Chapter Text
October 1st, 0007v - 11:17pm Midgard Standard Time
A peal of thunder echoed beneath the plates. Somewhere, far off, rain danced across sheet metal like a hail of bullets.
They’d been walking for some time, and Chrono had since sped towards wherever his owner, Marle, kept house and out of sight. Tifa had them duck and weave through alleyways and crumbling side streets, cursing and muttering to herself all the while; something about busted levees, and the damn canal Third Street turned into after every storm.
She stopped to ease him off her shoulders; letting him slump against the wall of a ramshackle townhouse. “Sorry, Cloud,” she huffed. “The rain carried the bridge over Third down towards Sector Eight-” A weary sigh slipped past her lips, and her eyes all but rolled from their sockets. “-again.” Apologetically, her gaze rose to meet his. “So, it’s going to take a bit longer while I find us away around.”
“It’s alright, Teef,” he slurred. “I-”
A crash sounded somewhere up the street, and her gaze flickered there and back. She pulled away, and he whined; the cold and damp more apparent with the loss of her warmth. “Stay here,” she whispered to him, hastily pulling a damp swatch of cardboard from the street, and drawing it over him. “We’re being followed.”
At that, his eyes shot open. He lurched to his feet, the damp covering crumpling uselessly bedside him.
Tifa let out an amused snort, shaking her head. “So much for keeping you out of it,” she sighed. He planted his sword between the cobblestones, driving it into the earth, and used the weapon as a makeshift crutch. His eyes followed Tifa’s to a shadowed alleyway; where a trio of tattered – though sharply dressed – individuals huddled beneath the eaves, and soon padded towards them through the urban damp.
Their suits were ill-fitting, and their faces were covered by a garish selection of colorful bandanas. Tifa’s boots slid across the wet stone, through the muck, as she settled into a ready, defensive stance.
The lead thug shouted across the empty street. “What’s a little bunny like you doing out here at this time of night?” he probed. “-besides playing the good Samaritan to a mangy stray?”
Cloud’s nose wrinkled at their approach; assaulted by the astringence of cheap cologne, even at this distance.
An assortment of weapons hung loosely in their grasp: clubs, hatchets - a rusted shamshir of all things - that shone threateningly in the dim light. Their leader shot him a dubious look, and turned to Tifa. “Your friend there isn’t doing too hot, is he?” the t. “He’s looking a bit beastly, even. Let me guess: Stamp ran into some rats while zozzed on a bit of green?” He pantomimed a swing of his flask, and tutted in disapproval. “There’s not much doing for a man after that.”
Tifa’s jaw clenched, and her teeth ground against each other.
“How about this,” he offered; his hands parting in a flourish. “We’re in a generous mood tonight. So, me and the boys here will escort you safely home, like the fine gentlemen that we are.” He gestured towards Cloud. ”-and then we’ll take rabies over there off of your hands, and put him out of his misery. Get him off the streets before he infects someone else.” A predatory grin stretched behind his mask. “All in exchange for... certain indemnities, of course.”
“Yeah!” the second barked. “-for certain inefficacies!”
The third rolled his eyes, and bent to smack the second upside the head. “The boss said: irrelevancies, shitbird.”
“Oh, for the love of-” their leader scoffed, whirling about to face his compatriots. “Shut the fuck up!”
The tirade that followed – and the accompanying stream of obscenities – continued for some time. The air tensed, and grow heavy, as Cloud felt Tifa’s patience stretch taught and threaten to snap like over-tuned piano wire.
“Listen!” she interjected. “I don’t have time for this, and I don’t want to hurt you either.” Her voice was tight, and carefully measured, and straining with frustration. “So, please, if you would just let us by – like the fine gentlemen you are - we can all get on with our night.”
The trio turned towards Tifa, heads craning over their shoulders, and then back to each other; their argument dead on their lips.
“You?” the third replied incredulously. “Hurt us?” Pushing past the two – shorter – thugs, the spindly gangster’s barking laugh echoed down the abandoned street “I don’t think you know how this works, girlie!”
The man lunged forward; his spiked bat sweeping towards Tifa’s head.
In an instant she ducked, sinking low to the ground as her leg whipped out and across the muddy street.
“Huh?” the mugger balked, stumbling. “What the-”
The well-placed kick smashed apart his knee. A scream tore out of him, and the man collapsed like a broken marionette; doubled over, clutching his ruined knee, and howling curses at the night. His leg was bent awkwardly, and splinters of broken bone poked from his thigh at an unnatural angle.
Cloud winced.
Tifa rose to her feet, and casually swept the dust off her skirt. “Your friend isn’t going to walk for a couple days,” she explained, nodding towards their shuddering heap of a compatriot. “-but I can do this all night. Your choice, guys.”
Her neck cracked ominously, and the lead gangster’s hatchet clattered to the ground. “Al- Alright now,” he cautioned, lifting his hands. “No need to-”
“Your junkie friend is going to pay for that!” the second thug howled, cutting him off and bounding towards Cloud with surprising speed. His battered shamshir sang through the air as the rotund, ill-mannered bandit closed in.
Cloud’s vision swam, and his sword lurched out from the muddy brick. He held it high, bracing to strike the approaching highwayman. His feet shifted unsteadily, and his eyes darted between a trio of blurred, phantom assailants. They screwed shut, and he waited for the hissing swipes to cut towards him.
They did not.
A sickening crack echoed down the alleys as Tifa wheeled about, lunging to grasp the wound-be butcher by the suspenders. The thug’s feet left the ground as she yanked back, slamming the portly man to the ground. Her fist followed shortly, and pistoned against the man’s throat. A wheeze escaped him, and tears spilled through the holes in his ratty, saffron mask; his hands clutching at the growing swell of his neck.
Cloud stumbled forward, kicking the fallen gangster’s weapon down the street. It rattled across cracked stone, slipped through rusted grating, and out of sight. Tifa spun on her heel, and gripped his shoulder, their assailants half-forgotten. “Cloud?” she asked. “Are you al-”
He caught the dull glint of an ax arc over her shoulder and sink between her shoulder blades.
She slumped against his chest with a wet rasp. Cloud’s heart thundered in his ears, and time slowed until it inched forward in an agonizing crawl.
“You’re a real pain in the ass, girlie,” the leader remarked. “Anyone ever tell you that?”
The vice around Cloud’s temples returned. His memories swam with the taste of copper, the acrid stench of mako, and a familiar, haunting laughter. A voice in the back of his mind screamed at him to move - to do something - but his body only shuddered in response, and veins filled with ice.
Tifa hacked up something warm and wet as the hatchet pulled free from her back, and she fell back, motionless, to the ground.
The thug knelt beside his quarry, patting her hips from anything of value. Tifa’s eyes darted, distant and unfocused, as she wheezed soundlessly; her chest heaving and her lungs struggling for air.
“No pockets?” her assailant muttered. “Fucking- Women’s clothing and pockets. I’ll have to talk to that dewdropper at the tailor sometime.” A hand dragged across his face; fresh blood tracking across the bright green fabric. “Holy Alexander,” he sighed. “I’m an honest individual, looking out for the neighborhood in these trying times...”
Cloud’s sword spun through the air in a smooth, practiced motion. His pupils thinned to slits, and his eyes shifted to a violent, emerald green. He stepped forward.
“What the- Whoa, there!” the bandit yelped, turning towards him. “You’re still firing on, what, one cylinder?” he balked. “Listen, friend. No need to get all-”
The blade swung down, and parted the stonework like glass. The leader retreated hastily, shuffling backwards across the abandoned street. Cloud pulled his weapon free from the cobblestones, and stalked towards the man – unblinking - as he scrambled to his feet.
“So... I hurt your girl,” he began. “That’s on me. I’m a scoundrel, I confess, but you!” The bandit chuckled nervously. “You seem like an up- upstanding member of the community! Let’s just... talk this out like two, civilized gentlemen, and we can-”
A thunderous report echoed up the street, and a cluster of shrapnel clipped the conciliatory bandit in his shoulder. The blow sent him reeling backwards and onto his ass.
Cloud’s ears rang; the scent of blood and powder conjuring phantoms at the edge of his vision: his old partner, the shrapnel and spent munitions on the shore of Wutai; the Hunt, tooth, and claw.
“Listen here, jackass,” a woman called, snapping him from his reverie. “You’ve ten seconds to clear out, and tell that fat cat boss of yours he isn’t welcome here, or snarly there is going to be the least your worries.” She pointed the weapon skywards, punctuating her command with another deafening blast. “Go on! Get!”
The wounded bandit scrambled to his feet, awkwardly collecting his crippled associates as he stumbled, bleeding down the street; one gangster slung his shoulder as the trio limped back into Midgard’s labyrinthine underbelly.
Chrono bounded past him. The bell tolling in his ears gave way to furious barks and muffled curses that bit at the fleeing men’s heels.
He turned, adrenaline quickly draining from his system, and fell to his knees; bent over his friend’s wounded form. “Tifa?” he prodded, slipping an arm beneath her shoulders. Easing her upright, his fingers snapped experimentally in front of her. “Look at me, Tifa. I need you to look at me, alright?”
A wet cough answered him, and blood dribbled down her chin. “I’m alright, Cloud,” she croaked. Her attempt at a reassuring smile curled into a grimace.
“She’s not,” the shotgun-toting woman countered from over his shoulder. The hammer cocked, and the still-cooling metal pressed against his nape. “You, on the other hand, could stand work on your situational awareness.” She spat. A wad of tobacco stuck to the back of his head. “Now, step away from my girl. There won’t be any warning shots this time, kid.”
“Marle,” Tifa rasped, wincing as she sat up. “Don’t. He’s... a friend. We- We had a run in on our way back from the station.”
Cloud looked back at the small woman. Her pale, scowling face was wrinkled with age, and a nest of frazzled grey hair was drawn behind her head in a high bun. Leathery skin hung loosely off her frame, but the aging spitfire carried herself with a lethal confidence.
The weapon fell away. “I can see that,” Marle scoffed, shooting her a look. “Can you walk, Tifa?”
“I think so,” she coughed, though a handful of faltering attempts to right herself proved otherwise. “-or not.”
Cloud’s fingers traced the deep furrow in her back, and pulled her blouse, unceremoniously, over her head.
“Cloud?!” she coughed, staining the garment a further crimson. “What- What are you-”
“This needs bandaging,” he shot at her, tearing the garment into strips. “Everything else we have is filthy.” She stiffened painfully, wincing as he tightened a makeshift dressing around her ribcage. “-and you need stitches, or an elixir.” He turned to Marle. “She needs treatment; something soon.”
The woman appraised him silently, sighed, and turned to Tifa. “His bedside manner could use some work, but scruffy there is right.”
Cloud startled as a wet nose prodded his flank.
Chrono whined. The wolfhound’s teeth were stained red, and ribbons of pin-stripe tailoring hung from his mouth.
“The mutt seems to like him, though. So, I guess he’s a decent enough sort.” Marle observed, fingers scratching behind her dog’s ear. “Are you put together enough to carry her, or do I need to get this circus another ring?” she asked him.
He shook his head. “I’ve got her.” His arm snaked behind her knees, and scooped her off the ground. “I got you, Teef,” he whispered.
Tifa relaxed into his hold, and her head lolled against his shoulder. “Thanks, Cloud,” she breathed.
Marle watched them for a brief moment, and rolled her eyes. “Come on,” she instructed, nodding impatiently towards a nearby intersection. “The bar’s a few streets over. We’ve got enough stock there to patch her up.” Her brow creased. “Though, I'm starting to think you might need it more than she does, kid. Did you lose a fight with a train, or something?”
Another, familiar pain lanced through his skull. “-or something,” he replied.
Marle turned down the street at a quick pace, and Cloud hurried to follow, cradling Tifa tightly against his chest as the young woman slipped out of consciousness.