"Zack, get to the Shinra Building yesterday. Genesis has attacked us."
He clicked and dashed off. The floaty-hearts would have to wait. It was time to go to work.
"Hey you!" a voice called, and Zack whipped around to see someone he really DID NOT want to see right now. Instinctively, his hand shot to his crotch.
"Oh no, no-no, don't you dare bump into me!"
The little Wutai thief eyed him like a cactaur, and chucked him his Ice Materia. "Because you're good to Aerith."
Zack cocked his head, fusing his Ice Materia back into his arm. "She really takes care of you all doesn't she?"
"Don't be mean to her. She's very important to us all, more than Shinra dudes can imagine."
"Where'd this come from? Don't worry squirrel, I'm not a bad guy. In Wutai I was just doing my job."
"My name's not squirrel, it's Yuffie, and I'm the daughter of Godo Kisaragi, Wutai's greatest warrior."
Zack stood stone. Godo Kisaragi, Wutai's succeeded Chieftain, he was dead now. Yuffie dashed off like a ninja into the Slums, vanishing without a trace.
On the expressway above the Plate, Zack saw the skyline silhouette stoked in smoke and flames. The signs on the overpass marked the Junction, Shinra HQ and Sector 6 splitting off. Zack sprinted underneath it but slowed once he came out, his mouth hanging open to behold…
…An angel, descending in prodigal doom to the highway, a Buster Sword in hand.
Angeal landed soft without a sound, his wing flowing around him with a lifeforce all of its own. There was little hint of aggression in his pose, Zack didn't know what to make of it. So he jogged on toward Angeal, relieved beyond relief when the Buster Sword didn't rise.
"I need your help," said Angeal, a strong rouse edged in desperation.
Doubleyou-tee-eff.
This was so bizarre. Angeal had knocked him off the Plate for trying to help him and now he comes and says he needs his help? Was he on Dancer? Zack hoped so, that would explain a lot.
Zack strode around him, trying to keep his distance. Stuff just got downright unpredictable.
"Honestly, what the heck is wrong with you, Angeal?"
The man stood stone in the middle of the highway. Zack didn't recognize him, and he doubted Angeal recognized him either. After all they'd been through together, now they stood as strangers on an expressway to bloody nowhere, Angeal holding it together with duct tape and shoestring.
"I'm not…really sure myself,” the big man’s voice cracked. "At times I feel as if my mind is mired in fog. But Zack, no matter what happens, I have to protect my honor. It's the only thing I have that's truly mine."
The Shinra Building loomed ahead like a megalith of steel and consumerist theory, and Angeal held his sword to it like he had in Wutai. "As long as I hold this Buster Sword, that building will never hurt anyone I love ever again."
In a terror he slashed his blade, flaying it like a proclamation to Shinra. "Zack, fight with me.”
Yes. Dancer. That was it. Zack couldn't blame a man who woke up one day with a wing sticking out of his shoulder for falling a little off the deep end. At least he wasn't trying to kill him anymore, now they were getting somewhere.
"Our enemy is all that creates suffering," proclaimed Angeal, and Zack stood with crossed arms trying to absorb this situation as best he could.
The hell with it all, nothing made sense anymore anyway. "All right Angeal…I'll help you."
Help you into rehab at least.
But Zack turned, and Angeal was gone. He stood in a daze, flustered and confused, until a single feather floated down in front of him. A rush of wind, and Angeal's arm shot around his waist to lift him into the air.
Zack and Angeal swooped off, the dynamic duo together again…at least on some level. They flew toward the armillary sphere of the Shinra HQ Building, its searchlights flaring straight into the sky like sword battalions in the night.
Meanwhile, inside HQ, Sephiroth tri-slashed a clone into three pieces. As another clone leapt at him, he snapped around to bash-Thundaga it into a wall. The legendary Sephiroth did nothing halfway.
Angeal and Zack smashed through a window into HQ. They met Sephiroth at the other end of the corridor, falling in behind him like party members.
"Cavalry’s here," said Zack as Sephiroth whipped his sword clean.
"You're late," the big man flashed the slightest glare at Angeal, not batting an eye at his wing.
"Sephiroth," Angeal grinned, "have you lost weight?"
Sephiroth smirked. That was a reference to when they were 2nds and Angeal dumped Sephiroth's "prescribed" rations in the garbage, giving him his steak dinners instead. Skinny Sephiroth gained mass very rapidly after that.
“Where’s Hojo?” Angeal asked.
“Who cares?” Sephiroth snorted, storming off in brooding disgust.
“I see you’re in your usual mood. Zack, go secure Dr. Hojo.”
“The head of the R&D Department?”
“Yes. If Hollander is behind this, then he’ll be after Hojo for revenge.”
“What about Genesis? Lazard said—“
“Leave him to me…” Angeal flashed his blade and whisked off in a deadly stride. Zack sprinted down the reinforced corridors with his head racing just as fast.
Down the hall through an auto-door, he barreled into a research laboratory stacked with Materia Fusion equipment, generator blast-furnaces, and a cryotank marked with the alphanumerics "REDXIII". Zack slid the folding gates away from the service elevator, and slammed the lever for "up."
The final floor was the R&D Testing Facility, an octagonal control room laid out like a technogogic temple for holding black-masses. A magnetically-neutral holding tube self-suspended in the middle of a drop, while a creepy little man stood at the control panel.
Wiry and hunched with beady, carrion eyes, and long hair greased from neglect, Dr. Hojo wrung thin arthritic hands over readouts on a standing holodeck, transfixed and oblivious to the world off the screen.
"Doctor Hojo…?" Zack approached him, but a bony hand shot up to shush him.
"Shh, please be more quiet! These experiments require the utmost of my concentration."
"The building is under attack by the Genesis army and you're worried about experiments? They may be after you Doctor!"
Hojo glanced up from his terminal, giving Zack a spectacled look up and down. "And you're my protection?"
Zack squinted.
The doctor pulled a stylus out of a lab coat pocket and nonchalantly went back to doing whatever the heck he was doing on his terminal.
"Genesis is nothing to fear…a memento of an ancient, degrading, unclassified life form, and albeit a failed experiment."
"Unclassified life form?"
"The calamity that fell from the sky 2000 years ago."
"Uh…"
A commotion broke their conversation. "Speak of the devil, look who's here!"
Ashen feathers fluttered in a cotton rain, and Genesis Rhapsodos stood in vengeful reverence before Hojo. He pointed his blade at the mad scientist in absolution, as if something had been taken from him and he wanted it back—but deep in his heart he knew he would never get it back. His threat was a futile attempt at recompense.
"Hollander sent you, correct?" taunted the little man in the lab coat. "You think that if you obey Hollander, he'll stop your body from degrading.”
It wasn’t a question, but a mocking statement.
"Genesis!" Zack rushed him, drawing his sword on him as he drew his on Hojo. The two SOLDIER 1st Classes stood at a stalemate, with the little man in the lab coat laughing the entire time.
"A second-rate hack like Hollander couldn't cure a cold!"
"Nor could a first-rate hack like you, genius," growled Genesis.
"GENESIS! THAT'S ENOUGH!" a strong voice called. Angeal rushed in from the service elevator with a flay of his wing, adding his sword to the trio in a blade-stalemate. The three SOLDIER's faced one another despite an oath they took to protect each other what seemed like a long time ago…and all the while the little man in the lab coat laughed.
The three of them stood in a tri-linear lattice, with Angeal's wing at its pinnacle, and Genesis spoke from somewhere far away.
"My friend, the fates are cruel. There are no dreams, no honor remains. The arrow has left the bow of the Goddess."
"Loveless, Act IV," Hojo threw his hands up in comedic disgust. "Where the two friends challenge each other to a duel. An ancient epic. I read it thinking it might aid my research, but…pure drivel."
They stood stoic, swords in a lenticular cross.
"How does the duel end?" asked Angeal.
"No one knows. The final act was never written."
Genesis flung a Fira spectre at the scientist, who dived away as a searing hole smashed through the wall. The one-winged seraph strode toward the opening, his wing fanning out like a curse.
"The mysterious Gift of the Goddess…What is the meaning behind it? For us, at least." Genesis stood bathed in aural flame, a backing of smoke and a gaping hole in the wall. The flames reflected off his pale features as he flew outside.
"Hey! Hold it Genesis!" Zack ran after him, but Angeal had already swept him up by the waist, flying with him out of the gaping hole. While all the while the little man in the lab coat just stood there laughing.
Genesis floated down from the Shinra building like an avant-garde assassin, a celestial seraph of melancholic accord.
"My soul, corrupted by vengeance, hath endured torment to find the end of the journey in my own salvation…And your eternal slumber.”
A crystal cell in his hand, the luster of galaxies in its wake…an Eidolon Materia.
The cast exalted the cranial transmutation circle, flaring like a semiotic sundial of elemental spheres. Angeal and Zack flew to its nexus as the hypervescent symbology once again glowed and shifted the natural world.
"He's summoning again!" called Zack.
Angeal rush-flew him to the overpass. "Zack, I leave this to you."
And he dropped him off, flying away. But as he went, he looked back down on his student.
"You can do this. Trust me."
"DON'T LEAVE ME HERE!" he leapt for Angeal like a child.
But Angeal wisked off to fight his own battle…against Genesis. Zack saw the Buster Sword rise—and he never saw that thing rise—to bash-flay off the red Curtana of a dark angel. Angeal and Genesis sheer-slashed each other in the sky, flying off to wage their war in the clouds.
Right then, at the most convenient timing, his phone rang. Zack answered it surprised.
"Aerith?"
"Hey Zack."
"HEY! Hold on, lemme go hands-free…" Zack dug in his pocket for the Bluetooth dongle and fitted it to his ear. "Alright, can you hear me?"
"Yeah, I can hear you fine. How are you?"
"Well, I'm great now that you called!"
She laughed like summer. Above him the sky morphed into an apocalyptic lightshow, cataclysmic energy flares beaming in aphelionic resonance. A seismic claw sliced the atmosphere, and a neoarbitronic dragon appeared above the overpass.
Zack drew his sword in a one-handed flash, stepping up to meet this daemonic fury.
"You caught me at just the right time, Aerith. I was just gearing up for a workout."
And the dragon charged down from the stratosphere, shooting streaking flareshots like screaming missiles. Zack sprung off his hands as fireballs slammed into the ground inches from him. He dashed around to get on the dragon's left side.
"So what're you doing?" he asked Aerith, not forgetting that she was on the line.
"Oh, dishes, you know…punishment."
"Aw shoot! Looks like I'll have to come rescue you, my Cinderella."
She giggled again. "Hey, what's that sound?"
"Oh, the TV, I can't find the remote to turn it down…or off!"
A sharp tail bashed the asphalt around him. He ducked and dodged, hurling Thudara beams and ducking back. Zack dive-rolled away from a claw-swipe back to his feet.
"So hey, not like I'm hinting at anything, but what do you like to do for fun?" he asked her.
"Um, I like to read a lot."
"Really? I can read too!"
"Oh really?" she giggled. "What do you read?"
"Uh, do comic books count?"
She laughed so he could picture her brilliant smile. "You're so cute Zack."
Neeeee, she thinks I'm cute!
The fight raged. The dragon flared its wings in hegemonic darkness as it gathered rays of light to its gaping maw. Ohhh snaps…Zack threw up his Barrier.
ExaFlare, Cluster sphere, Hexifang, the powerful hyper-attacks careened down on him like unholy lightning. Zack felt radiant heat singe his eyebrows. That's it, he needed his eyebows! How was he going to look like a sexy beast without eyebrows! He charged in, pissed.
"Are you okay Zack?"
"Yeah! Moving boxes around. You know, getting rid of some JUNK!"
Bash-bash-bash. Fight-fight-fight.
"So hey, you wanna hang out this weekend? I doubt there's any bookstores in the Slums but I'm sure we can find something to do." Zack traded slashes with a swiping claw.
"Well, I help out in the neighborhood on the weekends. Maybe you'd like to come with me?"
"I'D LOVE TO!" despite the fact that Zack had never done a day of community service in his life.
The dragon lowered its head to gnash with teeth at Zack. He took the opportunity to leap onto its snout, jabbing his sword right between the eyes and ran with it all the way down the length of its spine. He hopped off the tail, still talking as the dragon fell.
"So it's a date then?"
More giggles from her, and Zack's chest fluttered. "It looks like it is."
"GREAT! I'll seeya then!"
He clicked on her, then turned to see the megalithic monstrosity topple like a fallen dynasty. Zack just stood there for a moment, watching this massive protoevangelic Eidolon slumped like a slough-bucket over the highway, with Zack's name written all over it in blade-slashes.
When the dust finally settled and the falling fragments of flash-fire ash raining from a novic sky receded, he did the one thing that seemed appropriate to do at that moment…
He started dancing!
"COME ON IN AND PULL YER'SELF UP A CHAAAAAAAAIR. LET THE FUN BEGIN IT'S TIME TO LET DOWN YOUR HAIR! AND ZACK IS SO EXCITED, CUZ ALL HIS FRIENDS INVITED, AND ZACK IS SO EX—"
He was doing the running-man when he caught Sephiroth standing with his arms crossed. Zack froze, a sheepish grin on his face. The big man strode past without a word to inspect the infernal carcass of the antithetic Summon—when Sephiroth said nothing, it meant you did a good job.
"Genesis has fallen back…" he said, and Zack trotted up to him.
"Escaped?"
"…along with Angeal."
Zack let out a frustrated sigh, and his glare bore a hole in the asphalt. Sephiroth started back toward the Shinra Building.
"Be on high alert. Trust no one. Things are going to start getting really ugly really fast."
[Received Doctors Code]
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