icedark_elf | Fic: Heading Out (FFVII, Cloud, Zack, Aeris, Hojo, OC(Jacson), Sephiroth, PG)

Title: Heading Out
Author: GW Katrina aka

forgottenlover
Series: Nibelheim Burning
Wordcount: 2,614
Rating: PG
Warnings: Crazy Zack? Though if you have read the others, you should know this.
Summary: Things start moving, and the future waits.

Previous stories found here.

Heading Out

Finally, after all the preparation, all the time spent planning and wondering just how bad things were, it was time to go.

Cloud sighed to himself as he made sure he had all his gear and waited for the rest of the group to arrive. Jacson was already there, fidgeting slightly. If Cloud remembered right about the other guy, he was from down south. Mideel area. He had already made several comments about not being sure about mountains, but Cloud had just shrugged it off. Mountains were nothing. It was the town’s people he didn’t want to mess with.

He had already made the decision to not take his helmet off while in Nibelheim. Not only did he not like most of the people there and was grateful for the ability to avoid them, he had also not planned on going back until he had made it into SOLDIER. Which hadn’t happened yet. And, given the plan, wasn’t likely to ever happen.

Kind of a shame. He had done really well on the tests. Enough so that he had been called back several times to the labs for various other tests, along with a few other troopers. Zack hadn’t been sure about that, but even Zack admitted that the methods were different now than when Shin-Ra had been shoving SOLDIERs out as fast as they could for the war.

Taking a deep breath, Cloud nodded to himself as he spotted the light off of Sephiroth’s hair as the general headed towards them, Zack a step behind him.

This was real, it suddenly hit him. This was really happening.

Everything was about to change.

///

Seeing Spike, all kitted up and ready to go, along with their fourth on this trip, Zack couldn’t help but grin. He quickly shoved it into his more typical, cheerful grin rather than the feral, pleased thing it had wanted to become. He didn’t know this Jacson kid, nor did he trust Shin-Ra in the least. Hojo even less. He knew that it would be so very, very easy for things to go very, very wrong, but at this stage, it was too late to really change anything.

This was all for Seph, and he knew it. The only way that they would ever get the man free of Shin-Ra would be to make them think he was dead. Dead and unretrievable. That was going to be the hard part. But that was okay, there were plans. And they could always do the brilliant strategy of winging it. Seph and him were good at that one, especially after Wutai.

“Hey you two,” he said, waving at the younger two. Cloud nodded back, helmet tucked under his arm, and Zack stifled the urge to ruffle that spiky hair. He knew that Cloud would just swat at him with that helmet, and most likely make that adorable squawk of his. But now wasn’t the time, and he could feel the hair on the back of his neck stand on end in anticipation.

Now wasn’t the time, but it was close.

He hoped that things went to plan, but he wasn’t counting on it. All they could do now was go through with it and pray to anything that listened that it went well.

“We’re taking the copter over to near Costa del Sol, refuel, then to Gongaga. From Gongaga, we’re taking land transport to Nibelheim.”

Cloud murmured something. Zack doubted Jacson could understand him, but Zack heard him easily enough, and judging by the quirk of Seph’s lips, he heard the “backwards jungle town” raze just as well as Zack had. Not that Zack minded. He and Cloud were always teasing each other about their home towns. “Now, Nibelheim is pretty remote, and they’re backwards enough not to really have anyplace clear for a copter, so we’ll be taking a truck from Gongaga. Just...watch out for frogs.”

Given the looks the others gave him, he -knew- that they still didn’t believe him about the damn touch mes, but that was okay. Once they had been frogged a few times, most people learned fast.

He knew they should stop in, see his parents while they were in, but he could do that later. No reason to delay things anymore afterwards.

Plenty of time later.

///

Watching as the helicopter that was carrying Sephiroth and his group away flew out of sight, Hojo smiled. Looking around his official office, though he spent little time here, the man felt more pleased than anything. Finally, after so many years, things were finally coming together, and he would at last see the culmination of his work.

It was odd. He had no idea what Gast had been thinking when he had started this project, other than the possibility of recreating the Ancients. However, when Hojo had taken it over, he had set about a far greater goal. Let Gast try to bring back a mostly dead race. Let Valentine learn all he could about materia and Lifestream.

Hojo would do better than them all.

He was about to create a god.

It was not like he had never heard the whispers, the soft voices talking about the only reason he was in charge of Shin-Ra’s science division due to the fact of Valentine’s death and Gast’s leaving and eventual death. He had heard whispers like that always. Since long before he had come here, though the names and reasons changed.

He dared any of them to say things of that nature after this. After what would be about to happen.

Not that even he could predict everything. Creation was like that.

Messy.

Very messy.

Blood, death, he was sure both would happen. None of it mattered.

His Sephiroth would reach his full potential.

Hojo would laugh when Sephiroth and his real mother taught humans just how helpless and pathetic they really were, and it would all be due to him.

It would be a bitter lesson to them all, and he found that he was looking forward to it.

///

Unable to really sit still, Aeris found herself puttering around the house, cleaning, even though it was already very clean. Though that was thanks to her last few bursts of cleaning.

Everything about this was starting to feel wrong, and she wasn’t sure why.

It was odd seeing Zack like this, and she knew that the man had been hurt, and hurt bad. He was still Zack, but...something was off. Very much so. He was still gentle, sweet, and capable of the goofiest things, but there was something there, in the back of his eyes.

She hadn’t realized just how bad he had been hurt before. Now she did.

And she wanted Shin-Ra and Hojo to pay very dearly for it.

Oh, it wasn’t that she didn’t love Zack anymore. It was just going to take a little bit of time to get used to the feralness in him. To accept that, outside their little group, nothing really mattered for him. Oh, he didn’t mind little kids and animals and such. She had been watching, and he still had the same soft touch with them. Several children had visited when Zack and Seph had been visiting, and had been in awe of seeing them. Zack had handled them easily, much easier than Seph, and she had seen the genuine pleasure in his eyes.

Adults on the other hand, well....

And she wasn’t even sure if Zack would stop the plan if it involved children being hurt. It was odd to think about. In one way, it bothered her a great deal, as it was so radically different than he had been before. On the other...it...really didn’t.

Aeris liked people well enough. She enjoyed interacting with them and talking to them. And it was nice to make someone’s day feel a little better. But, after everything that had happened in the labs, and the way she heard things, all the time, wanted to or not, she found that, no matter how much she liked some, she wasn’t too fond of humanity over all.

Besides, they were killing the planet. Already, kids were getting sicker and sicker, falling ill so much easier then previous generations. She knew what was causing it, and wondered what people would do if they realized that the power that was lighting their homes and cooking their food was also helping kill their children.

Look how many families only had one or two children. She was an only child, though that was mostly due to Shin-Ra. Zack was an only child, he said. So was Cloud.

Maybe it was better if children did die earlier, so they wouldn’t suffer later. Before they realized what their parents had done to them. Weaken them, taken away their chances at a healthy planet, healthy life, healthy children of their own.

She was just waiting for the next plague. The way Shin-Ra kept unearthing things better left alone, they would find something they wouldn’t want soon enough. And the children now weren’t strong enough to stand against some plague like they would have been if the planet wasn’t being raped of her lifestream.

Aeris would keep her and hers safe, but she couldn’t save them all. She accepted that.

Survival of the fittest wasn’t just about animals, after all.

///

Strife was sagging as he sat in the bouncing truck, looking extremely pale, and Jacson couldn’t really blame him. He never had problems with motion-sickness himself, but this ride was hell. When they had gotten to Gongaga, and seen the size of the truck, Strife had sent up a series of words to turn the air blue, and Jacson had been impressed.

He and the other boy didn’t know each other all that well. They had come in during the same time, and had seen each other rather often, but not really talked. There was a lot of people who joined at the same time, so that wasn’t too weird. And Strife had always been one of the quiet ones. Most of the others had no idea why First Class SOLDIER Zack had decided to hang around with the kid, though most thought it was just for sex.

So the cursing and the flung helmet, which Zack barely caught before it hit the back of his head were a surprise, and Jacson decided he should watch them. He didn’t get the interactions, but he was fairly sure that he was being treated like an outsider, which was odd. If anyone should have really been treated like that, it was General Sephiroth. The man was the general, after all, and he was so withdrawn that he stood in one corner of the truck, balancing easily through all the bumps and drops that the vehicle hit.

Zack wasn’t much better. The man paced, and it was going to drive Jacson nuts. It really was. Back and forth, as if the ground under his feet wasn’t even moving. Like some kind of animal who was trapped in a room. Just back and forth and looking around as if just waiting for someone to give him the excuse to burst into motion.

Jacson had had the luck once of actually getting to see the General and Zack sparring, and he had never wanted to be in SOLDIER more than that moment. They more flew than jumped, and danced around like those insane blades of theirs weighed nothing. Which, to them, they probably did.

Still, he had assumed that, on this trip, it would be him and Strife being friendly with them, Zack being nice to the pair of them, and the General being aloof and ignoring them for the most part. But Zack almost seemed to ignore him, ruffling Cloud’s hair and checking to make sure that the blond wasn’t doing too badly, and then moving and talking softly with Sephiroth. If it hadn’t been for Strife looking at him from time to time, or the fact he could almost feel those freaky cat-eyes of the general’s burning into the back of the head, though he never caught the man looking at him, he would have thought he was invisible.

It wasn’t a nice feeling, and it just solidified his desire to get into SOLDIER.

Once he was there, nobody would ever ignore him again.

///

This was the time where everything seemed to pause, and go far, far too slowly.

It was the wait that did it. The wait one had to have before anything started, that seemed to go on forever.

Zack told him once that it was bad enough for regular people. And it was ten times worse for enhanced. When you could hear the beating of your neighbor’s heart as well as you could hear your own, and could move fast enough to dodge bullets, time seemed to take on a whole new meaning.

Especially while waiting for something as important as this.

If this worked....

Sephiroth would have never done this. Not without Zack being there, waiting for him. Not if Zack had never pushed him. This was as much for Zack as it was for him. It was because of him, Zack had been put into the situation that he had been. It was because of him that Zack had been...damaged as he had.

And Sephiroth knew that Zack would never leave his side.

Therefore, as long as Sephiroth was friends with Zack, Zack would always have the eye of Hojo and Shinra on him. As long as he was with Shin-Ra, that was. So, the simplest way to protect Zack against those who would hurt him was to remove him from the situation. As he would refuse said removal without Sephiroth, Sephiroth would simply have to go as well.

If it had just been Shinra to worry about, Sephiroth would have simply left. The President wouldn’t have cared after the initial search. Wutai was his, Sephiroth’s real usefulness was at an end, and now he was a potential threat of a takeover attempt. Not that Sephiroth wanted Shin-Ra. He had no desire for the company, and less for the people in it.

Hojo, though, would never let it rest. And as Hojo was Shinra’s only hope of gaining whatever it was they searched for, Shinra would listen to Hojo. Due to those factors, it would be required for trickery and stealth to be used to get Sephiroth out, and then have Zack follow.

Trickery was something Zack was very, very good at, and Sephiroth was grateful that he had never been a target for the more malicious aspects of it.

Though he trusted Zack, Sephiroth had his own plans. Backups, mostly, but one could never be too careful.

He knew that Zack knew of the plans, though not the details. Rufus was much easier to deal with than his father, and had that foolish belief of immortality that most young did. He didn’t care what Sephiroth did, as long as it didn’t harm the company, and the boy disliked Hojo with a passion. The Turks were loyal to Veld and Tseng, and Tseng was loyal to Rufus. So it had not taken much to have a Turk with an agenda tucked away towards Nibelheim, though none of them officially knew she was there. However, she was on Sephiroth’s side, and that was all he needed.

As they pulled up, towards a road too small to take them into town itself, Sephiroth frowned.

He had a headache, and it seemed to be growing stronger.

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Date: 2007-05-06 04:44 am (UTC)

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