Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

Something was going on out in the wastes.  Something big.  Squad after squad, company after company of Security Forces had been called away from headquarters, leaving the city in a long convoy of trucks.  Kunsel stood at a window, watching.  He could track where they turned off the highway by the dust rising from the wastes, a spreading cloud leading toward the cliff-edged horizon.  Shinra’s press release and the internal email announcement called it a training mission, but Kunsel doubted that.  

In Shinra, you never knew more than what someone higher up thought was good for you.  Unfortunately, Kunsel was a natural skeptic with an inquisitive nature.  He knew that what they didn’t say could often save your life.  He’d been with the company long enough to differentiate between real information, suspicious stories, or cover-ups, and he’d call this suspicious.   

A training mission wouldn’t call for so many reinforcements.  Requesting an additional unit or two for practice, sure.  But at this point, two whole battalions had left the city.  Last time something that big went down, it was Genesis attacking headquarters.  That had been years ago.  And, weirder than that, they were keeping SOLDIER in the dark over it.  It was a Security Divisions-only operation.  For something that required so many troopers - under every circumstance that Kunsel could remember or hypothesize, SOLDIER operatives would’ve been deployed by now.

Kunsel considered his options.  He had friends and contacts among the army troopers, but he’d already talked to the ones here at HQ, and they only had gossip to offer.  The rumors included the return (again) of Genesis, an attack by a squad of elite Wutaian ninjas, eco-extremists with bombs, a Weapons Department experiment gone wrong - nothing he hadn’t already heard himself.  Some he knew from other contacts or prior info was flat-out wrong.  Some could be true, but it didn’t make sense to keep SOLDIER away from those problems.  

He’d tried calling some friends in the dispatched battalions.  Some hadn’t answered; a bunch hadn’t even rung through.  Service in the wastes was patchy.

Radio scanner it was then.  A benign option unlikely to alert the Turks.  There was apparently something going down internally in the Department of Administrative Research, but he wasn’t about to drop his guard.  Last time he’d done that, he’d lost a friend.

Kunsel made a habit of reading everything on the mission board, assigned or otherwise.  This one struck him as weird.  Why did a check-up on an outdated reactor in the Nibel range need both of SOLDIER’s most prominent 1st Classes?  In the bare hours he had before deployment, he dug a little.  Chatting up one of Heidegger’s aides netted him that Sephiroth himself had requested Zack accompany him.  An army radio technician passed on a rumor: a nest of high-spec Genesis clones hiding in the mountains.

The mission brief didn’t say anything about clones, but Kunsel had encountered G-clones himself on missions where he hadn’t expected them.  They weren’t enemies to take lightly, and Zack and Sephiroth had good track records against them.  The information should have soothed his anxiety, but it stayed with him, prickling the hair at the back of his neck and knotting his shoulders.  He went back to his quarters and pulled up the mission board on his laptop, double-checking.  If you used the desktop version of the app instead of the PHS, closed the board before it had finished loading the mission names, then checked your personal mail, opened three messages, moved the third to trash and then out again, when you went back to the mission board, the mission subfolders and names would load properly, but the mission descriptions looked like computer vomit.   

He’d figured it out by cross-referencing missions against each other.  The apparent gibberish contained all the hidden administrative overhead of the mission, the entire picture instead of a sequestered, faceted, INSERT_DEPARTMENT_HERE version.  One of the most useful parts of the data: it showed which computer in which department had initiated the mission request.

This one had come from the Science Department.  From - Kunsel squinted at a string of numbers and letters and compared it agains his mental list - a computer in Professor Hojo’s office.

He sat back and tapped a restless finger against his computer keyboard.  Never get on the wrong side of the Science Department.  That was gospel to any SOLDIER.  Sephiroth probably had the whole thing under control.  He was Science’s golden boy.  And Zack was fast on his feet, and a lot smarter than his easy-going attitude suggested.

But everybody knew Zack liked to outsource any heavy thinking he could.  It had annoyed Kunsel at first, a little bit, to see somebody so talented leaning on other people for everyday basics like “go check the lockers before a mission, sometimes the company gives us extra equipment”.  He’d taken on the chore of keeping the promising-but-dumbass (or so he’d thought) cadet who’d made SOLDIER just after him in the loop.  It had pretty quickly stopped being a chore, though.  It was impossible not to admire Zack’s skill, his work ethic, not to feel charmed by his genuine enthusiasm and reckless courage.  He had his own sort of smarts, too.  Lateral thinking was one term for it, outside-the-box another.  Soon, Kunsel was helping him out for friendship’s sake as well as for the good of SOLDIER as a whole.  He wasn't the only one charmed, either.  According to a rumor Kunsel had confirmed, Marketing had partly based the energetic puppy-dog mascot Stamp off Zack.

So, there probably wasn’t anything to worry about.  He didn’t like that it was Hojo who’d requested the mission, but despite the rumors that swirled around, he didn’t think the professor would do anything to harm his precious, precious Sephiroth.  And Sephiroth had probably only asked for Zack because they both had a personal connection to Genesis.  

“You’re such a mother hen,” he told himself as he pulled up the encyclopedia database and forwarded details about Nibel range weather, terrain, and common monsters on to Zack.  He knew Zack didn’t always bother to read the info he sent, but he sent it out of habit anyway.  He had his own mission down south to get ready for, so he looked up the same sort of info for himself before shutting his computer down.

He really shouldn’t worry.  There wasn’t anything Zack and Sephiroth couldn’t handle.  This mission assignment was good actually - he knew Zack wanted to have a chat with Sephiroth away from company ears.  This mission presented the perfect opportunity.  He’d ask Zack how it’d gone when they both got back.

He had a stroke of luck at Fort Condor, striking up a conversation with a technician who’d once worked up at the Nibel reactor.  He sent a message to Zack with the gossip he’d picked up.

[Hey, seems like Science uses the reactor up there for storage.  So keep your eyes out for weird things.  Maybe equip an Esuna.]

Zack would’ve already left Midgar, but you couldn’t safely fly a chopper directly into the Northern mountains.  They’d have to disembark somewhere lower down, and hopefully Zack would have a chance to pick up an Esuna materia if he hadn’t packed one.  

It made sense now why the Science Department requested Sephiroth - he had the highest security clearance of any SOLDIER.  Zack’s was next highest because of all the missions he ran for the Turks, so he probably cleared Science’s bar too.

They should have been back by now.  Yeah, their mission had been open-ended but a month had gone by with no word.  The last few messages Kunsel had sent had gone unread.  Even the one about the flower wagon.  Talking to Aerith, he’d learned that Zack had called her once to say he planned on visiting her as soon as he got back.  Not a surprise.  It was weird, though, concerningly so, that he hadn’t called since, not even to tell her that he’d be gone longer than initially thought.

No one on the whole SOLDIER floor had heard from Zack - Kunsel asked around.  He even messaged Cissnei, for Gaia’s sake.  Sure, he knew Zack seemed to be friends with her, but you could never really be friends with a Turk.  They weren’t built for it.  All she replied was that reception was poor in the Nibel area.

Kunsel stared at his PHS screen.  The dark letters swam on the pale blue background.  SOLDIERs 1st Class Zack Fair and Sephiroth: placed on detached duty.  

Detached duty.  Sure.

The message made no mention of the troopers who’d gone with them.  Of course, there wouldn’t be, not on SOLDIER’s version of the message.  If he could find out who else had been on the mission and whether they had come back, he could talk to them.  Maybe he’d find a clue about what happened to Zack, why he wasn’t answering Kunsel’s messages.  

It took three days to find out about the troopers.  Two of them had been reported as dead (no additional information at this time) and the third was also on detached duty.  A Cloud Strife.  

Kunsel remembered meeting the guy a few times on missions, and a handful of times out for food with Zack.  Shy, prickly, stubborn, but overall a good kid.  Talented once he stopped overthinking or underestimating himself.  Zack had really liked him, but of course, Zack liked almost everyone.  Strife’s file, according to a secretary Kunsel chatted up, said he was from Nibelheim.  That was good, right?  Zack and Sephiroth had a local with them who knew the area.  And none of them were listed as dead…

There was still a chance they’d come back.

He tried to get assigned over to the west continent.  Most of the missions for that corner of the world went to SOLDIERs stationed in Junon, but a few made their way to Midgar.  He wasn’t going to wait for something in the Nibel range either.  He had plenty of leave time saved up.  Rocket Town, Corel, or even Costa Del Sol would do.  Anything that would get him across the ocean.

But as soon as one came up, it didn’t matter how fast he was at snagging it, he’d end up rerouted to something closer to Midgar.  One day when a mission east of Rocket Town came in, a message flashed back at him a bare half-second after he hit ‘accept’.  DENIED.  

Under his leather gloves, his palms suddenly got sweaty.  He wasn’t an idiot.  He knew somebody higher up was aware of his interest in this, or his missions wouldn’t have changed.  But he’d hoped they’d get sloppy, less vigilant.  More fool him.  This had come back so fast, it wasn’t human intervention.  They’d set up a computer script to handle it.  They weren’t even bothering with excuses anymore.  

That should scare him.  It did scare him.  This was Turk work, and despite his general nosiness, he didn’t want the Department of Administrative Research too curious about him in return.  He’d always tried to stay above a hypothesized threshold of ‘safety’ in his investigations.  Maybe enough to annoy them a little, never enough to stir them to action against him.

But this deliberate lockout, clearly meant to stay permanently opaque, was proof enough that something major had happened.  That scared him enough to make his stomach cramp and his mouth go dry.  Because he knew, he knew, that he couldn’t keep his nose out of this one and still live with himself.

[Tell me they’re lying.]

Kunsel grit his teeth and let out a slow shuddering breath.

[Got an announcement from General Affairs that you were killed in action.]

The text of the message he’d read floated in inverted colors behind his closed eyelids.  Cold, impersonal.  Zack Fair: killed in action.  Nothing else.  Just another name taken off the roster.  His fingers typed out his questioning thoughts as his mind failed to process that he was reaching out to a ghost.

[But those announcements are never true, are they?]

[Where are you?  What are you doing?]

[What did you have to do for the company to reclassify you as a dead man?]

Was it my fault?  Did I push too much, dig too deep?  The things I found…  They keep me up nights, but none of it helped me find you.

[Let me help you if you’re in a jam.]

[Talk to me.  I’ll be waiting.]

[Please Zack, tell me they’re lying.]  

[You can’t be dead.]

None of the messages ever switched from unread to read.

Two years, eight months, and ten days after that, he finally got a mission to the West Continent.  Not through the mission board, the normal, official means.  Instead, a SOLDIER 3rd scheduled for a mission at the far southern end of the Nibel range got a debilitating case of hay fever, and Kunsel quickly volunteered himself to take over the mission.  

It was further south than what he would have liked, but he’d saved up plenty of leave time.  He completed the mission - eliminate a flock of cokatolis that had made their roost in a communication tower - with ease.  It had been assigned to a single 3rd after all.  Mission done, he put in for his leave.

Two days south of Nibelheim, his PHS buzzed with the pattern he’d set for company business.  He was so close to his goal, he had half a mind to ignore it.  But he’d never been one to  ignore things. It just wasn’t in his nature; he had the sort of curiosity that itched and fizzed and ate him alive until he got answers.  He flipped open his phone and scanned the message.

They were recalling him to Midgar.  A helicopter would arrive to meet him soon, its landing coordinates attached.  He growled at the corporate line saying he would be compensated for his interrupted leave.  When the helicopter arrived, he felt no surprise to see it piloted by a Turk.  Tseng gave him a polite nod as he climbed in.  Kunsel said nothing back.

Something was wrong with the air conditioning - a low-pitched grumble came from the air vents in the SOLDIER common area.  With enhanced hearing, it was irritating to the point of distraction.  Everybody else was avoiding the place.  Kunsel, though, had come in half-deafened by    Idly he scrolled through old chat rooms.  The old SOLDIER fan clubs weren’t that active anymore and the folks that used them the most these days were conspiracy theorists, guessing at what had happened to their heroes.  Some of the theories defended the official notices but most were speculation that grew wilder with time.

Illness, retirement, desertion, terrorist death machines, wutaian curses.  The gods coming down to wipeout the unnatural abominations that were SOLDIERs.  Sephiroth leaving to go fight the gods. - There weren’t any credible new theories.  There was also the increased number of Sephiroth sightings.  None were confirmed and none said anything about Zack.

On a whim he checked his messages to Zack.  He knew it was an exercise in futility but reading old messages that had been sent back and forth between them was all he really had left of his friend.  On auto pilot he scrolled past the most recent messages, the ones that had never been read.  He was looking for an old conversation he remembered laughing at when his brain caught up with what his eyes had seen.

He zipped back up the top of the screen.  The messages that had sat unread for four years were checked off.  Zack - or at least someone with Zack’s PHS - had read them.  Hadn’t responded to them, but… 

He quickly tapped out a message.

[You can’t fool me.]

[I knew you weren’t dead.
Zack, where can you possibly be?
Let me know if you’re reading this.]

He didn’t get a response, but when he checked the message later he saw that again it had been read.  Honestly he wanted to call Zack.  To hear his friend laugh and tell him everything is okay.  That it was all some crazy extended undercover mission.  But he knew better than that.  Because if this is Zack and he’s not answering it meant something was up and Kunsel didn’t want an ill timed ringtone to jeopardize his friend.  Instead he sent another message.

[You’ve been missing since your mission with Sephiroth.
Are you guys okay?]

Luxiere was an idiot.  Most of SOLDIER were idiots, each with their own unique brand of stupidity, but Luxiere was a special brand of idiot.  He told Kunsel his plan on rescuing Zack from whatever mess he was in by letting Luxiere capture him.  Capture was the last thing Zack needed.  Kunsel told Luxiere that he should look for Zack on the North continent.

Hacking was not a skill Kunsel had ever really thought he’d need in life.  He was a SOLDIER not a programer for a reason.  But when gossip failed him and he realized the only ones with the information he wanted were the Turks and the higher-ups in the Science Department, he had to branch out.  

During the four years of Zack’s absence, Kunsel had started practicing the skill.  He wasn’t confident or foolhardy enough to actually try getting into either of those department’s files but the phs network for tracking phones?  Absolutely.

When Zack’s phs had come back online after years of being turned off, it started pinning off the communication towers in the Nibel range.  Then near Cosmo Canyon, near Gongaga, near Banora.  He tracked Zack’s progress south.  When Zack finally arrived on the east continent Kunsel was quick to snap up the first mission that might get him in the same area as his missing friend.

He didn’t find him on that mission or the next or the next.  He didn’t put in for leave, not willing to risk alerting the Turks to his attempted meetups.  But he wasn’t going to give up, he’d take every mission he could to find his friend.

On the outskirts of a no where town roughly two hundred miles east of Junon (Zack was avoiding all major cities) Kunsel found tracks that might belong to Zack.  SOLDIER boots were distinctive when the tread was worn down or the ground was soft thanks to the company’s logo stamped onto their arch.  

The soil here was hard, compact.  The tread of the boot track was badly worn.  No SOLDIER would go into the field with tread that worn if they could help it.  He had to keep reminding himself it wasn’t a sure fire thing that this was Zack.  Sure Zack’s phs had been in the area, and someone in worn SOLDIER issue boots the same size as Zack’s had been here recently.  But it could be someone had just found Zack’s stuff.

Then there was the problem of the second set of footprints.  They stumbled along, obviously being supported by the first person.  The tread wasn’t as worn but the toes were scuffed.  They were too small to be Sephiroth and he had trouble picturing Sephiroth needing to be supported like that.  Maybe Cloud.  They were bigger than what Cloud’s were but the kid had only been sixteen at the time Kunsel had the last confirmed shoe size for the kid.  Thank you infantry supplies depo.  It was expected that the kid had grown a bit.

Still the few tracks he found disappeared too quickly to be natural.  Someone had covered them.  Kunsel planned to cover the ones he’d found.  But that left the question of who covered them first.  If it was the Turks, Kunsel wouldn’t have found them in the first place.  Who else would cover for maybe-Zack except for maybe-Zack?  That pointed to him not wanting to be found.

It made sense.  What the hell had happened?  And where was Sephiroth in all this?

There was no way.  That absolute idiot.  Kunsel had been tracking Zack for a while now and at first it wasn’t obvious where he was going.  He zig-zagged and doubled back.  Drifted east, then north, then back south.  Throwing off anyone who might be taking him.  Friend or foe.  (Could you even consider having any friends when Shinra was after you?)

 Now thought as Kunsel starred at all the places he’d tracked his friend.  At the slow and erratic progress Zack had made across the globe.  He was certain that Zack was headed here to Midgar.  Maybe even to Aerith.  That absolute idiot.

Chapter Text

Tinny voices crackled out of the old scanner Kunsel had hidden away in a storage room in the SOLDIER barracks.  Keeping something like this in his room would have spelled trouble, luckily the air vent in his room also led to this place.  Couple years ago he’d looked into why the vents were so large in the Shinra buildings.  It had seemed like a major security risk.  Turned out that the Turks used them sometimes.  

Of course SOLDIERs would hear if someone was crawling around in their vents, so the Turks mainly left this area alone.  That meant the SOLDIERs were free to use them to prank each other or in Kunsel’s case move about without tripping all over security.

He kept switching through the channels until he found what he wanted.  He listened silently to the reports of downed helicopters and the need for more medics.  There were requests for Scarlet’s machines but not one for SOLDIERs.  The thing that disturbed him the most though, there was only one target.  All of this against one - monster - person - target.

 Kunsel flipped open his phs, looking for a particular app.  “Come on,” he muttered, waiting for it to open.  

Networking was his main skill but over the years he’d picked up some coding and hacking.  This app was a bastardized version of a program he knew the Turks used.  A phone tracker, recording every tower a targeted phs pinged off of.  There was only one phs Kunsel had cared about tracking.  One that had been dark for years and only recently came back on line.  One that was now in the wastes.

Rain whipped at his face as Kunsel cursed the laws of physics.  Enhanced speed and reflexes didn’t mean much to wet tires and pavement.  Still he raced through the city’s streets as fast as he dared.  He had to get there but he wouldn’t be much use to Zack if he crashed on the way.

He hadn’t thought when he grabbed the bike.  He just had to get there, had to get to Zack.  His loyalty to Shinra was nothing compared to the loyalty he had to his friend.  This was the closest he’d gotten to finding him but what would he do when he got there?

Fight?  Whisk him away?  Lie through his teeth?  There was no way he could return to Shinra if that was the case.  He had stashes in case of such an inevitability but outright deserting Shinra was a terrifying prospect.  Worth it if he could get Zack out.

The rain was starting to clear and a company helicopter wheeled over head.  While Kunsel wound his way through the city streets, it cut a clear line for the wastes.  Too late, too slow.  Maybe it wasn’t going to where he knew it was going.

Out of the city it still took him over an hour to find where the staging ground for the battle had been.  Army trucks sat steaming in the sun.  They would have brought troops and weapons out here but there was only one set of tire tracks in the mud, leaving towards Midgar.  The area remained eerily silent.  Where was the rest of the army?

The air carried more than just the scent of wet earth and departing rain.  There was an acidic smell of burnt metal and gunpowder, of spilt fuel but those were all secondary scents.  Saturating the air to where he could taste iron in his mouth, was blood.  Lots of blood.

Mud compacted to his boots as he followed the smell to where it was strongest.  A natural amphitheater with Midgar as its backdrop.  Most of the bodies had already faded away, a few wisps of green still lingering.  Rising from puddles of diluted blood.  A small pack of Kalm fangs scavenged around the battle's outskirts.  Poking their snouts into discarded helmets.  Army shoulder pauldrons, guns and swords were all that was left of the people who had fought here.

Kunsel kept a wary eye on the pack but didn’t engage.  Instead he focused on reading the battle.  Light infantry mixed with heavy artillery.  There were pock marks from bullets and small craters from shells.  Flattened and misshapen metal of the aforementioned bullets littered the ground.  While the burned out remains of a few helicopters and Scarlet’s sweepers continued to smolder, even after the rain.

What had his gut twisting thought was the long narrow gouges in the rocky soil.  These could only have been made by a large bladed object, like a sword, the Buster sword.

The blood of a SOLDIER smelled different.  It was the mako.  Barely noticeable in a 3rd, kinda there for a 2nd, even in a 1st it wasn’t strong.  Not like alcohol in the veins of an alcoholic, but it was there if you knew to look for it.  The large pool of blood by the cliff’s edge smelled strongly of mako.  Stronger than your average 1st’s blood.

He couldn’t picture Sephiroth dying here.  Plus the sword strikes he’d seen were wrong for the masamune.  Still the blood pool was too large for the person to have lived, and if it wasn’t Sephiroth.

“What the hell did they do to you Zack?”

No amount of mako would save someone from that much blood loss.  After all this time, too late.  Too slow.  He had to lift his visor and wipe his eyes before the screen fogged up.  Doing so he caught sight of the boot prints and narrow drag trail that lead away from the bloody ground.  

Looking at the area closer he could see how someone had dragged themself across the ground to the dying person.  Sat on their knees by them, then stood and stumbled away.  Not back to the trucks, but along the cliff-line.  The boot size was wrong for Zack but it fit for who Kunsel suspected was Cloud.  

He pushed his grief down and focused on his mission.  There still wasn’t any concrete proof that he had been tracking Zack.  No solid evidence that it was Zack who died here.  He needed to find the person who lived and question them.  

A soft squelch of mud, a pant of breath.  He’d find that person right after he dealt with the fangs.  

Slowly Kunsel wrapped his hand around the hilt of his sword while the sound of padded paws crept closer.  His hearing picked up three different individuals.  From looking over the pack earlier he knew there were another two, somewhere.

Magic thrummed through his materia and he shot off a low level fire in a sweeping arch as he turned.  The fangs on his left backed off.  The one on his right was more aggressive and lunged.  He blocked.  The large canine’s weight slammed into his blade's edge, forcing a nasty gash along its chest.  Pivoting Kunsel deepened the cut while forcing the monster to the side.

The other two fangs took the chance to rush him, one aiming low for his ankles, while the other leapt at his face.  With SOLDIER speed Kunsel jumped back from their attack but his boots slipped in the mud as he landed.  Off balance he had no time to recover as a fang slammed into him, its teeth scraping against his shoulder guard with an awful screech.  SOLDIER and fang tumbled to the ground.

Swords were great but sucked during grappling.  Kunsel dropped his blade, the monster's rancid breath panting over his face, and grabbed fist-fulls of its fur.  With a heave he tossed the creature away from him, right over the edge of the cliff.

Scrambling onto his knees he saw the other uninjured fang already rushing him.  No time to grab his blade or prep a spell.  A quick scoop and he flung a glob of mud into the monster's open mouth.  Its charge instantly stopped as it pawed and shook its mouth.  With it distracted Kunsel lunged for his blade.

With it’s solid wight back in his hands he jab the steel into the monster's ribcage.  The fang yelped and pulled away, doing more damage to itself in the process.  With both his opponents injured he took a moment to scan for the other two pack members but he couldn’t see them.  With his back to the cliff he knew they weren’t behind him.  

He couldn’t fight what he couldn’t see.  Turning his full attention back to the fangs in front of him, he watched their movements carefully.  The aggressive one was having difficulty putting weight on its right foreleg, while blood dripped from the other’s mouth and nose.  The tense moment broke when the fangs turned and ran.

Normally Kunsel would follow after.  Injured wildlife that couldn’t take on it’s normal pray were more likely to attack travelers.  But right now he had more pressing matters.  The fight had destroyed most of the evidence he’d found at the cliff’s edge but he remembered the direction the stumbling steps had left in.  

It didn’t take long for him to find the tracks again but unfortunately they weren’t the only tracks he found.  Looked like the fangs he hadn’t fought had gone after an easier target.  On foot would be too slow so he sprinted back to his discarded bike.  

At a higher speed he had to stop on occasion to double check he was going in the same direction as the tracks.  Boot Prints and paw prints alike followed the slope of the land, eventually turning for Midgar.  As the land flattened out he could see the fangs lopping along.  Pushing the bike forward he unslung his sword.

The fangs startled at the sound of the approaching engine and attempted to flee.  Again Kunsel wasn’t in the mood for a true fight.  He slashed one at high speed, its yelp cut short as he severed its spine.  The other he let go.  In the distance if he squinted he could spot a lone figure stumbling along.  But his attention was drawn from the person to the city.  Kunsel was shocked to see a thick dark fog swirling around it.  The hair on the back of his neck prickled.  That fog wasn’t natural.

He slowed the bike to a stop.  The whole city was obscured in a perfect dome of swirling gray.   The air itself felt supercharged not unlike the moments before a thunderstorm breaks.  And not unlike a thunderstorm the world seemed to explode in a flash of light.  The dark fog broke apart in a blast of air that slammed into Kunsel, nearly knocking him off his bike.  

For a split second he saw a blond man, (Cloud, glassy eyed and ill) limp past on his right, dragging the Buster sword beside him.  While on his left, Zack, bloody and hurt, with the Buster sword on his back and supporting Cloud by his side, walked past.

The wind was gone.  The visions were gone.  So was the person he’d seen in the distance.  All tracks had been blown away.  All that was before him was the city covered in its normal haze of pollution.

What the hell?

The following month Kunsel wondered if he and the rest of SOLDIER were going mad.  Some had seen the fog that day, some hadn’t.  Some said they had seen it but at a different time, while others said they could see it right now.  Considering SOLDIERs past history with mental instability it was concerning to say the least.  Also because of previous history SOLDIERs didn’t trust easily and didn’t bring it up outside the department.

Hell they barely brought it up amongst each other.  But if something was going on Kunsel was the one who would know about it, so they talked to him.  Unfortunately he didn’t have any answers for them except that no they weren’t the only one to have seen something strange recently.

He knew science theorized that SOLDEIRs were more sensitive to the paranormal or unseen things.  They were more in tune with materia after all.  But how did that explain his vision?  As far as he knew he was the only one to see something more than a swirling mist.

Was Cloud in the city?  Was it Zack and Cloud?  Were there two Clouds?  There had been more Sephiroth sightings.  

Kunsel was in the middle of sending a message to a special independent investigative reporter he was an acquaintance of when he felt the building shake due to an explosion.  A quick glance out the window showed something was going down in sector six.  Maybe Zack, maybe Cloud, maybe something else interiorly.  He was going to find out.

Several good sized chunks of the sector six plate had been destroyed.  Entire blocks had fallen, crashing down onto the slums below.  The civilian casualty count was staggering.  The leaders of the group responsible, the eco-terrorist organization AVALANCHE, had been killed.  The rest of the group had splintered without their leadership into many small cells.  Easier to be picked off by Shinra’s forces.

Or would be if the Turks hadn’t nearly been wiped out as well.  From fourteen active field members to three.  Of course most of Shinra didn’t know how many Turks there were to begin with.  Or what they actually did, or that they had been subsumed under Heidegger’s care.  

For Kunsel it was an opportunity to move around more freely.  That reporter had come through for him, apparently there were rumors of an ex-SOLDIER with a buster style sword doing mercenary work in the slums.  Kunsel started taking any mission he could get down there as well as spending what free time he had searching under plate.

If the Turks weren’t short staffed he probably wouldn’t be able to get away with this.  As it was he combed through each sector daily, hunting for rumors.  Some said they’d seen the mercenary with the oversized sword, some said he was blond while others said he had black hair.  

Kunsel felt like he was being teased.  Was it Zack or Cloud?  Was it both?  He considered checking in with Aerith in case she knew something but even with less Turks around he felt like that was pushing everybody’s luck.

AVALANCHE had been quiet since the sector six disaster but they came back with a vengeance.  Kunsel had been asleep when the whole city shook.  His first thought had been not another plate.  Pulling his boots on he ran to the SOLDIER common area.  There were already several other SOLDIERs there and as the minutes went by more arrived.  All of them waiting for orders.

Orders that never came.  Just like with what happened in sector six and out in the wastes SOLDIER was never called upon.  Several of the guys cursed Heidegger.  Ever since he’d been put in charge SOLDIER had been put on the back burner.  Some of their complaints were legitimate, others spoken out of frustration.  

The day after as Kunsel poked around for information he had to wonder if it was really Heidegger or the Turks that were keeping SOLDIERs away from certain events.  They might be a smaller group now but they could still direct big operations.

His reason for suspicion?  Someone said they had seen Cloud.  Not just a blond with a large blade, not just an ex-SOLDIER with spiky hair.  But Cloud.  

He spent the whole day tracking down those who had been on shift last night.  Showing each of them a group picture that had both Zack and Cloud in it.  No one said they had seen Zack.  But for Cloud the reports were mixed.  

They had seen Cloud.  They hadn’t seen Cloud.  They had seen some other blond who looked similar but wasn’t Cloud.  He was one of the terrorists.  He was a SOLDIER sent after the terrorists.

Kunsel knew eyewitness testimony wasn’t reliable but would it kill the gods to give him a solid lead?

Once again he found himself turning to hacking to find answers.  The video footage he had lifter from cc tv at the train station showed a man who was most definitely an enhanced Cloud Strife with Zack’s sword working alongside AVALANCHE.  Something had definitely happened to him during the last almost five years.

Kunsel was determined to find out what that was.  Looking at the massive man with a gun arm and combining it with some information he had gotten when talking to some locals, he figured he had a pretty good lead down in sector seven.  

Of course that was when his phs beep with a mission out near Kalm.

The world had gone insane.  Kunsel hadn’t felt this off-center since Genesis’s mass desertion seven years ago.  A second reactor being attacked had been a given since the first attack had been successful, but to then escalate to dropping a plate?  It didn’t make any sense.  It was too much.

Kunsel had found out enough about Fuhito to know the guy had some serious screws loose but he’d thought all the “kill all of humanity to save the planet” members of AVALANCHE had died fighting the Turks in sector six. Had he been wrong about this splinter group?  

Was it the splinter group Cloud may or may not be with, responsible for this?  Or was it a different faction?  He’d tracked what he assumed to be the group Cloud was with to sector seven.  It wouldn’t make sense to destroy their own home unless they were trying to get Shinra off their tail.  But there were plenty of less horrific ways to achieve that.  Another thought, one he absolutely hated but couldn’t ignore - was Shinra responsible?

Did the company want to get rid of these terrorists so badly they would destroy an eight of the city to kill, what?  Five - ten people?  Dropping the plate also damaged the sectors seven and eight reactors.  The whole thing was counter intuitive.  So it had to be AVALANCHE, right?

But the ones responsible for the reactor bombings were from sector seven.  His helmeted head hit the table with a clunk.  None of this made sense.  And why were SOLDIERs still on stand-by and not being deployed?  If things had gotten this bad SOLDIER shouldn’t be shelved.

Unless… Shinra didn’t trust their loyalty.  Kinda understandable given the department's overall record but the last four to five years had been fairly quiet.  SOLDIER was still used for monster clean up but when shit hit the fan they were taken off the field.

If the whole of SOLDIER had known it was Zack out in the wastes, fighting for his life, what would have happened?  Someone would have said “hold up” and ask Zack what had happened, why were they fighting, where was Sephiroth?  Depending on his answer you’d get SOLDIER desertion 2.0.

But Zack was… dead.  Cloud wasn’t thought.  SOLDIER wouldn’t follow Cloud, most didn’t even know him.  However if he was carrying the Buster sword, there would be questions.  So keep SOLDIER away from the Buster sword.  Heidegger didn’t think like that, the Turks did.

The Turks would also know if it was AVALANCHE or the company responsible for the plate.  A chill went through him.  His hacking skills had improved but was he ready to take on the Turks?  He wouldn’t be any help to Za- Cloud if he was caught but he hadn’t been any help to his friend either.

Did it matter? Did he really need to know who was responsible?  Yeah it did.  If it was Cloud who had been part of the collapse then Kunsel was obligated to put him down.  You couldn’t do that and get away with it.  And if it was Shinra… then what?

He’d stayed to help Zack and deep down if he was honest with himself he stayed because he was afraid.  Running from the company meant fighting the company.  He wasn’t like Zack or Hewley or Rhapsodos.  He couldn’t fight an army on his own or cause a desertion.  It would just be him against the strongest group in the world.  Sure he could disappear but eventually they would find him.  Mako eyes made it hard to hide.  That and SOLDIERs needed maintenance and Shinra were the only one who could provide it.  A built in design.  Shinra owned him.

At least they owned his body.  He headed for the library and its computers.  Sometimes it felt nice to bite the hand that feeds.

He didn’t make it though, a trooper, red faced and panting, ran up to him.

“Kunsel” he gasped “I’ve been looking all over for you man!”

He stopped, leaning back into a relaxed poster. “What’s up?”

“It’s Cloud he’s here!  You were looking for him the other day right?”

He straightened in an instant “He’s…”  Cloud was here?  How?  Why?  “Are you sure it’s Cloud?”

“Yeah, he’s still got the same blond spiky hair style.  Oh and he’s a SOLDIER now!  He’s probably been in Junon or on an extended mission or something.  Knew he hadn’t been smoked.  You’d think he’d write to let us know he’d made it right?”

“Yeah,” Kunsel agreed of auto-pilot. “Is he still here?”

“That’s why I was trying to find you.  He’s over by the battle simulator, com’ on.”  The trooper waved him forward but he didn’t have to, Kunsel was already running.  

Getting to the civilian and army access battle simulator in record time Kunsel wasn’t surprised to find Cloud already gone.  Too late, too slow. “Damn it.”

He ran back to the trooper that had fetched him.  “He’s already gone.”

The trooper sagged with disappointment “Damn it, you’d think after all this time we could all hang out again.”

“Do you know what he was doing down there?”

“Came out of the simulator with two other people.”

Kunsel was instantly flicking through the photos on his phs.  He found some he’d lifted from cctv with the other AVALANCHE cell members.  He showed the trooper the photos “Were these any of the people he was with?”

“Uh, the black haired girl and the guy with the gun arm.”

“Right, thanks.  I’ll handle it from here.  You head back to your post.”

“Yes sir.  Uh, when you find Cloud, tell him the other guys and I would like to hang out sometime.  Maybe go for some drinks.  If he has the time.”

Kunsel nodded “I’ll tell him.”