Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

A Possible Future

“That was only a single centimetre of my power.”

That’s definitely wrong.

“A millimetre of my power?” That was a little better, but it still needed work. Cid checked the dictionary by his side. “One iota of my power. That’s closer.” Flipping through to find the list of synonyms for iota he found the perfect word.

“That was only a single atom of my power.”

Knock Knock

Glad I got that done. Stopping half-way through would’ve driven me crazy.

He opened the door to find Claire standing there looking...nervous. They had been on different and better terms recently, but nervous still wasn’t something he was used to seeing on her and it set him on edge immediately.

“Hey sis, what’s up?”

She didn’t answer right away, but moved past him into his apartment, shut the door and then faced him with a serious expression.

“I kind of need a favour. Are you busy tonight?”

“What is it?” He asked, not ready to commit without knowing what he was signing up for.

“I...you know my friend Sandra Carst?”

“Yes, you introduced us.”

“I was-anyway, she has this important dinner party she has to go to and I promised to look after her little brother and sister while she was gone, but something’s come up and I need to go somewhere. Could you please cover for me?”

“Does this have anything to do with your… thing with Mary and Elizabeth?”

Claire looked past him for a few seconds, but there was nothing to see behind him.

She must really be nervous about missing this date if she can’t even maintain eye contact.

Her eyes snapped back to him. “Yes it does. Cid please, I really need to go,” Claire pleaded.

That’s kind of a role reversal.

“Look, I was kind of planning on doing something with Allison tonight.” There was no reason Claire’s dates should be more important than his. He was also pretty sure he had far more on his plate than her, even with travel time to wherever the vampire duo were now.

“Well bring her along then. You could probably use the help.”

Cid gave her a quiet, questioning look until she continued. “Okay, I was wrong about her when we first met, alright. I was very hopeful about you and Rose, but Allison is very driven and very well-educated, and you’re very… reasonably… not unlucky to have her. So now I’ve admitted I was wrong, can you give me an answer?”

And so, he and Alpha showed up that night to the Carst’s residence to look after little Alex and Elise. He’d expected Alpha to be slightly annoyed that their catered dinner had turned into babysitting duty, but he thought she might actually be a little excited (it was hard to tell with her) as they stood on the doorstep. Cid wrapped the brass gold knocker a couple of times until Sandra appeared, looking very stressed in her fancy dress.

“Hi Cid, Allison. Thanks for coming,” Sandra said as soon as the door opened. They were beckoned in so quickly and the door shut behind them so rapidly, Cid momentarily considered whether this whole thing was some sort of elaborate cult trap.

“Okay, so they had dinner about an hour ago. Elise should be in bed for nine but Alex can stay up until ten. If you’re hungry or need to get a drink feel free to take whatever you need out of the kitchen. It’s just down there on the right,” she finished hurriedly.

“Running late?” Alpha asked gently.

“Not yet, but I’m cutting it close,” Sandra replied. “You two are so lucky, you know, being settled already. Some of us still have to court in our final year. Come on, they're both in the living room, just over here.”

Alex (a thin, raven haired ten year old) was playing on the floor with a toy-knight, making it do battle with a model demon held in his other hand with a slightly bored expression while Elise (Seven, with blonde hair so pale it seemed almost white where the light hit it directly) sat on the sofa reading through a picture book.

“Alex, Elise, this is Cid and Allison, and they’re going to be taking care of you for a while. Please be good and do as they tell you.”

The dark haired boy and the fair-haired girl nodded soberly as Sandra moved to give them a kiss farewell, with Alex making a token protest as his turn came.

“I’ll be back late tonight, but I’ll be here when you wake up tomorrow. Have a good time.”

With that she sped back the way they had come and went through a miniature version of the same goodbye she’d just given when the kids put down their things to follow her to the threshold.

Once she was away, Alpha knelt down next to the two children and looked the elder of the two in the eyes before speaking.

“Shall we go back to the living room? Since there’s four of us, maybe there’s a game we can all play together?”

“Y,yeah, that sounds...good.” Alex said in a daze. It seemed as though he’d actually looked at Alpha for the first time at that moment and very much liked what he saw.

Elise nodded slowly and followed after her brother while he led them back (constantly looking over his shoulder to Alpha as he went).

He wanted to play some banking game but his sister insisted it was too complicated and boring, so they eventually settled on serpents and steps (Cid didn’t care which was picked as both were Mitsugoshi products so he’d already won). Cid took the first game, then (probably because he was hoping to lose), couldn’t get past the first quarter of the board on the second run and then Elise came through with the win. Alex won the third despite his apparent dislike for the game.

They were all growing tired of the game by that point, but that left them with a little more than an hour to go before Elise should be put to bed, so Cid suggested they take a tour of the house and grab a drink (and a snack) from the kitchens as they went.

Now they knew their way around a little bit, they played a quick few game of hide and seek after that, in which Cid may or may not have actually turned invisible during Alex’s turn to seek as payback for the little brat’s constant ‘bumping into’ Alpha as he ran about the house.

The clock struck nine during that time, giving Cid an excuse to reveal himself and declare victory. Alex went back to his room while Cid and Alpha got Elise ready for bed, who seemed to grow more and more nervous as she got closer to being tucked in.

They had just shifted the blanket over her and turned to leave when she cried out, “I-um…Mom or Dad or Sandra always tell me a story before bed-” She started getting teary-eyed and Alpha quickly tried to settle her.

“Calm down, it’s okay. They’ll be back soon.”

That obviously didn’t work and Elise only started to get more worked up over the absence of her parents and older sister.

“So, do you like that book you were reading earlier? The Lion Lord?” Cid knew the answer already. It hardly took Detective Kagenou (Midgar-PD) to see the picture book she’d been flicking through when they’d arrived had pages creased from rereads, and the edges of the hardcover were scuffed, indicating it had been bumped around significantly despite only being published this year.

You can take away the badge, but you can never take the investigator’s keen eye for detail.

“Yes. It’s my favourite.”

“Well, I actually know the author of that book, and she let me know what’s going to happen in the next one.” Cid said smugly, conscious of Alpha’s worried stare while he waited for the inevitable-

“Really?!”

Cid put on his most conspiratorial voice before he continued. “Yeah. It’s totally top secret though. I could never tell anyone. I mean, unless they promised not to tell anyone else.”

“Can I hear it? I promise not to tell.”

“I don’t know…I mean, I guess if you really mean it-” he said hesitantly as she nodded eagerly to egg him on.

“Okay. So our story begins back on the high-rock,” Cid started dramatically. “Sambo and Nara present their new daughter, Keera to the animals gathered below. At the same time in the dusty-badlands far to the east, a new cub called Koru-”

And so it went for half an hour, with Cid struggling to remember the plot and Elise straining equally hard to stay awake. By the time he got to “And so the prides reunited, never to divide again,” her eyes were half closed. Desperate for sleep and too tired to even try denying it, she accepted his goodnight this time silently, falling asleep as he slowly and quietly pressed the door shut behind him on the way out.

Alpha had departed during the story’s first quarter, and he found her sitting in Alex’s room. A wooden practice sword was lying in front of her and Cid could only guess Alex had tried to use it to impress her earlier. Then he heard a fresh challenge from the boy.

“I watched the Bushin festival, but it wasn't as good as last year. That Shadow guy ruined it, he was a complete joke.”

“What makes you say that?” Cid asked a little too defensively as he entered the room. It was as large as his sister’s, but a lot more blue and a lot more focused on dueling. He had a poster showing Iris’ final fight in last year’s Bushin festival among other dark-knight related memorabilia.

Alex looked at Cid like he’d just ruined the best moment of his life, then said petulantly, “He runs away all the time. If he was really strong, he would need to run and hide at all. He’d just fight,” he finished proudly.

“Well, maybe he just wants to stay mysterious.”

“Maybe he just sucks. What do you think about Shadow Allison?” Alex asked Alpha, eyes full of hope she’d take his side.

“I think...he must be pretty incredible,” Alpha began. Cid almost felt sorry for the kid as he managed to figure out he’d lost this one. “A lot of people follow him, and they wouldn’t do that for no reason, so I suppose that means there must be something very special about him.”

“I guess,” Alex replied sulkily. He yawned and looked back at the two of them. “I’ll go to bed now. I’m not a baby like Elise, I can do it myself. I’m ten,” He emphasized.

“That’s very grown-up of you Alex. Cid and I will be downstairs if you need anything.” Alpha gave him a quick hug before she left, and the kid hadn’t stopped grinning before they closed the door behind him.

They both headed back down to the living room, Cid leaning back into the sofa while Alpha paced for a few minutes, waiting until the sounds from Alex’s room stopped completely before standing straight in front of him like she was getting ready to give him an official report.

“How did you know to calm Elise down? I didn’t know you had any experience with kids.”

“I don’t, but I just thought it was obvious. If a kid is upset about something you can’t reason them out of it. You either have to distract them until they forget or wait it out.”

“It seems you still have much to teach me,” Alpha mused. “I thought I was doing so well up to that point.”

“Well you had Alex eating out of your hand the whole time.”

Alpha smirked, “Hardly a challenge. And it was hardly due to my skills with children.”

Cid shrugged. “It was our first time and we got through it without any issues. I say we just accept it as a win and call it a day.”

Alpha paused for a moment. “Cid, do you ever think about a life like this?” She asked, gesturing around the room. “A comfortable home, a quiet life… Children to take care of.”

Cid managed not to flinch at the sudden question.

“Probably someday,” he said noncommittally. “I mean, it’s probably where my cover identity is going.”

“That isn’t really what I meant,” Alpha said, voice growing slightly more cool. “I meant, is this something you would actually want for yourself?”

He hadn’t really thought about his life outside of being the Eminence in Shadow for anything other than how it served being the Eminence in Shadow, but there was a surprising amount of appeal in the thought of coming back to a home like this with Alpha every night.

There was so much potential in having a child too. Taking them on their first bandit hunt and coaching them through their lines. Helping them pick out the perfect spot for their own secret base, and of course, the many, many, ‘I am your father,’ options to choose from. This would of course be many, many years from now with no out-of-nowhere speed-ups.

Hopefully.

“Yes, I do want that,” Cid said.

“Well that’s good. I do as well,” Alpha said quietly, shoulders relaxing slightly. It occurred to Cid all at once how much she had risked asking that question. All her dreams for the future could have been dashed by a simple ‘no’ from him.

“Sandra’s not going to be back until midnight,” Cid said, gesturing to the spot beside him on the sofa. “Any ideas on how to pass the time?”

“I brought a little paperwork for us to do before we head back. We should be able to-”

“Shh,” Cid said, pulling her down on top of him. “The kids are asleep, we have the whole house to ourselves, and I say Mrs Kagenou works far too hard for her own good.”

“Cid, we really should-”

Alpha flushed and made a half-hearted effort to rise, but he held firm and she relented immediately, relaxing into him. He might have made their date babysitting, but there was no way in hell she was making him do paperwork. That was beyond the pale.

She tilted her head slightly so she could give him a challenging look without moving. “Fine. But you should know that once I really am Mrs Kagenou, this isn’t going to work anymore.”

Chapter Text

Tripping a Red Flag

“Come on Cid, I really need your help.”

Skel was once again on the ground before him, voice pitched annoyingly high as he begged for assistance. This time he had at least waited until they were alone in his room before the grovelling began.

Is this becoming his ritual greeting or something? This has got to be the third or fourth time this has happened in the last six months.

“Look, even if I wanted to, Allison’s out of town all week. Nothing I can do about it.”

“I-Isn’t there anyone else you can ask, like Claire? I didn’t tell her it was a date or who was coming, just that I’d show her around town with a few friends.”

My god.

If Skel was willing to risk bringing Claire into this, his new crush/obsession was driving him to new depths of desperation (though not in the way Cid thought it would have). He’d been visiting Marie religiously since they’d made it back to Midgar until she’d opened her new cafe, at which point he immediately applied for the part time job he’d been working for the past week. Cid really shouldn't have cared about it at all, but he could respect the grind and he did have a… morbid curiosity about where this was going?

I mean, is he really changing and could this work? or is he just being set up to fail harder?

“Don’t you have any other friends you could ask?”

“Only Po.” Skel admitted.

Silence.

“Well… I guess I could ask one of her friends or something,” Cid said slowly. His next Black Concord appointment was with someone he was a little… hesitant to be alone with for too long. He’d noticed a red-flag with Nu months ago as she interrogated his father (far too enthusiastically), and maybe a simple date through the city (with witnesses) would work out better for him than whatever she’d want out of him in private.

“Do-do they also have a Mitsugoshi discount? I said we would go to that new Moovie thing that just opened there,” Skel whimpered hopefully.

“I’ll have to check.”

---

Natalie, Nu’s alter ego for the day, was a business student interning at Mitsugoshi, and so dressed to balance fashion and practicality. The white button up shirt and form-fitting fur lined black jacket managed the balance well, but she had faltered slightly with the skirt and tights. The skirt was a little too short and the tights a little too thin to be traipsing through the snow-covered capital, but this was probably the only time she’d even see Cid for a month or more, and so appearance had to be prioritized ahead of the character consistency for now.

Marie’s little cafe was only a few blocks from Mitsugoshi, but was tucked in at the edge of a fairly narrow side street. Nu missed it on her first pass, but caught sight of the sign approaching from the other end which read “City Escape,” across a sky blue background bordered by white clouds. She ignored the prominent ‘Closed’ sign and pushed the door open, feeling a refreshing wave of heat as she crossed the threshold.

The interior was more spacious than Nu thought it would be from the outside. The layout was symmetrical with booths lining both walls, square and rectangular tables laid out across the floor leading to the counter, which had ten stools evenly spaced out in front. Cid and Skel sat there as Marie reached under the counter on the opposite side, then poured them a drink from behind the counter.

Nu waved as Marie noticed her and beckoned her over, while Cid and Skel turned to make their greetings as well. She chanced an overlong hug with Cid before taking the chair beside him. Natalie and Cid weren’t dating, but her new character did have a passing interest in him, and so it would be totally normal for her to lean into him as they watched the film. Her new character and Allison weren’t great friends, after all.

Maybe we should see the new horror movie? If Natalie’s easily frightened, she could practically sit in Cid’s lap through the whole thing and no-one would bat an eye.

“Do you own this place?” Nu asked with a hint of wonder as sipped at the drink Marie had passed her. Nu already knew the answer, but Natalie was a little more silly.

“Yeah.”

“Goddess, I’m kind of jealous of that. I work at Mitsugoshi between business classes and it’s a pretty good place, but it’s got to be cool to be your own boss and do whatever you want.”

Marie smiled sheepishly. “It’s a lot of work too. Long opening hours, balancing account books-” she said, leaning over the counter to whisper the last few words “training hapless employees.”

Nu glanced at Cid and Skel (a completely amateur move), then turned back to Marie, poorly suppressing a smile.

“At least you only have to balance one set of real books. I’ve got to do parts of Mitsugoshi’s and then work through imaginary examples for my classes.”

She and Marie chatted for a while, with Cid and Skel occasionally contributing, mostly focusing on the business of the cafe, (‘was it family owned?’, ‘when did you open?’, that sort of thing) but with a couple of the expected questions about her past gently mixed in, not pressing at the lack of detail. Nu couldn’t help but think it was a mistake not to just make something up as she fabricated Natalie’s entire life story on the fly, but she supposed she should appreciate that Marie was probably trying to be honest.

Nu found herself liking the girl and even offered to let her use her Mitsugoshi discount to get a record player to perhaps liven up the place on quiet days, but apparently Marie had never encountered one before.

“Why don’t we go check out the store on our way to the movies? It’s just a floor above and a few doors down, it wouldn’t take more than five minutes.” Nu asked.

“If there’s time,” Marie said looking worriedly down the flier with all the theatre’s showtimes for the week Cid had laid on the countertop.

“There’s plenty of time, movies never start when they say they will because they need to show trailers,” Nu said confidently. Marie probably had no idea what she meant by ‘trailers’, but didn’t ask.

“So, looking at our options, unless we want to wait, we’ve got a horror movie called ‘the apparition’ or a kids movie called ‘alone at home’, The first one’s about a demon haunting a family out in the country, and the second one’s about a kid who’s accidently left at home by his parents and has to live by himself for a week.”

“Apparition,” Nu said at once. “Come on, we’re all adults here. We’d look stupid going to see a film for kids.”

“I pick that too,” Skel said eagerly.

Cid shrugged, “Fine with me, Marie?”

Marie nodded, “That’s alright with me, as long as there aren’t any vampires in it.”

The walk to Mitsugoshi was far too short. Nu kept an arm around Cid to keep warm, all the while bemoaning the freezing cold weather and her own choices of clothing as she lied about thinking ‘‘it was supposed to get warmer this afternoon’. Skel and Marie walked apart, but Marie would occasionally use the lanky boy as a support if they were walking across a particularly slick bit of road.

Nu passed her employee discount card to Marie as she exclaimed over the record player so she could put a delivery order in at the till, feeling a little jealous of the girl's sense of wonder over the everyday device. Nu was, admittedly, a little ticked off when Marie passed the card to Skel rather than her as they walked the short distance to the theatre, but he was buying the tickets for them, after all. Nu held her hand out expectedly as he walked back to them and started passing out the tickets to make certain he didn’t forget to return it, as from what she knew of the boy he was likely to sell it or try to use it to make money.

They broke apart just past the ticket attendant, with Cid and Skel going for a quick bathroom break while she and Marie went ahead to take their seats, feeling an unfamiliar eagerness as she envisioned the next two hours. She had dreamed about something like this for months now, about what her life would be like if she and Cid had met at the academy and where it could have gone. Now she was finally getting to live out some part of it, it was hard not to feel excitement.

—

The movie was just beginning by the time Skel was finished, and the theatre was so dark he could barely make out the seat numbers on the floor to find his place. He shuffled slowly along the aisle to avoid tripping over anyone’s feet before settling in place besides Maire.

He briefly wondered where Cid was, as he’d had to buy two pairs of tickets as no row of four was still available by the time he was buying. The movie itself, being a ‘horror’ feature, had the screen half black for most of the runtime, which didn’t help him orient himself or locate his other friends, and he quickly gave up on finding them for more important pursuits.

Maybe some other movie would have been better for this (he’d hoped she’d be looking to him for comfort in this film, but as the minutes ticked by she sat as impassively as a stone), but maybe she was just afraid to make the first move. His side on view only showed him a curtain of long hair obscuring most of her face. Even the beautiful auburn colour was lost in the dim light. For all he knew she was sitting petrified, waiting for him.

Skel hadn’t had much success with Count Virgin Boy’s techniques in the past, but he’d considered this one for days now and from every angle it seemed solid. The foolproof technique ‘theatre pull’ only required him to fake a yawn, stretch his arms up, and then slowly lower one around the angel beside him. If she reacted negatively, he could just pull back and say it had been part of the stretch, no-harm no foul, but if not…

It took him until the last ten minutes of the movie to work up his courage, but he finally managed to execute. Slowly, carefully, he lowered his arm around the woman at his side. She flinched slightly as his fingers came to rest on her shoulder, but didn’t say anything as he relaxed into position.

Success. Even after all of my failed attempts, I never doubted you my dear Coun-

There was a sudden ripping pain between his fingers and Skel shrieked with half the theatre as the monster of the film he’d been so terrified of before was finally revealed. Skel was far more afraid of the person beside him, who had finally turned away from the screen to face him and was certainly not Marie.

“Listen to me very carefully-”

---

“That was pretty… What the hell happened to you?” Cid asked, as Skel approached with Nu, cradling a hand with two fingers bent the wrong way that was quickly turning blue.

Some mix up with the tickets left him sitting with Marie and Nu sitting with Skel, but it would have made a scene if they started trading places after the start of the film. They’d both heard Skel’s scream a few minutes back, but Cid just assumed it was his reaction to one of the jump-scares. Marie was bad enough with her fingers tightening on his arm every time something frightening happened, so it had checked out at the time.

“I...I got it jammed in the seats and someone leaned back and crushed it,” Skel said frantically, darting away from Nu to stand beside Marie, who gently lifted his hand and looked over the blackening break as Nu moved next to Cid.

“Oh you poor thing. Let’s go and ask if we can get some ice at the concessions stand and then head back to the shop so I can bandage you up.” Missing Skel’s look of jubilation that she had held his hand, Marie turned back to Cid and Nu.

“We’ll just get going, there’s no need for us to hold you two up. It was great meeting you both.” With a small wave, she turned to Skel and began leading him through the emptying theatre back to her cafe. Skel turned back to him and held two fingers of his good hand to his mouth in a shushing motion, clearly telling him not to inform Marie he could fix the break in a second with magic.

Nu’s reaction to the whole scene was… bizarre. She looked after them with a vacant expression with her hands quivering at her side.

Was the movie too much for her? I wouldn’t have thought she’d be that soft, but I guess it could be a gap moe thing?

“I helped him. If there weren’t so many people around I could’ve…I actually helped that wretched little-”

“What?”

Nu suddenly seemed to remember he was there, and moved to stand beside him. She towered over him in his chair, blocking his escape as she locked his wrists to the armrests with both of her hands as she leaned down to face him nose to nose.

“Master, your apartment building is near here, correct?”

“Yeah, but-”

“Shh,” she whispered, “For now just listen. I need you to take me there right now, then let me use your shower for exactly sixty seconds alone, then join me. I’ll give you more instructions then.”

Nu’s hadn’t broken eye contact through that whole speech. He noticed he felt more tension now than at any time in the last two hours as she pulled him to his feet in the dark, deserted screening room and pulled him to the bright exit. It seemed like he had been correct about her sadistic streak, and had still ended up as the poor sap dating her.

Cid decided to play along and led her back to his place. If nothing else, it would at least be a little different to what he got from all the others.

—

The Next Morning

Nu shook her head slowly as she turned in the bed, feeling her dull, exhausted tiredness turn to panic as she felt the body beside her and remembered her less than tender handling of it the night before.

Maybe it wasn't that ba-… Oh Goddess help me.

Cid was already awake and looking at her as she came to herself and she pressed her head to his chest in the closest thing to a bow she could manage in their current position. Thankfully he’d healed the scratches her nails had left there, so she didn’t have to face that reminder of her loss of control.

“Master, I’m terribly sorry about last night. I… completely lost my head and I-”

Cid put a hand to her cheek, cutting off her grovelling apology.

“Eh, it was actually a lot less intense than I thought it was going to be. Like, there was this one time when Alexia and I were dating where I lost so much blood, people started looking for a body. Compared to that, this was basically a soothing dip in the hot springs.”

Nu looked up at him in horror, a flair of outrage at Alexia’s impudence was suddenly dwarfed by another (fascinating) idea. Given her master’s incredible durability, was she perhaps too gentle with him last night?

Chapter Text

A Failed Experiment

After a few months of living with the Black concord, Cid thought he’d experienced enough that he wouldn’t be disturbed by any of the requests made on him by his followers. Between Alexia, Nu and Delta, he’d thought himself now immune to that kind of shock. This though… this might genuinely be the most out-of-pocket shit he’d ever live through.

“Just… lie back. Then I’ll climb in with you… and we’ll be retracted inside,” Eta said, almost squirming with glee as she gestured to the black, coffin-like cylinder. They both stood dressed in loose pyjamas in one of Eta’s private labs outside of Mitsugoshi. It was basically a small apartment with tools, projects in development, blueprints and notes scattered across workstations like a hurricane had blown through, with an eye-catching circular hole in the wall just behind this cylindrical pull-out bed.

When Cid had been asked to change, he’d expected a quiet few hours of relaxation in the small (and much tidier) living quarters upstairs. Maybe that one of the numbers would swing by with some dinner in a couple of hours. This though...

“Umm… and you’re sure this is how you want to spend today’s date?”

“Positive,” she said, patting the odd bed with glee.

“Is there… any particular reason?”

“Vampires are popular… with girls my age… because of Beta’s books. Is it that weird?”

“No.”

Fuck yes it is! I’m pretty sure the vampires in those stories don’t even sleep in coffins. And it’s completely out of character for you to be into that shit anyway. If you were going to be into old horror stuff like this, at least pick Frankenstein or Dr Jekyll or something with a mad scientist motif!

“Besides… it cuts out the light...and makes sleeping easier. Isn’t everyone always saying… I need to work on that.”

“Okay, I’ll go in,” Cid said reluctantly, lying down on the smooth, padded back of the bed(?) and relaxing his shoulders. His vision was almost entirely cut off by the wall/ceiling above him, and the thing hadn’t even shut yet.

“You coming?” Cid asked after almost a minute of waiting.

“Just a second I…” something clanged and began to hum faintly in the background. Cid braced himself for the very real possibility that the machine might try to harvest his brain. It had been years since that first attempt, but even to this day he felt being prepared just in case was the right attitude with Eta. “I forgot something… I need to sort out. I’ll be right… there.”

There was a clang and the hum died away, then the soft weight of Eta’s body began shifting against him as she cuddled in. He couldn’t see her well, but he could feel the top of her hair brushing his chin as a machine began pulling them into the wall and a panel extended to lock them inside, sealing them in pitch black silence.

Cid began running a hand through Eta’s smooth tresses as he relaxed in the calm and quiet. It was actually rather soothing once you got used to it. Then a faint knocking that sounded as if it was coming from above and below intruded on the silence.

“It’s really soothing in here… isn’t it, master.” Eta said, more loudly than she needed to given their proximity.

“Yeah, it’s better than I thought it’d be.” He was about to ask her about the knocking when it cut out and he decided to drop the question.

This would be a great place for meditation, if you could sit. Maybe I should ask her to make me one.

Two flashes of light from the left and right broke him out of his musings, and he looked at Eta questioningly, then realized there was no way she could see him now the lights were off.

“Oh yes...I was testing light patterns… to induce and improve sleep. I forgot to disable that. Sorry master.”

Okay, that’s it. There’s got to be some kind of trick here. Bide your time and get ready.

It took only another five minutes for another sound, a low hum, to feed into their chamber. As he expected, Eta tried to speak over it to distract him again. “Master… how was your-”

Cid cut her off, pulling her face to his for a silencing kiss as he focused the majority of his attention and mana into his ears to make out the noise all around them, only to discover a cacophony of faint whistles, groans, and hisses amongst a few of the noises he’d heard previously. Pushing Eta away and giving her a second to recover her breath, he asked a question he already knew the answer to.

“This is an MRI machine, isn’t it?”

“Please don’t move… you bringing my face up there… might have already compromised the scan.”

“Eta,” Cid said sternly.

“It is,” Eta said, squeezing the right side of his chest in frustration. “You just… kept making excuses… whenever I asked. And I spent so much time… trying to make it quiet and dark… but this was the best… I could do. Sometimes I… hate physics. Please just… stay there...until it’s done. I’ll make it… up to you,” Eta said, slowly crawling down his body to the other end of the MRI cylinder.

Cid probably would have stopped this at once had Eta not still been lying half on top of him and if he didn’t know he would literally have to kick his way free, given her investment in getting a brain scan from him. Making her stop now would be like trying to pull meat from the jaws of a starving wolf (or Delta).

He’d resisted for a long time, but now finally locked into it, he would just have to hope nothing too bad would come from this brain scan.

She’s looking for the secret to a hyperintelligence I don’t have, so how bad could this possibly go?

Three Weeks Later

Cid rushed through the halls of Mitsugoshi, only stopping to confirm Eta was in her lab before dashing off again. The note Gamma sent him that morning had been worrying him all day.

“Eta has stopped researching, and not even threats to the budget are motivating her. Lord Shadow, we require your immediate assistance.”

Despite being told she was alone by the number he’d asked, he could hear a voice echoing through the empty corridors. Eta’s own, he realized as he drew closer, made strangely unrecognizable by how loud it was.

“You fool… what you just struck… was merely an after-image.”

What the-

Thinking there must be an intruder despite the lack of a second mana signature in the lab, he burst through the door to find Eta facing off against… Eta. Both were in their Shadow Garden battle-suit, but only one retracted their mask.

“Oh, Master. Welcome.”

“Hi Eta,” he said slowly, looking at the moving Eta and realizing the second one was completely frozen in position. “What are you doing? Gamma said you’ve stopped working on the tape player.”

“It’s… complicated, master. I’m having trouble focusing on my research right now… getting it to work right,” she said, putting a hand to her head in frustration. “The thing is… I’ve also been thinking about this new technique all the time… and it’s distracting me. I think I need to practice it and use it… to just get it out of my head… and I’ll be able to focus again.”

“Alright,” Cid said, nodding in understanding. It wasn’t like he hadn’t been there before himself.

“So… how does it go?”

“Well… I’ll be fighting someone… then I’ll covertly drop that decoy artifact,” Eta said, pointing to the small disk on the floor, projecting the still masked Eta. “Then my enemy attacks it.” Eta swung a sword through the hologram to demonstrate. “Then I reappear and am like… ‘That was merely… an after-image… you are blind… within my shadows.”

“Okay that’s… really good.” Cid said honestly.

“I imagined doing it… with a real after image… but I’m not fast enough for that. I’ll have to train more, I suppose.”

Cid almost cried out at the thought of Eta volunteering for physical training, but restrained himself. Maybe this meant she was finally growing up, and expressing disbelief at this stage would surely damage her self-esteem.

“If that’s the problem, why don’t we practice this together for a little while, then try and find a couple of robbers to try this out on tonight. Then you can get back to research tomorrow?”

Eta ran and hugged him, thanking him profusely before they got to work. The technique itself was harder than he’d originally thought. With Eta’s speed, it was difficult for her to drop the disk, deploy the decoy, and get completely out of sight without being detected, but they could compensate for that by positioning the decoy between Eta’s enemy and her path of retreat to block line of sight. The limitation meant she had some severe restrictions on what position she could start from to pull off the move, but after a couple of hours grind they had it in a workable state.

Following that, he and Eta began heading out of Mitsugoshi to begin their stakeout for likely bandits to hunt, only for her to run into one of her admiring fans.

“And it’s not just your inventions, I also really like the buildings you made. My parents took me to the Syndal Opera house you designed, and it was so beautiful. How did you get so good at so many things?” A young girl of around thirteen asked as they were just inches from the exits. They hadn’t exactly drawn a crowd, but a few people had slowed to look at the pseudo-celebrity.

“Oh, I’m really not all that good. A lot of my work is collaborative, so I really can’t take much of the credit. Just keep working and I’m sure you’ll manage,” Eta said, in a sweet, consoling voice Cid thought she might have modelled on Sherry’s. It was incredibly disturbing, coming from her.

“Then it must be great to have such an amazing team. It was really nice to meet you, Miss Erin,” the young girl said before skipping away. As soon as they were out of the doors, Eta’s shoulders slumped as they began trekking to an almost perpetually deserted side street to put on their suits and climb into position.

“Cid I think I’ve made… a terrible mistake. I tried to play it off… and look inconsequential but I mean… I have fans… What was I thinking? Becoming so famous.”

“Is there anything wrong with that?”

“Of course there is. How am I supposed to blend in… while having fans? It isn’t mob-like at all!”

Wait, mob-like?

Cid gave Eta another curious look over. Maybe this wasn’t a growing up thing, but some bizarre form of flirting by trying to appeal to his tastes.

That doesn’t really explain everything though. Guess I’ll just need to keep an eye on her until I figure it out.

It took two hours of waiting after sunset to find any muggers, and they passed the time discussing potential lines to drop in the fight like “this form, this battle, that is all that I am,” or “I have come… to collect your debts… to that person… that is all that can be said.” By the time the bandits showed, Cid was seriously reconsidering the offkey flirting theory for Eta’s behavioural changes.

The incident itself didn’t involve him at all, and the decoy into shadow strike attack went off perfectly.

As Cid looted the bandits an alarm went off on Eta’s wristwatch, and he paused his rummaging to watch her. She reached into a pocket of her slime suit, withdrawing a small pill and prepared to swallow it.

“Eta, what’s that?” Cid asked.

“Oh it’s… do you remember that brain scan...you let me have a few weeks ago,” Eta said lovingly. “I was able to make a… brain supplement so that my brain… will become more like yours with time. That way… my intelligence will increase and… I won’t have to bother you for Shadow Wisdom as much.”

“Noooo!” Cid yelled, rushing to tackle Eta and leapt to the closest rooftop, causing her to drop her new medicine and let out a much softer “Noooo,” as they went.

Eta’s brain. Eta’s brilliant, business-building brain. Please don’t let it be permanently damaged.

Cid cradled her head against him, partly to comfort himself and partly to stop her from going back into the alley and poisoning more of her brain cells.

“Master… why are you-”

“Shhh. Eta, did you never wonder why I denied you a scan of my brain for so long?”

“Of course I… wait, do you mean to say… there was a forbidden secret… behind this discovery… I don’t know.”

“Yes… I had hoped your years of training would have allowed you to realize the dark secret of brain modification yourself, but I see your eagerness has blinded you, Eta.”

“Master… What is the secret?… I must know,” Eta whispered, her gentle pull away from him towards the street finally stopping.

“There is a… hidden side effect to your current treatments if they continue. The terrible curse of-”

Think, dammit, think. What’s going to make her stop?

If he was dealing with the Eta he knew, the answer was nothing but the truth. For the kind of increase to her intelligence she thought she was getting, Eta would probably give up the use of her legs with no regret. But this Eta was becoming like him, and so-

“Alopecia,” Cid said seriously, making tiny strands of mana with his fingers to cut a few brown strands, collecting them, then holding them under her eyes for inspection.

Eta yelped and began pressing herself more firmly into his chest.

“Please...please say I’m not going to become a baldie.”

Cid spent the rest of the night comforting Eta as they returned to Mitsugoshi. Her personality and intelligence returned to their usual state after a few days, and while her priorities returned to normal, the residual fear of the episode kept her from attempting brain modification again.

Chapter Text

Lessons In Ruthlessness

Zeta’s ideal day out was something most wouldn’t have guessed from her, but given her love of the water for travel, relaxation, and as the source of her favorite food, Cid wasn’t terribly shocked. The lake was about as out of the way as Cid could imagine, about three miles across and half that lengthwise in a rough oval shape. The grass between the encircling trees and the water was wild, but not thick enough to be an obstacle. Zeta herself was lounging in her bathing suit on a towel a few feet from the lake’s edge, eyes obscured by her dark brown sunglasses as she lounged, a light travel bag and cool box lying beside her. Saying she was stretched out comfy as a cat would have been an understatement.

Sensing an opportunity, Cid camouflaged himself in slime and moved slowly down from the slight hill he’d used as a vantage point and through the trees towards her, restraining his mana to ensure she had no way to detect him. He could have already given himself away on the run over, but Zeta had always made a point of highlighting her successes sneaking around him, and now was as good a time as any to show the student had not become the master. He was but a few feet from his target when she said “I know you’re there,” tiredly, as if rousing herself from a nap.

Cid froze, disappointed and trying to work out how she’d managed to detect him. As he worked on that puzzle, Zeta didn’t stand or even look towards him. Now doubly puzzled by his detection and her response, Cid remained silent and still, studying his target.

“I know you’re there,” she said again, in the same disinterested voice.

Struggling not to laugh aloud as he figured out her game, Cid took the last few creeping steps towards Zeta’s tail, stopping just a few inches from the outlying hairs. Then he bent down to give the appendage a gentle tug.

Zeta shot up like a new recruit being called on by Lambda, tail retracting behind her as she spun on him.

“I know you’re there,” Cid said derisively, giving her a mocking smile as his camouflage dropped. “You sensed my dash over here, but you had no idea where I really was once I started sneaking up on you. You were just saying that on a loop to trick me into revealing myself.”

“Well, yes, but that’s no reason to start pulling at my tail,” Zeta complained, running her fingers along the strands as if she could massage them.

“I just wanted to show you how it’s done. You made a huge deal about slipping me that gift for Claire without me noticing, and it really wasn’t that big a deal. There was a lot going on, and I just wasn’t paying that much attention at the time.”

“Really, and now things are quieter, you’re sure I couldn’t get into your apartment to leave or take anything.”

“Pretty sure,” Cid said, mostly confident in the answer.

Zeta made no reply, but walked to her travel bag, pulled something black out of it and threw it to him. He caught it and looked down to see his own trunks unravel in his hand. He was about to ask how she’d gotten these when the obvious answer that she had pilfered them occurred.

“You were home when I picked them up, just so you know.”

Now on the backfoot himself, Cid could only think of one good response. “Well…I guess you and Delta have that in common, pinching things out of my drawers.”

Zeta flushed slightly at that, “I only wanted to surprise you. This is entirely different to whatever Delta does with your socks.” Taking a calming breath, she continued, “Instead of wasting your time today, I’m going to do something useful and teach you how to swim. All that flailing you were doing back in the Palreia pool was difficult to watch.”

Cid gave her a puzzled look. Swimming wasn’t a particularly useful skill to hone, so he’d mostly ignored it after learning the basics in his first life and again in the second, but he didn’t consider himself to be horrible at it.

“I caught you once or twice in those games.”

Zeta grinned at that, “I let you catch up, to keep things fun. Master, it was so bad, your doggy paddling beside you was able to keep up.”

Damn, she’s been working on that one for a while.

“To be clear on how much work we’ve got to do, you’d be at about a nine year-old level in the Golden Panther tribe,” Zeta said, all traces of amusement gone.

“Really?”

“Yes, really. Now get changed so we can start. You can do it in the woods if you’re embarrassed.”

Not wanting to give ground, Cid changed where he stood, though he used his slime suit to ensure he was never completely exposed. Not out of any sense of embarrassment (that was long gone), but because he suspected Zeta had been trying to provoke him with those words, and didn’t want to give her the satisfaction.

To establish a baseline, he was commanded to dive into the water from a rocky outcrop a few hundred yards from her towel, then cross the lake and back as fast as he could. Timing it in his head as he went, the three mile exercise took a little over five minutes.

Shaking her head at his performance from their improvised diving platform, she took off her shades and signalled him to climb out of the water and take up her position, so he could watch her do the same exercise.

She was quite simply much better than him at this. Her dive into the water was like an arrow being shot into it, while his had been more akin to a brick being angrily tossed into the depths. To keep with the arrow image, hers was shot straighter and kept more steady as she cut across the water, and by his count she pressed her hand to their starting point again after only three minutes and thirty seven seconds.

“Okay, I concede my technique could use some work.”

The lesson began with working on his starting position, either diving in or pushing off from the rocky platform. After an hour of that, he was on to working on improving his stroke form, timing his breaths, better integrating his breaths into his regular movements to minimise slowdown, and half a hundred other minor details.

In swordplay, there was a basic tenant that reducing wasted movement was always ideal, and there was a similar tenant to swimming in which minimizing water resistance was always ideal. Differences, like that his legs were much less useful due to their limited range of movement threw him off, but Zeta’s constant corrections kept him improving.

Zeta’s teaching style was much more serious than he’d expected, and she was a little more hands-on in directing his head and limbs into the appropriate positions than most other teachers would have been (and to be fair, that part he should have seen coming).

“Your fingers are too spread out when you reach into the water,” she explained, the pair of them standing in the shallows as she delivered this lesson. “Think of your hand like a shovel,” she said, pressing his fingers together. “You drive it into the ground,” she continued, pushing it into the water beside them, “pull up the dirt, and toss it behind you,” she finished, pushing his hand down, then back and up behind him.

“Yet another Delta similarity. You both love digging.”

“It’s a good metaphor,” she responded, ignoring his jab and smiling gently. “When you’re digging a hole, the more dirt you get each time you swing your spade, and the less you drop back into the hole, the faster you dig. When you’re swimming, the more water you get when you reach out in front of you, and the more you keep to push behind you, the faster you’ll go.”

“Did you just make that up?” Cid asked, slightly impressed.

Zeta had a slightly faraway look as she responded, but kept her smile. “No. When my father taught me to swim, I said something about how earth and water were total opposites, so it was a stupid description. He sent me on another ten laps and gave me that answer when I finished.”

Her smile took on a bitter edge, “He also said I would have been smart enough to figure that out myself if I wasn’t trying so hard to be a smartass. Now back to it, we’ve only got about two more hours of light left.”

Cid thought the reminder of her family might make her either angry or upset (it always had in her younger years, and he’d learned not to bring up the topic), but she seemed happy enough, and the lesson continued as before.

It had still been morning when he’d yanked her tail, but sunset was threatening by the time Zeta said he was ready to attempt another test lap to review his progress (and she probably only conceded that much because continuing into the dark was out of the question).

Sinking in like a stone arrow during the dive, he focused on his hands and arms and shoulders, using his legs only to provide a slight bit of additional power and balance as he fought to beat his last time, and even Zeta’s a little bit. He hit their block after four minutes and fifteen seconds.

“Better,” Zeta conceded. “It could still use some work, but definitely much better than it was. Alright, let’s have something to eat before you have to head back.”

They sat down on Zeta’s pre-laid towel and opened up the packed lunch she’d brought, the sandwiches inside the cool-box were still cold to the touch after all the hours in the sun.

Seems like Eta really got that one down.

“So,” Cid said between bites, “this was a pretty odd date. Did you enjoy it?”

“A little, but I wasn’t really aiming for fun. You’ve got plenty of other people for that. I wanted to do something that could help you in the long run. Even if I don’t see you for another year, or even if I died tomorrow, you would still have this new skill I’ve taught you forever.”

“That’s a little overdramatic,” Cid said with some amusement. Her downcast eyes made him think she was really bothered by the possibility, so he let go of his sandwich with one hand so he could put it around her shoulder.

Maybe it’s about her family. They basically went from fine to all dead in a few days. It would be pretty normal if her mental leaned a little towards anxiety.

“Zeta, you’re one of the best fighters in this world, part of the most powerful organisations in the world, and, well, I’m here,” he finished, giving her shoulder a light squeeze. If he’d been trying to boast about all that to an enemy, he’d have known exactly what to say, but sincerity in comforting others was not part of the Eminence in Shadow toolkit he’d developed for thirty years, and she pulled away from him to get another sandwich.

I’m here. What are you, fucking All-Might or something?

“It’s nothing serious, I just like to plan for the worst. Besides, even you aren’t perfect.” She said the last part with such melancholy he felt the need to argue, despite agreeing.

“We proved that today, but something tells me you’re not talking about my swimming form.”

“You can be… soft sometimes. Not in how you fight, that’s all perfect, but in how you act when you’re not fighting.” She answered, still not facing him despite completing the task she’d moved away from him for. She made no move to eat her newly acquired sandwich either.

“Like how?” Cid asked, still no wiser about what was bothering her.

“Like… with the oath stone. You could have used that to make everyone in Shadow Garden obey you without question. We’d be better soldiers if you did. You wouldn’t have to worry about Eta kidnapping your exes either.”

“Yeah, but… come on. You don’t actually want me to do that, do you?” As much as Alpha would kill him for saying it, if you took the mad scientist out of Eta, he wouldn’t want what was left.

“No, but that isn’t the point. The point is, if you were truly ruthless, you would want to do that yourself, no matter what I or anyone else thought. If you don’t have it in you to take every advantage you can get, it could easily come back to bite you. That’s all I’m trying to say.”

Cid shrugged, not understanding her insistence on this point. “I don’t need to do any of that. I could handle anyone in Shadow Garden if they started being a problem. Eta basically proves that all the time.”

Zeta only grew more sulky hearing that and muttered, “I suppose you can. If you catch us in the act.”

“If you think you can escape me just by jumping in the water, you can't.”

Zeta took a long, slow breath before turning to him with a wide smile. “We still have a bit of light left. Let’s test that theory with a race,” Zeta said, dropping her meal and running to dive into under the water, gliding away from him faster than he’d ever seen her go, her golden hair tinted red by the setting sun.

Cid abandoned his own meal, deciding against a straight chase, he instead reached for his slime suit with one hand and took only a part of it. He dived into the water after her and used the blood queen’s mist form technique to pursue, turning into a streak of red under the water and moved faster than even she could go. His sight was almost entirely cut off as he became part of the water, but knowing where she was headed, that wasn’t an issue. He caught up to Zeta just as she neared the opposite shore of the lake.

He started by solidifying the water around Zeta’s top half, catching her like a fly in jelly while thinning out his reserve of slime to a thin rope he sent towards her ankle. After it circled and sealed around her foot, he dragged her to the shore with his improvised fishing line.

“Looks like I can catch you after all. You didn’t even make it halfway,” he boasted, hoping annoyance would take her mind off her troubles.

“Cheater,” Zeta complained between short coughs as she pushed herself off the grass to face him.

Success?

Cid shrugged. “A friend told me recently I had to be more ruthless. That I should use every advantage I can get to win. Go complain to them if you don’t like it.”

“Alright, you’ve made your point. Now are you going to let me go… or is keeping me tied up half naked in the woods another part of this new ruthlessness I’ve inspired in you?”

Fighting off a blush at her words and what the scene would look like without context (apparently, he could still be embarrassed about women, go figure), Cid undid the loop around her ankle and they headed back towards Zeta’s things. Just as it usually did, and as they’d started the day, his strange competition with Zeta had ended in a sort of tie.

Chapter Text

The Alexandria Trip-Part 1

“Cid, your hometown sure is-” Alexia started, looking out the window at the rapidly approaching town.

“Rustic,” Beatrix suggested.

“Charmingly simple,” Rose offered.

“A backwater dump,” Alexia finished.

If she had to guess, Brievale had around 200 people based on the number of homes she could see. Adding to the… rustic appeal was the fact most of them were built from wood with thatched roofs, with the few tiled rooftops sticking out like sore thumbs.

Cid was one of the wealthiest people on the planet (proving in Alexia’s mind that there was no fair goddess in this world), and this was the biggest village in his father’s territory? She could see a line of eight queued in front of the town well, indicating the people of Brievale didn’t even have running water.

“Yeah, you’d never expect anything important to be here,” Cid said happily. The train was almost full when they’d boarded in Midgar, but most of the passengers excluding them had disembarked at the last stop, giving their Shadow Garden contingent some privacy for the last leg of the journey. Alexia wished she could take off the face mask of the forty year old woman she had needed to wear to go on this trip, but even in a backwater there was still the possibility of her being recognized, so it had to stay on. Rose and Beatrix had also disguised themselves for the same reason.

As the announcer finished stating they had arrived, Cid gestured to Delta, who had been napping, curled up at his side, to join Alexia’s trio.

“Go on Delta. You need to take them to Alexandria, okay?”

“Boss,” Delta whined, disturbing Alexia. The beastkin was far too terrifying when she fought to be this cutesy in her free time. “Delta barely sees you. Can’t Delta come with you?”

“Maybe next time,” Cid said, pushing her onwards from behind.

Cid then went to reach for their bags, but the final member of their party, a number Alexia didn’t know, cut him off, insisting she would do it. She was one of the rare humans of Shadow Garden, sporting long red hair darker than Iris’ that fell straight to the small of her back.

“Thanks um… 426,” Cid said.

She moved swiftly, carrying Cid and Alpha’s travel cases onto the carriage his parents had sent for him before turning back and approaching the rest of the group’s (considerably lighter) bags.

“I can handle that. There’s no reason for you to go so far for someone you just met,” Alexia said as 426 started lifting them. Alexia might have accepted the girl’s service without saying anything, but Cid had warned them that the chain of military command was the law in Alexandria, and arriving with a superior carting their luggage might paint a target on their backs. Hell, as far as Alexia knew, this was some kind of test to make sure they weren’t being lazy.

426 paused and looked over to her. The intensity in her dark green eyes as she scrutinised Alexia rendered her momentarily stunned.

“You don’t… never mind, it’s nothing. I just...want to be helpful,” the girl said, and Alexia would have sworn she was on the verge of tears. She would have said something, but she darted away before Alexia could think of anything, keeping her head bowed as she dropped the luggage beside the rest of the group, now gathered behind Cid’s carriage.

“We’re not planning to visit Alexandria for a couple of days, but Delta will guide you in and lead you to your instructor for the week.”

“Good luck with Cid’s parents,” Rose offered to Alpha, once again proving too nice for her own good.

“I believe you will need luck more than I will in the coming days, but thank you all the same,” Alpha answered coolly. “Do try to make the most of your time here. I don’t think we’ll be able to excuse all three of you from public life like this again for a significant time.”

“We will. Do try not to overwhelm your new parents too much,” Beatrix said, giving Alpha a parting hug.

Cid's eyes widened briefly at those words, but Alpha only hugged her disguised aunt back for a few seconds before Cid gave her a hand up onto the carriage. Delta initially tried to follow them before Cid waved her back. Helped by a steady glare from Alpha as the carriage lurched forward, Delta took the command and rejoined them.

“Let’s get lunch. Delta can smell steak cooking at the inn,” Delta said, sounding as if she was trying to put herself in a good mood.

“Umm,” Alexia started. Unarmed and in a simple white shirt and jeans, it would be very easy to assume this beastkin was the simple, kind girl she appeared to be. Fortunately or unfortunately, visions of Delta’s rampage in Lindworm, cutting Nelson to bloody pieces again and again were hard to forget.

“We are expected to be at Alexandria before evening,” Beatrix began.

“There’s enough time. We just have to run fast. Delta wants steak.”

“Maybe Delta could stay for lunch and you could take us?” Alexia asked 426.

“No. I’m sorry, but I have some things to settle here in the village before I head for Alexandria. It’ll be tomorrow morning at the earliest before I leave here,” 426 said, then left in a rush, as if she’d forgotten she was supposed to go until that moment.

“Hurry up, Delta’s hungry.”

“She has a point, we are wasting time here,” Rose said politely. “And we are here for training. Perhaps a quick sprint to Alexandria will make a good start.”

It did not make for a good start. The food was nice enough, and Alexia thought Delta and Beatrix’s orders might put the inkeep’s children through college, but things went downhill as soon as they finished. The ‘quick sprint’ Rose had envisioned turned out to be an almost five hour hike in the mountains at top speed through misty terrain, not helped by the food they were currently digesting. They did at least get to take off their masks once they were a few miles out of the village.

The sight of Alexandria when it finally came into view took what little breath Alexa had left. The most immediately eye-catching thing was the two-hundred foot-tall stone statue of Shadow that dominated the centre of the hidden city. Behind that guardian stood the gates to a beautiful white castle, lit a dull orange by the sinking sun.

Simple stonework buildings gathered at the feet of the monument and around the castle in an intricate pattern. Even if every number (they were over 800 now, though she didn’t know the exact figure) took a building to themselves, they would barely fill half of them. Beyond the octagonal walls that surrounded the city were rows and rows of rectangular crop fields on three sides, while the area directly between them and the city was lined with open training grounds and newly built facilities Alexia couldn’t identify from this far out.

A dark elf was waiting for them in an open training space adjacent to the main road, instantly recognizable as their instructor. She wore a military dress uniform in black lined with gold, with a jacket draped over her shoulders like a cloak. Her long hair was pulled into a long single ponytail, topped by an officer's cap. Her one golden eye looked them over, while the other appeared permanently shut.

An injury maybe? If it’s something Cid couldn’t heal, it must be serious.

She bowed to Delta who barely noticed. “Lambda, Delta’s brought the new students. Delta’s going to go home and take a nap now.”

Before she went, she gathered the three of them in a (terrifying) group hug before setting off for the woods again.

“Where’s she going?” Alexia asked.

Lambda didn’t answer, but instead drew her sword and began cutting Alexia’s clothes to ribbons. By the time Alexia figured out what was happening, there was no shred of fabric left in a wearable state.

“Talking out of turn is a bad habit here, 666. See I don’t catch you at it again.”

Alexia instinctively moved to cover her royal parts while Lambda moved onto Beatrix, who flinched and tried to cover herself as well once it was done. Rose took the forceful disrobing stock still, standing with shoulders back and head held straight, her lack of discomfort drawing Lambda to her like a vulture to dying prey.

“666, you’re not cowering like your little friends here. Why the lack of modesty? Do you think you’re the goddess’ gift to the world?”

“No Ma'am. In my training with Lady Victoria, I have had to abandon ruined pieces of clothing Ma’am. I was therefore ready for something of this nature, Ma’am,” Rose practically shouted.

“That’s…” Lambda trailed off before raising her voice again. “An acceptable level of discipline for a new recruit, yet you were still late to this rendezvous, soldier.”

“Yes Ma’am. Lady Delta requested we stop for lunch, and as our current commanding officer, I felt it improper to disagree, despite it contradicting our previous instructions, Ma’am.”

“Yes… well, see that you keep up this exemplary attitude soldier. These vermin could learn a thing or two from a disciplined warrior such as yourself,” Lambda said, smiling faintly to Rose before turning her attention to Alexia and Beatrix, gesturing to them as her face changed to show open disdain.

“Normally, I have all the time in the world to prepare my soldiers, but Lord Shadow’s given me just seven days with you three, and I can tell I’ll need every second. You might think who you are, or who you know,” Lambda said pointedly to Beatrix, “means something here. Let me assure you that it doesn't. Forget everything about who you are beyond these hills, and know that here you exist only to fight and to train.”

“Wait just a damn minute-” Alexia interrupted.

“You seem to have excess hot air to blow out 667, let me fix that for you.” She pointed to an oval dirt track a few hundred feet away. “I think about ten laps of that should solve the problem nicely.”

Alexia stood slack-jawed, at the point of asking even more sharply ‘in the nude?’, but Lambda decided to be generous and spoke before she could. “And it’ll be fifty if I hear any back talk. Hop to.”

Grumbling quietly as soon as she was far enough away from Lambda, Alexia jogged towards the start of the track. As she circled her first lap, she saw Beatrix and Rose being given slime suits to wear.

This is going to be a rough week.

---

Meanwhile

Alpha felt an oddly potent mix of anticipation and nerves as she and Cid were driven up the road towards the Kagenou estate. There was no real reason for the nerves, the mission she had right now, ‘impress Cid’s parents’ was markedly easier than almost every other task she’d set herself across the last five years. The anticipation was just as outdated. During the early days, when Shadow Garden was only a group of eight, she had usually wanted, but been unable, to come here as Cid’s on-call assistant. It had been difficult for her to leave their base for any length of time, and so the position had usually gone to Epsilon, Beta or Zeta.

She also felt slightly melancholic looking at the small but well kept manor. It wasn’t perfect (she would have preferred a home closer to the village, and the weather was more bitter here during the winters than ideal), but it was the sort of place she thought about retiring to when their fighting with the cult was done. Cid hated the idea of living so far out of the way though, so at the very least she’d have to find somewhere closer to a major city or thoroughfare.

Cid pulled her from the carriage, keeping her arm locked in his until they reached the manor’s main entrance. The elevated position of the estate had allowed the Baron and Baroness to spot their approach, and the pair of them were waiting for them on the porch.

“Welcome back Cid,” his mother said, giving him an unenthusiastic embrace before turning to her. “And you must be Lady Grey.”

“Please call me Allison, Baroness Kagenou,” she said, offering a small curtsey.

“Baron Kagenou,” she said again, offering him the same.

Looking at her, the baron’s eyes widened and he was momentarily lost for words. Oh that’s exactly what I needed.

It was perhaps ungrateful, but there were times she wished she weren’t so eye-catching.

“Y-yes, we’re very pleased to meet you. We’ve heard so much about you from Cid and Claire.”

If she hadn’t seen Claire pulling the same trick on Cid, she might have missed Baroness Kagenou briefly crushing his foot as she took him in hand. “Come with us and sit for a moment, the servants can bring your luggage to your rooms, then you can settle yourselves and change for dinner. Also Allison, please feel free to call us Lucinda and Robert while you’re here.”

She and Cid followed his parents to the sitting room, with each couple facing the other on couches around a low table, while behind them the carriage driver and another servant began hauling their bags upstairs.

“So Allison, Claire tells us that you’re staying with your aunt Beatrix in the capital. You know, we saw her last win at the Bushin festival when we were at the academy together, didn’t we Lucinda? How many times is it that she’s won now, five?” Robert asked.

“Seven, over the last sixty years or so.”

“Sixty years of duels,” Lucinda mused. “We often forget just how long your kind lives. And with her in the capital teaching, I assume your parents must be watching over your family’s estate?”

Alpha had hoped for a little more time to work on them before broaching this topic, but once she’d been asked, there was no good way to deflect.

“My parents passed away some time ago. There was a… political incident eight years past, and the family holdings were passed to a distant relative. I was out of the country at the time, which was… probably for the best.”

“Oh, how terrible,” Lucinda responded. “Do you think you’ll ever try and reclaim your inheritance? ”

“Most likely not. My finances are secure enough to support myself, and my homeland holds little appeal compared to the splendour of Midgar, and there are some other important things here as well, so I intend to stay here for the foreseeable future,” she said, looking to Cid and resting her hand instinctively on his. Lucinda didn’t fail to notice the gesture, but instead of looking relieved, she seemed put out by the declaration.

“Well that’s… lovely. I can see Michael and Paul coming down now, so you two go ahead and get yourself settled. We’ll call you down in about half an hour for dinner.”

Cid showed Alpha (mostly unnecessarily) to her room, then as he turned to leave and begin unpacking his own things, she grabbed his wrist and pressed a finger to his lips. She focused mana into her ears and pointed to them, indicating Cid should do the same.

“Completely obvious what she’s up to,” Lucinda was ranting softly.

“Quite right, Quite right,” the baron replied.

“Oh do be quiet. Cid’s only seventeen, I can understand him being taken in by this penniless foreign beauty, but you’re a grown man. A married, grown man. Don’t you have any shame?”

“I was just surprised by how similar she is to her aunt, and well… she is rather striking compared to Cid.”

Lucinda sighed. “You don’t understand anything do you. She’s after our money. That’s why she’s cosied up to Cid and Claire. Once she’s bagged him, she’ll convince Claire that Cid needs the estate, have it passed to them, then make off with everything we have. It won’t matter if it takes two years or twenty to her, because she’s an elf, that’ll be like the blink of an eye.”

“How… devious,” the baron mused.

“Yes, so please, keep your guard up around her. I’ll come up with some way to politely send her packing, but keep an eye on her just in case.”

Their conversation drifted to what was going to be served for dinner, and so she moved her attention away from the distant conversation and onto Cid.

“That… wasn't great,” he explained lamely.

“To put it mildly. I’ll need to work overtime to win them over about us.”

“Don’t overdo it. It really doesn’t matter what they think.”

“Cid, they’re your parents, and they think I’m some sort of harlot trying to scam you out of your family’s money.”

“Yeah, and if they tell me to stop seeing you, I’m just going to ignore them. It literally doesn't matter at all.”

She gave him a quick kiss. “That’s nice to hear, but still… It’s a right of passage for a woman to impress her value on a man’s family.” She very much didn’t care for the idea she was such a poor partner for Cid, she would fail at something literally billions of women must have done in the past. “Perhaps you could tell them the story of how we met? It might help to explain why I’m so hopelessly in love with you.”

She meant that last part as a joke, but it was too honest to really be funny.

“Okay, and I’ll mention how you defeated Claire as well. They’ve been really afraid of her for a few months now, and maybe thinking you can defend them would help.”

“What happened with them and Claire?”

“Dunno, but I think a detective was involved somehow. I wouldn’t ask.” Cid gave her a kiss before leaving to get changed, and she herself exchanged her travelling clothes for more formal attire, deliberately avoiding anything remotely provocative.

The beginning of the dinner began just as they had planned, with Cid detailing her harrowing escape from slavers and his assistance in finding her a place to stay. He also managed to subtly work in her becoming the strongest duellist in the academy and her battle with Claire in his story recounting the events of the Lawless City. The baron’s guard dropped easily enough, but a crack in his wife’s armour wouldn’t appear for another half hour.

“I’m sorry to abandon you so soon after you’ve arrived Cid, but we’ll have to leave for most of the day tomorrow,” the baroness was explaining. “We’re in the middle of a border dispute with Count Tutimin, and the court overseeing the case needs us to attend tomorrow.”

“Give Dutchess Treet my regards,” Alpha said, giving the baron and baroness an amused smile.

“Allison dear,” Mrs Kagenou said. “We’re leaving for a discussion with Count Tutimin, this has nothing to do with the Treet family.”

“I understood that, but,” she shot them a deliberately confused look. “I thought everyone knew Count Tutimin is sleeping with Dutchess Fordas Treet.”

Robert’s eyes were once again threatening to burst, though this time the look was accompanied with a hacking cough and a scrambling of his hands towards his throat.

“Don’t kill yourself, dad,” Cid complained at the older man, striking a palm into his back and causing him to spit out the half chewed roast potato he’d just been choking on. Slightly disgusted, Alpha focused her attention on Lucinda, who barely paid any attention to her husband's antics.

“You know, we haven’t heard anything about that,” Mrs Kagenou said delicately.

“Clearly,” Alpha replied, nodding slightly at Robert.

“How did you find out about this?”

“Well,” Alpha said shyly, stalling and playing with a lock of her long golden hair. “Mitsugoshi is a very large organisation, and I know a lot of people there. I happen to know that Count Tutimin bought an emerald pendant from our jewellers and had it engraved with the initials F.T, and, well, his wife’s name is Matilda, so…”

“Ahh. You know, I think she was wearing that the last time I saw her,” Mrs Kagenou continued thoughtfully. “I would never have thought about it myself, but I suppose this business you’re involved in leads to you knowing a great deal about affairs and dealings all over the kingdom.”

“And beyond,” Alpha added helpfully. “Mitsugoshi’s expanding into Orianna and Velgalta.”

“You must be full of stories then.”

“Quite full,” Alpha said, still maintaining her pretence of coyness, completely impassive to the assessing glare the baroness was giving her.

“Can I get you another drink?” Mrs Kagenou said at last, holding the bottle towards Alpha’s glass. To Alpha, it may as well have been a waved white flag.

---

Alexia was about to die. Rose was clearly tempted to use a burst of Mana to force her two assailants away, but with how far away she was and the power required, she probably wasn’t able to hit them without also hitting Alexia.

Beatrix was already down, focused down by three attackers moments after the combat began. She watched them now from the floor, lying listlessly.

Alexia lasted another few seconds in an admirable showing, but eventually left Rose with a three on one. In some ways, the change was positive as it allowed her to go all out and bring her superior magical power to bear, but her opponents were too well coordinated to be overcome by brute force. They fanned out, approaching from all angles and gave her no safe way to turn. She managed to get one in the brief exchange as all four collided, but took what would have been a fatal blow in exchange and fell to the ground in mock death.

After Lambda had praised (or perhaps acknowledged was the more accurate term) the skill of their opponents, 663, 664, and 665 were sent away to the mess hall for dinner. It was somewhat ironic as 665 seemed to already be eating something as soon Lambda’s back was to them, while 664 moved quickly to block the food from Lambda’s line of sight.

Can you sneak food inside a slime suit? Even so, anything with meat in it probably wouldn’t last that long.

664’s caution was somewhat unnecessary, as Lambda’s one eye was entirely focused on their group, full of scorn.

“Up, get up. You’re lucky this exercise demands you get to lie down, because Lord Shadow knows you don’t deserve it.”

Pushing herself up and brushing herself off, Beatrix looked to Lambda impassively, ready for judgement. Even with only a single day under the dark elf’s tutelage, she knew they were in for a tongue lashing, and that all that could be done was to endure it.

“Do I even need to say what a shit-show that was, or can do that for me?”

“Whichever you prefer, Ma’am,” Rose said. Beatrix and Alexia mostly let her do the talking now, realizing she had the best chance of minimizing whatever consequences were coming.

“I think you should do it in turns. 667, what did you do wrong?”

“I allowed myself and 666 to be separated from 650, allowing the opposing squad to take her out in a combination attack,” Alexia replied, now mimicking her loud, direct speech.

“And you 650?”

“I engaged that pair thinking I would be able to-”

“I can’t hear you!” Lambda shouted, cupping her ear. “Don’t think just because you have family connections you can mumble your way through this week.”

“I engaged those two thinking I would be able to deal with them myself!”

“And you 666?”

“I held back on using my magic against the opponents out of fear of hitting Alexia, Ma’am.”

“Those are the individual problems. The bigger issue is that you have absolutely no unit cohesion,” Lambda said, turning to Alexia, “and that’s mostly your fault, being the commander of this mess. Individually, you should have had no problems against that squad. You, 650, might be one of the best duellists I’ve ever witnessed, but it means diddily-dick if you’re following the script for a one-on-one duel and not a team battle. You, 666, have some of the most magical power I’ve seen outside of the seven shadows, but it means nothing if you follow 667 like a duckling and can’t bring it to bear. Her being the commander doesn’t mean you need to stay behind her at all times. You, 667, are supposed to have enough brains to have figured all of this out for yourself, but instead you’ve coasted on the strength of your teammates.”

“Now for your punishment, you’ll be coming with me to work on escaping magic sealing restraints. Don’t worry, it only requires you to dislocate one joint in your thumb. Then I’ll give you the rest of the evening to work on your team-coordination yourselves, and I expect to see improvement by tomorrow morning.”

Lambda led them out of the practice grounds and into a nearby equipment shed, where they were pointed towards a box of mana suppressing shackles. Rose volunteered to demonstrate first, allowing Lambda to chain her wrists together.

“To escape the restraints, you have to dislocate this joint here,” Lambda explained, holding one of Rose’s hands and pointing to a spot just below her thumb “The carpometacarpal joint, apply pressure here until it’s done. Then you will be able to slip your hand out of the restraints, and once you’re out, feel free to reset it with magic.”

Beatrix and Alexia shared a look of concern. They had been told this training would be difficult, but to have to purposely injure themselves-

Crack.

The manacles fell to the floor with the clatter of metal on metal as Rose began channelling mana into her hands to reset her dislocated thumbs.

“Well done. That was one of the fastest finishes I’ve seen.”

“Yes Ma'am. I can only be grateful to my previous instructor for preparing me for the intensity of this training, Ma’am.”

Beatrix and Alexia shared another look of concern, this time not for themselves but for the sanity of their teammate. They each took their own turns under Lambda’s expectant gaze. It wasn’t as painful as they’d feared, but neither of them managed Rose’s unhesitating performance.

“Once will be enough, it’s not the sort of thing you get better at with practice. Clean these and return them to their place, then you’re free to go about your training on your own time,” Lambda said as she departed. Alexia shot a rude gesture at her back while Rose tried to swat the offending finger away.

They wiped down the interior of the shackles, which Beatrix found herself somewhat torn on. On the one hand, they had only been used for about three minutes, but on the other, the thought someone else had used them and left them for weeks to mould was rather disgusting.

They decided to head back to the outdoor training field they had just left until the sunset, then move to an indoor facility to continue until midnight. Their banal conversation over scheduling was interrupted by Alexia.

“Do you two think I should still be the team leader?”

“Yes,” both she and Rose replied, almost simultaneously.

“I think Lambda was right about me. I have been coasting, managing this team. We were crushed out there today, and not because we were worse fighters.”

“We’ve all been coasting,” Beatrix replied. “All of our opponents so far have either been easy for us to beat without strategy, or so strong no amount of strategy would help. I think it’s made us sloppy.”

“I don’t think I’d have done any better as our leader, Alexia,” Rose said.

Alexia shook her head as they neared the gate into the training field. “Alright then, guess I’ve got to figure out a few new ways for us to work together. We’ll work on Lambda’s idea, leading with Rose to start with, but we’ll need something else too. There’s no way she’s not going to make us dislocate a dozen things if we don’t figure anything out for ourselves.”

They started working in the formation Lambda had suggested. Rose used her innate strength in magic while she and Alexia weaved around the area of her attacks to be in position to cover her flanks. They had barely begun when the number who had accompanied them on the train came to them in full battle gear, leaping the fence and approaching them slowly. Despite the fact she doubtless outranked them, there was a hint of nervousness in her bright green eyes.

They stopped working as she approached, and gave her a salute when she stopped before them.

“At ease, squad,” she said, focusing on Alexia. “It must be difficult for you to practice without an enemy to fight against. I could fill in, if you’re interested?”

Beatrix would have accepted the offered help at once, but Alexia narrowed her eyes at the young woman. “Why?”

“Why?” repeated in confusion

“Well, Lambda wasn’t really explicit about it, but from what she said, we’re supposed to complete this training for ourselves. It could get you in trouble with her, and I’m not sure why you would bother, especially without the rest of your own squad. So thanks, but no thanks,” Alexia finished, giving the girl a dismissing wave and turning back to the others.

“I don’t think Lambda would mind,” the girl said defensively. “Are you certain I can’t help you?”

“Not unless you start being straight about why you’re being so weird about this,” Alexia said, turning wearily to face her again.

426 swelled and looked ready to shout, then deflated in defeat, shoulders slumping. “Princess, it’s not what you think. This is a matter of the heart.”

“Huh,” Alexia said, just as she (and probably Rose) thought the same.

“It’s hard. Being in love with someone while they have no idea you exist,” 426 said, head turning to look up at Alexia. “To see those enchanting red eyes again with barely a hint of recognition in them. To watch their public duels at the academy and witness their magnificent swordplay, knowing that those feelings might never be returned. I can’t even be angry about it since it seems as if everyone’s forgotten about me. We’ve met before… back at Mitsugoshi-”

Oh, I remember now.

She had met this girl (still masked) in Lindworm when she’d encountered Shadow by the moving sanctuary door.

Beatrix could hardly remember what it was like to be a girl that age, but she remembered enough to understand what the girl must be feeling.

Being forgotten by someone she’s infatuated with would certainly explain why she was so upset at the train station.

“R-Right, yeah, you were there when Rose was taken by Eta, when I went to get help for Gamma,” Alexia said. “Sorry I didn’t remember, but there was a lot going on. I actually thought the cult had abducted her at the time, so I wasn’t paying much attention to anything else.”

“Umm,” Alexia continued. “It was very nice of you to say all of that, and anyone would be lucky to have someone like you love them, but-”

“Please. Just allow me to join you as you practice over the next few days before you reject my plea. I want you to at least know something about me before you decide. I know you and Lord Shadow are involved, but your time in the Black Concord will end eventually, and I’m not asking for anything before that, just...when that’s finished…”

“I...alright I suppose, but I can’t promise it’ll change anything.”

“That’s all I can ask. Thank you, princess.” With that, 426 joined them and their training accelerated. They worked 3vs1 for a time, and while 426 was more skilled than any of them, she wasn’t good enough to maintain that for the whole night, and so they switched to 2vs2 on and off. When first paired up, Alexia moved around the other girl like she was covered in acid, taking special care to avoid the girl's ample curves as they sparred. Over time, the nervousness faded, and the two were able to fight reasonably well together. The teams were well-balanced, as 426 was the best fighter, but had the least experience of each of her partners fighting styles.

Once true dark set it, they moved indoors, to facilities remarkably similar to the academy's duelling halls. Alexia put her mind to coming up with new formations for them to try out, while 426 eagerly gave her own advice and detailed how her own squad fought as a unit long into the night.

Chapter Text

The Alexandria Trip- Part 2

Robert Kagenou and his wife were woken at the crack of dawn by a servant to prepare themselves for their journey. It was still hard for him to wrap his head around the fact that a journey that once would have taken several days could now be managed in just three hours, and considerably more comfortably.

Goddess, thank you for having Mitsugoshi inexplicably make this town a railway stop.

Once dressed, he walked to his study in order to grab the documents and case notes he had prepared for the trial, but stopped outside the door as he noticed a flickering light peeking from under the door.

Did I forget to turn off the lamp?

His wife would never let him hear the end of it if she found out. Wasted fuel was wasted gold, after all.

Opening the door, he paused, struck dumb by the sight before him. A young woman sat in his chair, a pen in hand as she quickly wrote line after line in neat, even letters. Around her lay pages upon pages of his work, scored through and annotated like a schoolboy’s essay.

“What the hell are you doing?” Robert asked, fear making him lash out. In just a few hours he was expected to use these notes to help argue his case before the high court.

“I’ve been reviewing your prepared legal defence. I’ve removed a few pages and references there,” she said, pointing to the fire where only ashes remained of whatever papers she’d scrapped. “Much of the rest needed to be corrected, and some of the official documents you were planning to submit were incorrectly formatted, so I had to redo those from scratch. The actual work is done, but considering all the changes I needed to make, your opening statement hardly made any sense, so I’m rewriting that now. After that I’ll organize this, file it by topic, and have it ready for you to read over.”

Robert looked down at the butchered notes in horror.

“What have you done?” he said, pointing to one paper that had been almost completely scored through. “It took me hours to find that precedent. I can’t even read this anymore.”

“It took hours because it was ruled on seventy-two years ago, and the case was overturned by the crown nine years later. In the dozen or so times the same issue has come up in the intervening time, every judge has ruled the same way. Your opposition is going to bring that ruling up, and if you had brought that up at the hearing yourself, you might as well have taken your case outside and strangled it.”

She paused her writing, fixing him with an icy glare. “Now, please leave so I can finish this.”

The command in her voice forced him from the room, though the realization he had fled from the young woman moved him from cowed to furious before he made it to the breakfast table.

Robert fumed as he returned half an hour later to collect his mangled papers, he simmered as he reviewed the notes on the train, he cooled as the arguments he was directed to make began to work as he presented them to the court, and he was bubbling with glee as he and his wife left the courthouse, the ruling not yet made but the judge clearly favoring their side.

“Dear,” he said, unsure of where his wife stood considering their guest now, “I think we might need to reconsider Allison Grey.”

—

“Alright recruits, we can stop here.”

Rose, Alexia and Beatrix readied themselves as Lambda and Delta faced them on the hilltop. Worryingly, they had been allowed to make much of this journey by the cable-car systems set up through the mountains, moving further and further away from civilization as they went. That implied whatever task they were being set was so taxing even Lambda felt it would be unfair to make them attempt it without rest.

The last four days and nights had been primarily spent on team combat training in the mornings and afternoons with Lambda and another squad, while in the evenings they trained with 426 (with a little counter-intelligence and individual magic training occasionally thrown in). Their performance had improved so rapidly that after the fourth day, an older squad in the 500s had been chosen as their opponents, as 663-665 were no longer a proper challenge.

During the nights, in the brief breaks everyone else used to have a drink and recover their breath, 426 detailed her life story (primarily to Alexia). She was born as the second daughter of a count in the south of Midgar, and had grown up on an estate surrounded by vineyards, riding through them on horseback as much as she could. Her parents had been on the cusp of giving her up to the church when Alpha appeared to heal her and take her into Shadow Garden, where she had been a persistent high-achiever. With time, she hoped to become one of the named numbers, and personally loved animals, Epsilon’s music, and historical movies. Thankfully her crush on Alexia hadn’t come up or gotten in the way as they worked.

“This will be your last challenge here. I have no power to hold you back, but by Lord Shadow you belong to me for the next twelve hours, and if you fail, I’ll make sure whatever time you have left here is spent answering for that failure. Are we clear?”

“Ma’am, yes Ma’am,” they shouted in unison.

“Good. We’re a few hours from base camp and your task is to make it back there before you're caught. I hope for your sake you watched the terrain as we passed overhead. Lady Delta here will be acting as the hunter in this wargame.”

She and Alexia shivered, despite the warmth of the day and the insulation of their slime suits.

“But don’t worry, I know not to expect miracles from you. You’ll be given a headstart to render the challenge possible, and Delta isn’t allowed to get ahead of you and set an ambush. You’re considered safe once you reach your quarters, and you’ll be disqualified if Delta forces any of you to surrender, or you take longer than four hours to make it back. Questions.”

Alexia raised her hand.

“666,”

“How much of a headstart are we given?”

“Delta’ll wait till she can’t see you, then Delta’ll hunt something else quick, then come to catch you,” the wolf-girl explained, her tail twitching across the ground like a viper.

That seems… unreliable.

“Our hunter doesn’t much like sitting still, so we’ve had to adapt the training around that. Besides, I find a lot of the squads run faster when lady Delta approaches covered in the blood of a fresh kill. Anything else?”

Beatrix looked as if she were on the point of asking something, but only raised her hand a couple of inches before putting it back down. Lambda gave them one last look over, then blew her whistle.

They set off, she and Alexia sprinting before noticing Beatrix was lagging behind them at a gentle jog.

“She doesn’t start until we’re out of sight behind the treeline,” she explained. “You’re just wasting your energy running now.”

They slowed, and Rose began preparing to speed up as they came to the end of the grassy slope and prepared to enter the trees.

“Stop,” Alexia shouted, and their group came to a halt a few paces from cover.

“I’ve got an idea,” Alexia said, before they could ask. “I’ll need some mana from you once I’m done Rose, but if it works, it’ll buy us some time.”

Alexia raised her sword in a ready stance. “It’ll be a minute, and you might want to step back.”

Rose and Beatrix backed off a few paces, while Alexia shut her eyes, slowing her breathing and began layering a mana construct around them in faint pink lines.

“I am… Tsun-tomic,” Alexia shouted, and a burst of magical energy exploded from the tip of her sword roughly the size of a small house, the edge of the blast catching a few of the leaning branches overhead. The sound of it made Rose’s ears pop and blew her back like a strong wind, while the backlash of force caused Alexia herself to fall back on her bottom.

“That was impressive,” Rose said as she ran to offer Alexia a hand up, beginning the mana transfer as soon as she made contact, “but why do it?”

“The sound,” Alexia said simply, shaking herself off and pointing into the distance where a flock of birds had just taken wing. “It should scare off the nearby animals. If Delta has to find something else before she comes for us, it should take her a bit longer this way. Let’s get moving though, even if we’re still in sight, there’s no way she’s going to wait forever.”

They moved at top speed as soon as the canopy was overhead. Without any delays on a straight path, Rose could have probably made it back to Alexandria within two hours, but her two teammates hadn’t gone on any of Victoria’s midnight hiking practices, and so were less prepared than she was for this type of exercise.

Maybe I should buy her a thank you gift when I get back.

She had thought Victoria’s harsh training regimen had just been because she personally disliked her, but considering Lambda’s course, maybe she had just been adequately preparing her.

As they neared another hill, passing just below a cable car post, Rose directed them onto a smoother (if less direct) path and requested they slow down to a jog so they could talk.

“There’s a stream up here that runs almost exactly the way we want to go for another two miles,” she said between breaths. “We can get in and follow it for a while to cover our scent trail. That’s how Delta will be following us, so it should throw her off.”

Beatrix halted as they neared the water, looking disgustedly at the stream they were planning to move through (which was, admittedly, more algae filled than it had appeared from above).

“I’ve been thinking, if we’re struggling to outpace her, why don’t we set an ambush and try to fight her? The rules seem set up to allow it.”

The look Alexia gave her in response was sanity questioning.

“No, no, absolutely not.”

“I know she’s one of the shades, but we’ve been working on our team combat skills all week. Don’t you think this might be part of the test?” Beatrix asked, focusing on Rose.

Alexia turned to her, one part angry and two parts desperate. “Rose, she doesn’t know what she’s saying, she’s never seen Delta fight. And don’t you dare say we should do it because ‘I’m used to this level of training’ or something.”

An image of the Lindworm sanctuary appeared to Rose then. A blood-mad wolf ripping through copies of a priest in an endless white plain, slowly turning the blinding surroundings a dull red with spilled blood as she hacked and clawed and bit. More disturbingly, she imagined the corpses of Archbishop Nelson shifting as they hit the floor, forming a mountain of dead Alexia's, Roses’ and Beatrix’s.

“In this case,” Rose began, trying not to shake. “I believe that kind of training would be too extreme, and would suggest we do something less potentially harmful.”

“Objection withdrawn,” Beatrix said, jumping straight into the murky water.

---

Meanwhile

Alpha sat with his mother, reviewing the family account books and going over how they could improve revenue, cut costs, and which residents she thought were holding out on their taxes. There was something kind of relaxing about watching Alpha do paperwork. He imagined it must be what watching him fight felt like.

“You’re also overpaying for your supply of steel. You could get the same amount for almost twenty percent less by importing from Orianna. The merchants in Midgar tend to price gouge in the metal trade, thinking no one will bother checking elsewhere. You would have to buy in bulk to make it worth the traders' while, but your territory has a few vacant buildings we could easily convert to storage space to hold the excess.”

Alpha had been on an absolute tear this week. He was fairly certain he was missing a few events, but she had used their spy network’s information pass his mother blackmail information, managed a legal case, resolved a long running dispute between two farming families, found out who kept stealing the innkeeper’s good whiskey, rediscovered an abandoned silver mine in the hills (and cleared out the monsters that had originally chased off the miners), patched all the leaks in the manor’s hot water system and was now auditing their finances as she looked for potential savings.

“Allison, are you okay to go on by yourself for a minute? I need to have a quick word with my son,” his mother said as she finally noticed him.

“It’s fine. I’lll tell you what else I’ve found when you get back.”

Cid followed his mother, ready to hear the over-earned approval his girlfriend had earned. Surprisingly, she didn’t stop anywhere to talk alone, but brought him to the kitchen where his father was waiting. He seemed ready for their arrival, meaning this was going to be a prepared speech.

“Cid, we want to talk to you about your relationship with Allison,” she started.

“What about it?”

“Well, we’ve taken a real liking to her, and we would be honoured for her to become a new member of our family. Allison made the point that it would save money if the two of you got an apartment together in the city rather than renting separate accommodations at the academy dorms, and while we agree, there are some things we want to tell you before you two live together. I think it would be better if your father explained it.”

“Hmm, of course dear.”

No, not doing this.

Cid really didn’t want a sex-ed talk. Once in his past life had been bad enough. “I already know. We need to keep safe until we’re married. You don’t need to say anything else,” Cid said, holding up his hands as if to surrender.

His mother shot him an exasperated look while his father began fidgeting with his collar.

“Actually son… we actually wanted you to take the opposite approach. Losing that girl would be a generational loss to the Kagenous, and suffice it to say, we wouldn’t be disappointed if you were to, hypothetically, plant a seed in the elven forest before you officially became the landholder-”

“Please. Stop talking.” In all his years, Cid never thought he would beg this bald guy and his wife/boss for anything, yet here he was.

Fate truly is mad. Wait, that’s a good line, I should save that.

“Cid that girl is… I have no words,” his mother interjected. “And she’s crazy about you. Seal the deal with her and none of us will have to struggle with anything ever again.”

“So you’re just trying to use her superior mind so you can slack off. You copyc- I mean, shame on you. She’s been working herself to the bone this entire week, and all you two can do is try to squeeze more out of her.”

The shame gambit worked, and they stopped talking long enough for him to walk away uninterrupted, fuming at the fact his parents had tried to steal his idea and use it as their retirement plan.

She really overdid this.

—

Delta had been in sight by the time they reached the barracks, and despite the fact they had run themselves ragged (and filthy), they had made it. Lambda was waiting for them, having used the cable cars to make the trip back in half the time.

“Adequately done recruits. You can leave here proudly knowing I no longer you the worst squad in Shadow Garden.”

With that glowing review, she faced each of them in turn.

“650, focus on trying to integrate more with your squad and your magical control. 667, you can actually think when you take the time to do it, so take the damn time. And you, 666,”

Alexia gasped as Lambda gave Rose a brief embrace, then settled her hands on both her shoulders to look her eye-to-eye(s).

“Exemplary work soldier. I expect great things from you.”

She let her go and faced the group again. “You have the night to yourselves. I suggest you hit the baths first, given the state of you.”

They took her advice, heading for a combined swimming pool/spa a few streets away from their barracks.

“It’s kind of a shame we’re leaving this place,” Rose said sadly, as the hot tub worked on their aching muscles. “These facilities are rather nice.”

“Yeah, well, it’s not like we would have time to enjoy them anyway,” Alexia shot back. “One night a week when we don’t have to crash into single bed bunks after working till midnight just isn’t enough.”

“We have improved a lot, despite the burden,” Beatrix said.

“Yeah, I suppose we did,” Alexia said, satisfied with their progress.

An easy silence settled over the team. Their relaxation lasted a few minutes before the frosted glass door to the spa opened and a well built red-head descended beside Beatrix, opposite Alexia and Rose. Thankfully, the pool rules meant everyone gathered was wrapped in a white towel.

I guess I had to deal with this eventually.

“You guys are all leaving tomorrow?” 426 asked.

“Yes, first thing in the morning,” Alexia said, speaking softly. Despite the fact she could never have any romantic interest in 426, she had come to like the girl as they trained together and hoped she could let her down gently.

“Then, I need to hear what you think about me. You know my past, and you’ve seen my skill, and we’ve kind of got to know each other-”

“Are you sure you don’t want to do this in private?” Alexia asked.

“No, they can hear this. Do you think I… might be suitable?” 426 asked, the combination of the heat and the topic making her face red.

“It’s just that… suitable isn’t really the right word for this kind of thing, is it?” Alexia said. “There’s got to be some connection, or mutual feeling.”

“I’m certain if I was just given a chance, we could make it work.”

“I’m not so sure.”

“667, Alexia,” she said, warming slightly. “I appreciate you trying to keep my expectations realistic, and I know you can’t promise anything, but even so… Please recommend me to Lord Shadow to take the open spot you leave once your turn in the Black Concord is over.”

“Huh?”

“Maybe turn isn’t the right word,” 426 mused. “Time, perhaps. Once your time in the Black Concord is over, please request to Lord Shadow that I be chosen to fill the opening you leave behind. I know it’ll be hard for you, giving up something so perfect, but even so, your dedication to Lord Shadow should be strong enough for you to select a successor. I’ve checked and he isn’t making any more openings, and it’s not as if anyone else is st-unfortunate enough to give him up, so this might be my only chance to be with my beloved. Please, when the time comes, help me. Until then, I’ll work every day to become a woman worthy of his attention.”

Alexia couldn’t say anything in response to 426’s expectant look.

“You’ll recommend me, won’t you? Wont you?” She asked, grabbing one of Alexia’s hands and holding it desperately.

“Uhh, sure, fine” Alexia said, mostly to get the other woman to let her go.

With that, 426 left them behind, beaming. Alexia was still dumbfounded, while Rose began to chuckle.

“What’s wrong with you two?” Beatrix asked

“She-she’s in love with Cid,” Alexia said slowly.

“Yes,” Beatrix replied. “Hasn’t she been saying that for days now?”

Rose’s giggling intensified as did the blush that seemed to have transferred from 426 to Alexia. She used a small current of mana to splash some water at Rose, hoping her being silent might make her feel less embarrassed. “Cut it out, you thought the exact same thing I did,” she half-shouted.

“I still don’t get it?”

Alexia was powerless to stop Rose explaining their shared (not just hers, shared!) misunderstanding. As Rose finished, she heard Beatrix’s unrestrained laugh for the first time in a year of knowing her.

---

“So, how was training?” Cid asked as they managed to get a small moment alone together on the train.

“I had to run laps naked on the first night,” Alexia said testily, still smarting over that humiliation a bit.

“Huh? Never seen that before.”

“Sure you haven’t. What about you? How overboard did Alpha go?”

“My parents gave me this,” Cid said, reaching into a pocket and withdrawing a black felt box. As he opened it, careful to keep it out of sight from the rest of their group, she saw an old, very expensive looking ring held inside. Alexia whistled.

“I know, and that’s not even the worst part. This is supposed to go to the Kagenou heir, I’m never supposed to get this.”

“Well, you knew what you were getting into,” Alexia said, trying to decide if there was ever going to be a better time to try keeping her poorly thought out promise.

“Cid, how do you feel about red-heads?”