mud monster was not supposed to be there either, according to the guidebook; with me disarmed and you depleted, our collective defense would be substantially weakened."

"I'm perfectly capable with my sword," Genesis retorted hotly, "and you are perf—reasonably capable of magic!"

Sephiroth raised his eyebrows, unimpressed.

"Oh, just give it a rest, guys," Angeal said. "We're practically within shouting distance of the outpost, anyway. Genesis, I think you should try it. Maybe it isn't necessary, but if there's no risk to the chocobo...."

"Never in life," Genesis said.

Genesis assigned Angeal to sit on Chicken's huge foot with his legs crossed over her toes and his arms wrapped around her ankle, and this was when Angeal learned that birds didn't have backward-bending knees. This might have touched off an argument if Genesis weren't laser-focused on his task. Sephiroth's job was to keep an eye out for problems while he held a towel over Chicken's head and soothed her. Even Dynamite stepped in, winding his neck around hers for much the same purpose—though in practice, she looked grumpy at his breathing in her ear.

That would distract her, at least.

Genesis created a seat for himself on the ground out of folded blankets, then rolled up a towel so that Angeal's full weight wouldn't be resting on Chicken's toes. Then he scrubbed his hands thoroughly and settled in to work.

Until he finally looked away, Angeal had a close-up view of Genesis' task and the intense concentration on his friend's face. The materia in Genesis' bracer pulsated irregularly with soft green light as he trickled out the spell at precise intervals and channeled the magic through his fingertips exactly where it was needed. All the while, his hands moved with consummate care over the wound, and not lightly either. He had to use some force to get the edges of the tough skin to line up and stay put long enough for the magic to seal them together. At some point, Genesis' mouth drifted open and he began to whisper something to himself that Angeal couldn't make out a single word of.

Genesis didn't even notice when Sephiroth began to hum.

Angeal certainly did.

He also noticed the dramatic effect it had on Chicken, who had been wriggling and straining against all of them since the start. After a few minutes of Sephiroth's tuneless improvisation, she heaved a deep sigh and settled considerably.

"Keep doing that, Seph," Angeal said.

"I will," Sephiroth murmured, not bothering to object to the nickname.

And then Genesis was done. He sprawled backwards in the dust as if he had just finished running a marathon. His hands were bloody, and he flexed them repeatedly to work out the stiffness.

"There has to be an easier way to do that," he gasped. "Has to be. I'll take that ether right about now."

Without waiting for a response, he rolled over onto his side and went promptly to sleep.

"Um," Angeal said after a solid minute. "I—I guess we can let her go? D'you think?"

Whatever the answer might have been, Chicken's patience was at an end. She bucked them all off with an exasperated hiss, flung the towel to the ground, and darted off—fortunately, away from the hazardous terrain. For a while, she inspected and tested her leg, chattering a warning at anyone that dared to stray near her.

Angeal tossed a blanket over Genesis and set down the requested ether by his head, then stooped to pick up the towel. "That was a good call on the humming, Sephir—hey, what's all this sticky stuff?"

Sephiroth looked abashed. "Tree sap," he explained. "That is why we took so long. It is all over me, the dog, four of the chocobos, and everything I or they touch. Water does nothing to remove it, and our single bar of soap is buried in one of the carts." He took back the towel, even though it was too late: the sap was on Angeal's hands now.

Pickle, whose fur was matted with gunk, was keeping the four miscreant chocobos, whose feathers were in an even worse state, apart from the flock. They looked—

Well, the word "hangdog" didn't quite cover it.

"So, Trouble did turn out to be—" Angeal said, trying not to laugh.

Sephiroth nodded. "She was the first to find the tree and begin... rubbing on it."

Angeal shoved his hands in his pockets, then regretted it. "Gaia, this stuff is like glue!" he said.

"Except," Sephiroth said astringently, "glue dries."

"All right, you know what?" Angeal said finally. "This"—he pointed at the sorry bunch of chocobos—"is above our paygrade. I'm pretty sure that bar of soap is a figment of your wishful thinking, too. Once Genesis is finished with his beauty nap, let's just get them home and—"

Sephiroth smirked. "Wash our hands of them?"

"And our clothes and faces—and hair," Angeal said wickedly, for he had noticed that Sephiroth had, probably unconsciously, pushed his hair back from his face and in the process gotten sap in it.

Sephiroth didn't swear very often, but when he did it was hilarious.

Chapter Text

The sap-covered chocobos tried to hang back, whether out of embarrassment or out of apprehension for whatever dreadful form of bathing it would take to get them clean again. The usual dust bath probably wouldn't suffice. But Pickle was having none of their dawdling, even though he was probably smart enough to realize that he was in for a bath, too.

And, as it turned out, "within shouting distance" was more accurate than Angeal could have expected. Just before they turned onto the grounds of the outpost proper, they began to hear strains of a loud argument. As the voices resolved into distinct words and phrases, though, Angeal became increasingly convinced that the dispute was facetious, at least in part. Two people were winding each other up on purpose, but doing it at the top of their lungs.

Well, Angeal could relate to that.

The western outpost was almost a mirror image of the eastern one, minus the depredations of the unruly flock. The main building featured similar striking brickwork, but the garden and porch were intact. Staked out front was a temporary wooden sign with "NO BIRDS AVAILABLE - CHECK BACK SOON" painted in tidy yellow letters, and from its lower edge hung a piece of cardboard with today's date in red marker.

As Angeal climbed the stairs to the porch, the argument inside rose to a crescendo and stopped abruptly. Then a weedy, middle-aged man came barging through the door with such force that it ricocheted off of the outer wall, and if Angeal had been any closer he would have likely been knocked flat.

"Oh, Gaia!" the man muttered—so meekly it was hard to believe he had taken any part in the argument just prior—as he sidestepped to avoid barreling into Angeal. "Beg your pardon; excuse me; hello there." He turned back to the door and bellowed, "Mum, they're here!"

"Hello," Angeal said awkwardly, for the man was barely paying attention. "We're the temporary, uh, wranglers?"

"Sorry, sorry," the man said with a strained but indistinct gesture. "The person you'll be wanting to talk to is my mother, Cala. I just fix things here."

Then he scuttled away.

Angeal put his hands on his hips. "All right," he said to himself. There had been a certain, telling emphasis on things, and, having dealt with the social quirks of his friends over the years, Angeal could guess why. "I guess I'll talk to Cala, then."

He didn't have to wait long.

"Odin's tits!" came a voice from within. "They're early is what they are! I haven't even started cleaning out the bunkhouse yet! Ooh—!"

Charging through doors at full tilt, Angeal thought as he sprang backwards, must run in the family.

"Sorry, sorry, sorry!" the tiny woman warbled cheerfully. "Welcome, and thank you so kindly for your help. I'm Cala, and you must be—" She thrust out a hand to Angeal.

"Angeal, ma'am. Pleasure to meet you," Angeal said. "I don't mean to be rude, but my hands are covered in—"

"Tree sap!" Cala exclaimed. "Oh, not again! These birds are always—but anyway, I think we still have a few jugs of oil left from the last time. No worries! I'll help you get the flock settled in and then you can have a nice bath and a glass of tea while we do the hard part."

Cala followed Angeal to the open-sided corral that served as a staging area.

Sephiroth had dismounted, but, at a loss as to what he could do without spreading sap around, he was standing around with an absent expression on his face. By now, his hair was stuck to his skin, clothes, and itself in multiple places, and Angeal had never seen him look so disheveled.

"Apart from the four birds and the dog, Sephiroth is pretty well covered in it," Angeal explained. "And probably Splat's tack and Dynamite's, too. But I don't think we got it in their feathers, thankfully."

"What, pray tell, is a Sephiroth?" Cala asked, more amused than anything else.

"That is my name, ma'am," Sephiroth said. "I would shake your hand, except..." He gestured helplessly.

Cala chortled. "No worries, young man." She pointed out a wooden building across the yard. "If you like, you can head straight for the bath while I handle the birds."

"That would probably be for the best," Sephiroth said with open relief and headed off.

Cala put her hands on her hips and surveyed the flock. "Thought there were three of you?" she said, circling around the two parked carts. "Oh, here he is! Looks like Ryka's got herself another ginger boyfriend! At least this one's closer to her age, I suppose."

Angeal opened his mouth and shut it again. "'Ginger boyfriend'?" he echoed. "Another?"

Genesis, having deemed it both uncouth and unsanitary to eat in the saddle, had chosen to ride the last little bit of the journey on the tailgate of a cart while he polished off the remainder of their food supply. He was, he claimed, feeding up his magic. Ryka, therefore, had decided that she would complete the trip trailing along behind, keeping pace with her feet while resting her head solicitously in Genesis' lap.

And that was where Cala found them, for Genesis had nodded off again and slept right through their arrival.

Cala looked at Angeal and put a finger to her lips, winking merrily. Then she pulled a little compact camera out of her pocket.

Angeal grinned. Genesis was going to love that.

Once the flock and the dog were variously unhitched, unsaddled, fed, and watered, Angeal made a token offer to help out with the de-sapping operation, only to be cackled at and shooed off to the bath, with Genesis not far behind.

Genesis, at least, had the sense to bring them clean clothes to change into.

When they emerged from the bathhouse, scrubbed clean and in some places raw, it was to a scene of controlled chaos. An army of neighborhood children had been summoned to help oil, bathe, and dry the dog and the chocobos. Angeal and his friends, on the other hand, were firmly relieved of their dirty clothes and instructed to stay put on the porch, where lounge chairs, a huge pitcher of iced tea, and an array of snacks had been laid out for them to enjoy while they watched the entire slippery, sudsy spectacle.

"I feel like a conquering hero," Genesis said as he nibbled on a cracker. "Although I imagine, historically speaking, that conquering heroes are not ordinarily harried by small children to hand over their laundry.

Angeal snorted. "I keep thinking I should offer to help, except I'm pretty sure getting laughed at is the mildest response I was going to get."

Sephiroth sighed, pleased beyond measure to have his hair clean again. "The children certainly look like they are enjoying themselves."

Chapter Text

"Why, I imagine our insurance will cover this," Cala said as she looked over Sephiroth's broken sword. "Unless they decide to get their knickers in a knot over... something or other." She glanced at Sephiroth and shrugged, then resheathed the truncated blade and handed it back.

Sephiroth blinked and took it. "Really?" he said.

"Sure, you'll be covered under our employee policy. It's in your contract, after all. No worries!" Cala said with irrepressible cheer, then immediately backtracked. "Well, there will be gobs of paperwork, certainly. But we can handle that; you just give us someone back home to get in touch with. Since I doubt you're carting around the receipt for your sword."

Sephiroth's head swiveled towards Angeal, his eyes wide and brows raised with what passed for open mirth with him, and Angeal sighed. Yes, he was carrying around a copy of the invoice for his sword. Clearly, it was the sort of thing that came in handy at least once in a while!

Angeal wandered off. It was astounding how aggravating Sephiroth could be without even opening his mouth.

In the main room, Genesis was still where they had left him paging through one of the outpost's extensive library of photo albums: the one that showcased Ryka and her favored riders (and drivers—she was a draft chocobo, after all), dating back to her rental debut as a three-year-old.

"Bet your ego's taking a bit of a beating?" Angeal teased.

Genesis looked up, and Angeal had to stop himself from laughing at the expression on his face. To Genesis' credit, there was more than a little amusement mixed in with the consternation and dismay.

"My ego had no idea what to do with the jealous devotion of a gigantic draft chocobo in the first place," Genesis retorted, "so finding out that I'm just one among a whole assortment of redheaded—redheaded paramours is not exactly—" He gestured vaguely and trailed off, for once at a loss for words. Or, more likely, he had such a profusion of words that he couldn't choose just one or two.

"Sure," Angeal said. "I believe you." He paused and squinted dubiously. "'Paramours,' really?"

Genesis shrugged. "Some of these people are clearly married," he said cheekily. "There are twins, Angeal. 'Infinite in mystery is the gift of the—'"

"Nope, I'm leaving." Angeal pivoted on his heel and headed for the door. "That one doesn't even fit."

Genesis smirked. "'My friend, do you fly away—?'"

Angeal waved a hand without looking back. "That one fits, but still—tell it to your feathery yellow paramour, Genesis, I'm outta here!"

"Barbarian!" Genesis called after him jauntily.

Angeal knew he would regret going outside: the weather was oppressive, and the air conditioning in the outpost was so pleasant after days under the sun. But he was disturbed by the possibility that Sephiroth would enjoy getting into the weeds of insurance reimbursement, and Genesis would be insufferable about it if Angeal retreated so quickly. The chocobos, at least, would still be good company.

Except for Bean. No number of baths would make Bean any less of a smelly creepster.

Angeal reached for the doorknob, but something made him hesitate. Sure enough, the door banged open with some violence a fraction of a second later as another tiny woman came barreling in. She had an unidentifiable but clearly heavy object in her arms.

"Mum! Mum, the vet's finished with Spud! And there's another group wanting a campsite!" she shouted. Then, though she didn't slow down much, she noticed Angeal. "Oh, blimey, I'm sorry!" she called over her shoulder.

Definitely a familial trait.

A series of bangs and crashes, accompanied by sharp but mutual recriminations, issued from the office. Genesis set aside the photo album and joined Angeal to gawk.

"It's like something out of a cartoon," he said whimsically. "I wonder if they realize."

"Reminds me of my extended family," Angeal said, shaking his head. "They certainly don't."

Shortly, Sephiroth came scooting out of the office doorway looking perturbed at having found himself amidst such chaos with so little warning. He quickly schooled his expression, but there was no disguising his habitual awkwardness as he joined them as well.

After much confused but heated yelling, Cala emerged from the office with a wild, harassed expression on her face. She shut the door behind her and leaned against it.

"So," she said, too brightly, "I don't suppose you boys have ever had the chance to pet a chocobo chick, have you? Let's get out of here. Before she tries any more delegating."

The rules were that they had to introduce themselves to the yet-unnamed chick one at a time before they could be let into the paddock all at once. Spud, the chick's mother, was seated like a queen in a fragrant whorl of dried grass in one corner of the enclosure. She had been dozing while her chick pottered around and scratched in the dust, but now she was alert and watchful.

"It's more for Spud's benefit than the chick's," Cala explained quietly. "Go in slowly, crouch down, and reach out your hand so the chick can investigate you first. She'll peck, but it won't hurt, so it'll help if you can keep yourself from flinching."

They played rock-paper-scissors to decide who went first, and for once Sephiroth was left staring at his hand as if it had betrayed him. He even muttered something about the battery running low—a likely story.

Genesis was trying to follow the instructions—he really was—but the chick wasn't exactly on the same page. As soon as she noticed him squatting down, her spindly feet whirred into motion and she burst into peals of cheeps and chattering as she mobbed him.

"She's so fas—hwoof!" Genesis said as he sprawled on his ass in the dust. The chick hopped into his lap and began headbutting him in the chest, still peeping with frenzied enthusiasm.

"Or... she might do that to you," Cala chuckled. She turned to Angeal and Sephiroth and winked. "You both can go in if you want—Spud's already bored of you, the daft creature."

The chick was about double the size of a hatchling but was still covered in down rather than feathers. As Angeal and Sephiroth stepped into the paddock, she hurled herself off of Genesis and headed for them. Sephiroth glanced at Angeal in alarm and froze mid-step, lest the little bird get underfoot.

"Maybe shuffle your feet, I guess?" Angeal said. "Gaia, she's practically just a yellow blur!"

"You can pick her up if you like," Cala said. "Try not to lift her much above your knees, though."

Genesis gently captured the chick so that Angeal and Sephiroth could sit without worrying about squashing her. When he set her down again, she began to ricochet between the three of them with such manic energy that Angeal was worried she would hurt herself. But every time she went sprawling in the dust, she righted herself so quickly that she sometimes went tumbling again in the opposite direction.

Over dinner at the outpost that evening, Cala asked them to come up with suggestions for names for the chick.

"Tater?" Angeal said.

"Nice try," Cala said, "but that's Spud's mum's name already, so..."

"Come on, Angeal," Genesis said, "be a little creative!" He rattled off a half dozen names, only some of which Angeal recognized.

Sephiroth looked skeptical. "That is just a list of your favorite literary characters, Genesis. How will she fit in among flockmates with names like 'Chicken' and 'Splat'?"

"Well, what's your bright idea?" Genesis shot back.

Sephiroth made a face. "How about... 'Pelican'?"

Cala rested her chin in her hands and hummed thoughtfully. "Why Pelican?"

Sephiroth put his fork down and thought about it with a seriousness that verged on absurdity. "...Pelicans are funny," he said at last. "And a chocobo named Pelican is especially funny."

Angeal raised a pointed eyebrow at Genesis. With feigned reluctance, he said, "I can't fault his reasoning."

"I can!" Genesis exclaimed, flinging his hands in the air.

Chapter Text

Angeal felt guilty and seasick. Mostly seasick, but the guilt didn't help.

They had all accepted the possibility that passage over the open ocean to the Western Continent on a much smaller ship would be rougher than travel on the big ferry, which had hugged sheltered coastlines for much of its route. But Angeal couldn't have known that he would be so much less affected by the heaving of the deck than his companions. He wasn't ungrateful for the reprieve, but it didn't seem fair.

Bringing them potions was the least he could do, after having argued in favor of the cheaper tickets and prevailed.

With their unexpected earnings from chocobo herding, they could have afforded nicer berths on a more stable ship, but Angeal had staked out the position that saving the money would give them more leeway once they arrived in Midgar. In a worst-case scenario, if the outpost's insurance didn't pay out, Sephiroth would be able to use the money to replace his sword. Modestly, Sephiroth had offered to use a Shinra-issued blade in such an event, but Genesis had been incensed at the thought of Sephiroth using a standard-issue anything, and Angeal pointed out that they weren't yet sure they'd even be working for Shinra.

Now, though, Sephiroth's face was just about as gray as his hair, and Genesis had buried himself under a sad heap of bedding, not in his bunk but on the floor of his cabin. He claimed the harder surface made the nausea slightly more tolerable for whatever reason, but when Angeal tried to pass the tip on to Sephiroth, he received only a wretched groan in response.

It was probably for the best that they each had their own closet-sized berth to suffer in. Some miseries didn't bear sharing.

Once Angeal finished his delivery of crushed ice and curatives (useless in this case but for the electrolytes), he fled the closeness of the lower decks. It was embarrassing to be seen clinging to the rail, but fixing his eyes on the horizon did seem to help.

"In the past, I have experienced neither carsickness nor airsickness," Sephiroth said sullenly, "so I do not understand why I should fall victim to seasickness." He took a saltine cracker between thumb and index finger, glanced at it with disdain, and inserted it into his mouth.

They were seated three abreast on Angeal's bunk. Two and a half days into the passage, the worst of the seasickness had come and gone—or so they fervently hoped, though they dared not check the weather forecast—and so Sephiroth and Genesis had asked the steward to give their cabins a much-needed cleaning and airing-out. Angeal had tried to chivvy the pair topside for some horizon therapy in the meantime, to no avail.

"Different motions," Genesis said blearily through a mouthful of ice chips. He lifted one pallid hand as if to demonstrate, then thought better of it and retracted it into his cocoon of blankets.

"That's probably it," Angeal said. He nudged the packet of saltines toward Genesis. "Like how I get carsick when my mom drives, but never with anyone else."

Sephiroth raised both eyebrows. "Speaking of your mother, perhaps it is untrue that I have never been carsick," he said dryly. "I may have mistaken it at the time for terror."

On any other front, Angeal might have been able to defend his mother, but in this case... "Yeah, fair," he said.

They fell into companionable silence. Angeal was beat, and the others had to be far worse off. After a while, Genesis reached for the crackers, and it reminded Angeal of a video they had watched in school of an amoeba eating a plankton by engulfing it with its pseudopod. He kept the comparison to himself, though.

"So," he said idly, "what's next? Wasn't this where you were thinking of changing our route, Sephiroth?"

Sephiroth had been on the verge of dozing off, his head on an inevitable trajectory for Angeal's shoulder, but he jolted awake at the question.

"The map is in my bag," he said. He sounded perfectly alert, but Angeal knew it was a front. "But from what I remember from the guidebook, we will be passing south of the Gongaga region and north of Cactus Island over the next few days. The Gongaga area is—"

"—Just a jungle, isn't it?" Genesis said. "Named after the tiniest, most backwater village in it?"

Sephiroth nodded. "There are several major cities in the region, but the town of Gongaga is, if anything, even more remote than Banora. I don't think it even gets bus service."

Genesis shuddered dramatically. "Gaia. Imagine not even having Mideel to escape to on the weekends! Nothing to do but drink, except that's the kind of place where the general store—if they have one—only stocks cheap domestic piss! I'd have run away years ago."

"To become a chocobo vet!" Angeal teased. There was little room to dodge Genesis' elbow without jostling Sephiroth, so Angeal decided to just take it. The blankets muffled the blow anyway. "Hey, Cala said you'd be great at it, didn't she?"

"Naturally, I would have run away to become an actor," Genesis sniffed. "But I suppose magic would have been a respectable enough occupation to pay the bills until I was discovered. Some of the most brilliant players spend years in the wilderness before making their big break, after all. I'm not so arrogant as to assume I'd be any different."

Sephiroth snorted, and if it sounded more like an incipient snore, even Genesis felt no need to point it out. "I certainly can't see you waiting tables with any success," he said.

"Mmm-hmm," Angeal said. "He'd be dumping plates of food in rude people's laps on a daily basis."

Genesis didn't even attempt to deny it. "Rude people suck," he said. "No, don't scoff at me, Angeal. Why are you picking on me in my vulnerable state?"

"I did not scoff!" Angeal said. "I definitely didn't. Did you hear me scoff, Seph?"

Sephiroth made a noncommittal noise. Then, with palpable finality, he sagged against Angeal's side and his breathing settled into a deep and even rhythm.

"He never did say where we're going next," Genesis said.

Chapter Text

The ship they were aboard was in no sense a pleasure cruise, but it did have two scheduled port calls, the first of which was a three-day stop in a tropical locale for which brochures were helpfully provided. The day before their arrival there, Sephiroth examined all of these—including the more adult-oriented ones—with punctilious care before presenting them after dinner in the ship's passenger mess.

"We've already hit the beach," Angeal said. Idly, he turned over one of the gaudy pink fliers, only to find that the photos on the back were even raunchier. They managed to look all the more lurid under the fluorescent lights of the mess hall. He cleared his throat and tucked the thing under his tray. "But it's been more than a week since. We could definitely hit another beach."

"Hunt for shells, get our palms read," Genesis added. "Play food truck roulette."

"Apart from the last activity, I have no objection," said Sephiroth, who just so happened to be the one who usually suffered the most from their gambles with street food. "However..."

He unfolded one final brochure overtop the rest, and Angeal and Genesis leaned in to get a better look.

"Snorkeling?" Genesis said.

"A guided reef tour... equipment rental included," Angeal said. "I'm not sure how I feel about putting something in my mouth that's been used by an unknown number of strangers—oh, get your mind out of the gutter, Genesis!"

As tired as the joke was, Sephiroth looked amused. He forged on regardless. "The fine print on the back—"

"You have to stop reading that stuff," Genesis muttered. "You'll rot your brain!"

"—says that the gear is sanitized between each customer. But if you still find the idea distasteful, a new snorkel will not be particularly expensive."

Angeal, long since accustomed to reading Sephiroth's restrained expressions, could tell that his friend was enthusiastic enough about the idea to pay outright for the equipment for all of them if they wanted. But that wouldn't be necessary. "Not that distasteful!" Angeal said. "Let's do it. We're halfway around the world at this point—we'll get to see all sorts of sea life we've never seen before."

In retrospect, Sephiroth ought to have known better than to say anything at all like, "we have plenty of time." Superstition aside, that kind of talk only ever created complacency, and it was almost never true. Certainly not while traveling abroad.

And he really hadn't counted on the cats.

There was one lounging on the counter at the tourist information kiosk in the port; it placed its paw superciliously on Sephiroth's hand before he could do anything so untoward as rubbing its belly. Another cat came slinking out of nowhere to entwine itself around Angeal's ankles while he waited for Sephiroth, who curtly refused all offers of assistance, to struggle his way through correlating the bus route map with the timetable. And as they rode their way into the town—they hoped that was where this particular bus went, at least—to get lunch before the tour boat departed, Angeal began to notice more and more of them.

"What's the deal with the cats?" he asked Sephiroth as they got off the bus. "It's gotta be a thing, right? They're everywhere."

"Street cats," Genesis said fastidiously. "What if they have fleas, or...?" Despite his apparent misgivings, though, he didn't hesitate to crouch down, get his hands on, and coo at the nearest two of the several cats sprawled in the little brick plaza that served as a bus stop. Considering how weirdly the bus timetable was organized, the cats probably knew the schedule better than the local people.

"Aren't you more of a dog person, Angeal?" Sephiroth asked, himself squatting to run his hand down the spine of a sleek black cat. He glanced up at Angeal, and Angeal was struck by how exact a match the cat's vivid green eyes were to Sephiroth's. It was too bad he hadn't replenished his supply of film yet, although it likely would have been impossible to persuade either Sephiroth or the cat to stand still long enough to get the shot.

Angeal had long since known that his friends were both cat people, but it still amused him how effortlessly they had been lured in. Hadn't they both ribbed him on multiple occasions for getting sidetracked petting every dog he met at the farmer's market in Mideel? "Sure, I guess," he said. "But I don't mind cats either." He sidled up to a nearby retaining wall, atop which a gang of more patient cats were waiting for the attention to which they were entitled.

"The guidebook says—and I am sure you are as tired of hearing me say that phrase as I am of saying it—the guidebook says that locals often joke about the cats being treated better than the citizens," Sephiroth said. "So yes, Angeal, the cats are definitely 'a thing.'"

They managed to find a restaurant that was serving lunch, and they even managed to eat in a timely manner. Genesis went through fistfuls of hand wipes as he alternated between eating his fried clams and petting the endless succession of cats that promenaded across the breeze-cooled restaurant patio.

In the end, though, they were foiled by the confusing schedule of the bus.

"No!" Sephiroth exclaimed as they rounded the street corner only to see the bus halfway down the street in a hot haze of exhaust. "Why is it leaving already? We should have at least ten minutes! Genesis, is your watch wrong?"

Genesis scoffed. "Absolutely not! Get your own watch if you don't like it! Did you even read the timetable properly?"

Sephiroth pulled the folded paper out of his back pocket and snapped it open brusquely, obviously prepared to demonstrate his mastery of it. But as his eyes flicked over the numbers, which some hapless clerk had had to both squash and stretch to make fit, he deflated visibly.

"I have no idea what I'm looking at," he admitted at last. He shot a glare at Genesis, but it was half-hearted at best. "Some of these times are listed as a.m. or p.m., while others are in twenty-four-hour time. The route designations are on this front section, but after the first part, none of the column widths or rows match up. There are times printed in red, green, and black, as well as symbols all over the place, but no explanation for any of them."

"I told you, you should have let us help!" Angeal said grumpily. He grabbed the timetable from Sephiroth's hands and studied it himself for a minute.

"Hmph!" Sephiroth said, snatching it back. "You don't understand it any better than I do!"

Genesis shrugged. "Well," he said mischievously, "we could just fly ourselves there. All we have to do is find a discreet place to take off and land—"

"No, Genesis," Angeal said, rolling his eyes. "That's a terrible idea for all sorts of reasons."

"Chief among them being that you never keep your flight feathers in condit—"

Angeal flung his hands in the air in horror. "Shut up, Genesis! We're in public!"

Sephiroth sighed wearily. "I don't see how else we are going to make our departure time," he said. "And the reservation is not refundable."

Chapter Text

Three more buses passed by, and Sephiroth attempted to scrutinize each one for any evidence that it went to the fishing port. But the characters of the local language were impossible to decipher at speed, even with the timetable on hand, and Sephiroth was atypically ready to give up by the time their savior drove up to the curb.

Their savior in a hot pink paint job and with an accent thick enough to smother a behemoth.

"You guys tryna get to the fishing port?"

Angeal couldn't help but stare at the tiny, toy-like pickup truck and its incandescent coloration. It reminded him of the brochures for the strip clubs, and for a moment, while he was still wading through the driver's heavy drawl, he wondered if they were being propositioned somehow. Or recruited.

He swatted Sephiroth's shoulder to get his attention, then whacked him again on principle.

Sephiroth turned and said testily, "Why are you hitting—oh!"

The truck driver bared an eccentric set of teeth at them and repeated the words "fishing port," this time enunciating it in a way that made it harder rather than easier to understand. He waggled both his arms in the general direction of the shore, then jerked a thumb towards the back of his vehicle; meanwhile, the teenager in the passenger seat writhed in embarrassment.

After a long moment with his head cocked to one side, Sephiroth seemed to realize that a response was expected of him. "Yes, please!" he said.

They hopped into the back of the truck, which then took off at a speed that suggested to Angeal that flying might have been the safer choice after all. The kid—the driver's son, or nephew perhaps—attempted to greet them normally, but only Sephiroth could hear him over the disproportionately powerful roar of the truck's engine, and then only by sticking his head all the way through the back window of the cab. When he extricated himself, he had a satisfied expression on his face.

"It is just a few minutes to the port, so we will have time to spare," Sephiroth half-shouted over the sound of screeching tires as they careened around a bend. Then the wind blew the whole mass of his hair directly into his face, and he fought it down before continuing, "The truck's color, by the way, is meant to deter theft. I get the impression that this measure has been successful where nothing else has."

"Huh," Angeal said. "I guess you could drive this thing"—he paused as they launched over the top of a low rise—"halfway across the planet and still get found out."

"I think you could drive this thing to the moon and still get noticed," Genesis said. "Do you suppose I could get my parents to wire me enough money—? They did offer to buy me a car."

Genesis had vehemently turned down the offer and insisted that he would pay his own way in life, but he appeared willing to make an exception. Angeal couldn't blame him, either. At least, he could appreciate the mental image of Genesis driving a tiny neon truck around—not to mention the expressions on his parents' faces when he showed them what their gil had paid for.

Sephiroth gave Genesis a wide-eyed little grin. "I doubt any amount would tempt him to part with it."

The truck—and the conversation—came to an abrupt halt.

"Right, we're here!" the driver announced. Probably.

The fishing port put on a less polished façade than the passenger terminal, and as Angeal got his feet back under him, he spotted two falling-down shacks that pinged his radar as the kind of seafood restaurants that had sublime food but irascible staff and indecipherable hours. The pink truck took off in a cloud of tire smoke just as soon as Angeal thanked the driver but before he had a chance to get any insider information.

The charter boat outfit that ran the snorkeling tours was nestled amidst a hodgepodge of discarded buoys, mounds of netting, derelict boats up on cinder blocks, and, once they entered the little compound, an army's worth of wetsuits hung out to dry under trellises. Between the rows were picnic tables set up for guests to wait. But the undernourished vines above offered scant protection from the sun—the wetsuits were faded and shabby, while the tourists were red-faced and sweating.

"This place," Sephiroth marveled, "is a cacophony of smells."

"A cacophony," Genesis echoed, looking far less sanguine about it. "A... smörgåsbord. Pandemonium?"

Angeal wrinkled his nose, not at the odors that lingered despite the firm sea breeze, but at Genesis threatening to abuse his mental thesaurus.

"Nuh-uh," Angeal said, turning towards the weathered shed that served as a reception, "I'm gonna go check us in. You guys can sit here and describe the smells to your heart's content."

"Sephiroth!" Genesis said briskly. "Head note, heart note, base note!"

Sephiroth snapped to mock-attention and nodded, accepting the challenge—for this was a game they sometimes played. "This is an easy one," he announced after a minute or two of sampling the air with his overpowered nose. "A filthy outhouse, decaying marine plant matter, and spilled gasoline!"

Angeal grinned, shook his head, and got moving. Insofar as he understood how the notes worked, Sephiroth was exactly right.

Later, surveilled by a fluctuating alliance of egrets, gulls, and some of the bolder cats, they feasted on boiled crabs under a scrap of awning out back of what could best be described as a heap of driftwood pretending to be a habitable building. After a while, their conversation wended its way back to the topic of the next stage of their journey.

"I have no memory of that discussion," Sephiroth said, blinking.

Genesis put his claw cracker down with a thunk and gave Sephiroth a sidelong glance. "Pretending to be asleep is one thing; pretending to be awake and having an entire, lucid conversation is just ridiculous!"

Angeal wasn't sure he disagreed. Hopefully, Sephiroth wasn't about to start doing even creepier things, like sleeping with his eyes open. "Nothing?" he probed. "You don't remember us talking about Gongaga, Genesis running away to be an actor, or what he'd be like as a waiter?"

"I have to assume the consensus was that he would make a terrible waiter," Sephiroth said, returning Genesis' sidelong glance with one of his own.

"Anyway, the point is," Angeal said, taking advantage of their staring contest to steal a chunk of potato from Genesis' basket, "you never did get around to letting us know where we're going next."

"Oh," Sephiroth said. "I thought it was obvious. We are going to Wutai." He picked up a half-ear of corn and began to nibble on it.

Angeal opened his mouth and shut it again. "Yeah, sure—that's obvious, all right," he groused. "How are we going to get visas? Is it a good idea?"

Sephiroth blinked again, then smirked. "Well, if you trust the editorial section of the Mideel Bay Chronicle"—Genesis scoffed—"it certainly isn't a good idea," he said. "But for the visas, my research indicates that, as of this year, we need only show up at the airship port and have our passports stamped. The diplomatic situation has improved to the point that Wutai is now more interested in tourists' gil than it is in holding a grudge against Midgar over empty threats."

They all paused to chew over this statement. Sephiroth had told them enough about Shinra's abandoned preparations for war that they had an inkling of how "empty" those threats had really been. But that information had never been made public, nor had anything that Sephiroth, being a child at the time, had not been aware of. At the height of the financial scandal, when it seemed like all the rest of the company's dirty laundry was being hung out to air, what must have been War Plan Wutai was just another black hole out of the many in Shinra Electric's budget.

Angeal dug through the detritus of crab shells and denuded corn cobs in front of him, searching for any missed morsels. Across the table, Sephiroth had lined up his corn cobs in a neat row, to which he now added a final cob.

Shortly, the restaurant's crankiest waitress came swooping out with a broom to discourage the herons.

"Do you think you know enough Wutainese to get us out of trouble?" Genesis asked in the wake of the rampage. Not getting into trouble in the first place, Angeal noted complaisantly, wasn't even a consideration.

Sephiroth looked thoughtful as he drank off the remainder of his glass of beer. "Probably not," he concluded with a shrug. "I only know one dialect, and I couldn't keep up my progress with the tapes. The library only had the odd-numbered sets of tapes, too."

"Gaia, I can't wait to be living near a proper library," Genesis said a little sourly. He swabbed at his hands with a limp wet napkin, then gave up and tossed it to the table. "Drenched in butter—do you think we can get more of these? Fifty more? Or a hose? Sudden downpour?"

Wordlessly, Angeal passed him his handkerchief.

For a while, their replete silence was punctuated only by the croaks of the egrets as they renewed their siege one by one. Angeal fiddled with the disposable camera that Genesis had insisted on buying for him at a ludicrous markup. If it was waterproof, it was probably butter-proof, too. There was one shot left on it, and as usual Angeal was at a loss for what to do with it. A group shot? The sunset? Sometimes he dithered so long about what to finish a roll of film with that he forgot altogether, and the final picture on the roll came back from the lab blank.

"You may get your sudden downpour," Sephiroth said.

"Petrichor," Genesis said dreamily.

"Still distant," Sephiroth said, himself sounding quite far off.

Or perhaps it was Angeal who was far off. The hours in the water and under the sun, the rich food, and the beers were weighing him down. But something was tugging at the edge of this languor, and he tried to stir himself. "We should probably—" he began without knowing how he was going to finish.

"Shit," Sephiroth said in a matter-of-fact tone. "We should probably catch our bus."

Chapter Text

"Can't I just staple his passport to his forehead or something?" Angeal lamented. He looked at the transit lounge's notice board, not for the first or last time, and made a frustrated noise.

Sephiroth shot him a look of mild reproach from where he sat on the floor against the wall. He said, "I don't think it will stay attached long enough to make a difference."

Angeal sank onto his uncomfortable plastic bench and groaned again. "If we miss our flight, I swear I'll roast him with his own Fire. I will honest-to-Gaia grab his sword arm and cast it right in his face."

"We are already two hours early, Angeal," Sephiroth said, rolling his eyes. "Will you please eat something and stop—stop fussing?" His left hand was tethered to the glazed-brick wall by a very short charging cable, so he reached around himself with his right, grabbed a packet of dried fruit, and thrust it up at Angeal. Then he made a belated—and lackluster—attempt at being soothing. "He'll be back soon. Even if he left it at the hostel, it's only a fifteen-minute walk from here."

Angeal made a skeptical face, but took the bag of fruit anyway.

The transit lounge was a low-ceilinged, worn-out, nearly-windowless affair whose overbearing color scheme of burnt orange, harvest gold, and brown reminded Angeal of the houses of a certain subset of his cousins. About half of the passengers waiting there were business travelers, with the rest being families. There were very few obvious fellow tourists, though Angeal had suspicions about the poker-faced man whose suit jacket was inadequate to the task of containing the garish hibiscus-print shirt worn underneath it.

Angeal was making an effort not to fidget in Sephiroth's peripheral vision, so he didn't see Genesis reenter the lounge through the cave-like passage that led from the ticketing concourse. Then there was an iced coffee, cup dripping with condensation thanks to the humidity, being dangled in front of his face.

Angeal looked up. "Is this supposed to be a peace offering?" he asked suspiciously, taking the cup. It was black with no sugar, the way he liked it best.

Genesis handed down another coffee to Sephiroth, perched his own on the armrest of the bench opposite Angeal, and then turned around with more than the usual flourish.

"No," he said in an airy, indifferent tone that was almost genuine, "this is the peace offering."

Then he dropped Angeal's wallet into his lap.

Sephiroth, who had just taken a slurp of his nearly-white coffee, began to splutter and cough.

"What the hell?" Angeal said, slapping his free hand against the pouch he wore under his shirt. "How did you get this?

Genesis shrugged expansively. "You must have forgotten to put it away at the café," he said, "after you decided to pick a fight about how much to tip the waiter who didn't refill our coffee so much as once!"

Angeal opened his mouth to make a retort, but Sephiroth regained his composure long enough to croak plaintively, "Could you not have this argument again, please? It's very boring."

Angeal grudgingly settled back into his seat. The contents of his wallet all seemed present, though he wondered if he counted the cash whether he would be short by the amount spent on three iced coffees. Probably not. Genesis had his shortcomings, but he knew better than to squander a hard-won piece of moral high ground like that.

"Fine," Angeal sighed after a while. "I apologize for being a jerk about your passport, Genesis. And thank you for finding my wallet."

This induced another coughing fit in Sephiroth. "The fruit must have worked," he gurgled at Genesis, who knew exactly what he meant and grinned accordingly. "He's being reasonable."

"Oh, come on!" Angeal said. "I'm not an idiot! Do you really think I'd sulk about something that stupid?"

The looks he received in return were downright insulting.

The flight from the coast of the Western Continent to the largest city in Wutai took about as long as the flight from Mideel to the coast of the Eastern Content, half a planet away. But there the similarities ended.

"This must be," Genesis mused as they shuffled down the cramped left-hand aisle between the even narrower rows of seats, "one of those old-fashioned airships. The kind that run on hydrogen." He wafted a hand in front of his wrinkled nose and continued, "Also the kind where smoking is still allowed—how foul!"

Sephiroth glanced back at him. Angeal, who was bringing up the rear, was concerned to see how openly Sephiroth expressed his alarm.

"I thought those were illegal now," Sephiroth said. "Since they have the tendency to explo—" He broke off when the elderly man in front of him whipped about and began talking at him in rapid-fire Wutainese. He was barely over half Sephiroth's size, but his tone was astonishingly angry, and Angeal guessed that Sephiroth had stepped on his heel or something. Sephiroth managed to get out a few syllables, but they made no impression whatsoever.

Genesis turned around, seamlessly pretending to have nothing to do with the altercation. "It makes sense," he said to Angeal as the entire aisle ground to a halt and other passengers began to stare. Some were sympathetic; others not as much. "If this airship is based in Wutai, it's not as if there's a reactor there to extract mako to fuel it."

Angeal swore under his breath. "Maybe we should have taken the sea route after all," he said. 

"Says the man who suffered least from seasickness!" Genesis said dryly.

"Are you going to help me or—?" Sephiroth pleaded as he retreated, eyes wide with consternation. The man was now shaking a finger at him with some violence, and the rising volume of his invective was beginning to annoy some of those already seated in the adjacent rows.

Angeal shrugged as best as he could with the straps of a fifteen-kilo backpack digging into his shoulders. "Just say you're sorry?" he said. "What do you expect us to do? We're gonna be in deep trouble when we get there if you can't remember how to say sorry."

"And bow a few times," Genesis added. "Even I know that! Deeper than that—Gaia, is that the best you can do?"

"You're both being very unhelpful!" Sephiroth complained. "Can you at least page a flight attend—"

Angeal was about to do so—he wasn't a complete bastard—when they became aware of commotion further up the aisle and approaching fast. Angeal couldn't see the source of the fresh problem, but he could hear the exclamations the other travelers made as someone savagely elbowed her way back upstream. She barreled headlong into the elderly man, creating a domino effect of jostling that may well have dumped someone toward the front of the airship right onto their ass.

Sephiroth's shoulders sagged with relief at no longer being the center of attention. Now it was the old man's turn to sweat, for the woman outmatched him in both volume and velocity. Whatever her relationship to the man, Angeal pegged her as the sort of auntie he was all too familiar with.

"Some things really are universal," he muttered to himself. He couldn't understand a word of what they were saying to each other, but he sure could hear the mutual derision.

Genesis hung an arm around Sephiroth's shoulders as they watched the auntie tow her relative back up the aisle, now clear of other passengers. Sephiroth lowered his hands to his sides, as if he had forgotten that he had raised them in the first place.

"Now that that's over with," Genesis said, "all we have to worry about is dying in a colossal hydrogen fire."

Angeal squeezed his eyes shut. "Gen, you know this is his first ride on an airship, right?"