Mount Nibel/Caves

[*~Nikkole~*]

Nikky laughed and leaned into him.

Kamen watched him with curiosity. He had never really thought about it like that. He nodded and slowly smiled. "Yes... that is true. I have gotten far and have made many good allies on my way." He was slowly starting to believe in Vincents words... but his masters power prodded t him still. He pushed it aside. His smile widened slightly. "Thank you..." He said a little more weakly then intended.

[Amnesty Lazuli]

Vincent nodded acknowlegement of Kamen's gratitude, but remained otherwise as emotionless as always. "Hopefully... I will soon be the one thanking you." He stalked off to continue his surveillance of the general populace... his attention kept returning to Kadaj. I could tell myself it is merely because I have encountered him before... more than anyone else, I know what he and his brothers are capable of. I saw what they did to Tseng and Elena... but even that does not explain the cold feeling I get when I look at him... something about him is off, even more so than usual.

Something about his eyes... sometimes, when I see him in my periphery... it's as though he is not the one watching me.

****
"We have the where and the who and the what and the why," Jared mused. "What we don't have here is the how. Exactly what's gonna happen when we get to Kalm Inn? The place is crawling with troopers... and Xima is gonna mow down every last one of us before she lets us get hold of the kids again."

"Don't ask me. I've never been outside my own temporal plane," Cloud replied. "You're the one who knows what we're dealing with."

Jared turned to the other two men. "That's just it. I've been having it out with these creeps for a year now. They know all my tricks. What have you guys got?" He was particularly interested in finding out what resources Cid had... he hadn't known Cid very well in his own time and so was working blind as far as he was concerned. Jared just hoped the guy would see past the "half-Shinra" label that had followed him around... in fact. he was hoping that Cid wouldn't notice the distinct resemblances he bore to his parents at all...

Cloud finally heard Joey nagging at him. "Huh... What?"

Shh! Joey insisted mentally, deliberately looking the other way. He'll hear you!

Cloud stayed silent, but his eyes widened somewhat as he heard the urgency in Joey's Voice... He who?

Joey shot a quick look at him. The General. He's somewhere on this ship... or maybe, someONE on this ship. Yazoo just spoke to me... and I fear this may be a repeat of future history, yo.

Cloud didn't get it. The General... Then he remembered Jared's tale, and it clicked. Sephiroth. He ISN'T gone. But... what do you mean, someONE?

[Ru]

"Eh, it's not a big deal," Cid joked, with a small shrug, "That way just gets you killed quicker. As for fuel, I got plenty. Enough to keep her in the air for at least another twelve hours, if not longer." He patted the steering wheel of the Sierra fondly, then turned around as Jared approached the group. There was something about the kid he couldn't place - some familiarity that escaped him at the moment, but he seemed to know what he was talking about.

"I guess you got a point," Cid nodded grudginly, folding his arms, "As for me, I got whatever the Sierra can throw at anybody - cannons, bombs, you name it - and my own skills." He jerked his chin at his lance, which rested near the steering wheel. Aside from that...Cid tried not to scowl. He was happy not being some sort of crazy interlocking force with Jenova and the Planet, but it also meant that he was only human, and fought with what he had.
"Yeah, that's about it," he admitted, raising an eyebrow as Cloud spoke to seemingly nobody.

[Amnesty Lazuli]

Jared nodded. "We can always use more good fighters... G** knows they were a precious commodity back in my time." This guy seems a little more mature than just about anyone else in this room... that makes him a survivor. And that's how we've managed to hold out against Xima and Rufus this long... just by surviving. As long as we're still alive, she still hasn't won. Jared tried to get his brain in gear. "We have the Sierra... we got me and the other Remnants to guess how Xima's mind works... we got the former Turks to guess how Rufus' mind works... the twins can work space and time, and Kamen's got his Puppeteer magic... we have you and Cloud and Vincent as trump cards... OK, so now we add it all together... what have we got?"

He thought it over... "Bombs, you said... the Seraphs don't use contemporary explosives. It's a point of pride for them... no grenades, no TNT, no nitroglycerin, none of that. That could be a distinct advantage. But they do use electronic explosives-- not as effective as the old-fashioned stuff, and it's mostly left to what they call 'munitions engineers'."

Ami nodded confirmation. "We all saw examples of that back the Seventh Heaven."

He kept thinking. "Somebody give me some feedback. A seventeen-year-old can only do so much to fill a general's shoes." Even if he IS the nephew of someone who was a general at nineteen... a fact I have never been proud of, anyway.

Cloud was only vaguely processing all this... he was still listening to Joey, whose tone was all the more severe every minute. It was becoming hard to believe she was any child of Reno's... but then, Reno hadn't grown up in the middle of a war and lost his parents to an army of Sephiroth clones. In the last raid of the war, when they were trying to destroy the time machine, right before we came here... Sephiroth dispersed his presence and possessed one of our allies. He got into our base and... killed almost everyone. And... he took control of Jared's uncles... they had told each other they would sooner die than let him take them over again... so they killed each other. Joey was sheet white with the recollection. I told the others they died trying to protect me from the Army, because I didn't want them to know... it would have torn Jared apart... We barely made it to the machine in time to get away from Jenova and the others... our last ally, Blue... he didn't make it. Someone had to stay behind to operate the machine. Joey's head drooped as she continued to stare in the opposite direction. He was Annie's best friend... only eighteen.

Cloud's stomach lurched. He'd heard of and seen the many horrible things Jenova and her brood had done before, but this... it made his blood curdle. He found himself staring at the Prime brothers... So which is it?

Joey didn't get it. Huh?

Cloud tightened his grip on his sword. Who? Who is he hiding in?

Joey shook her head. I don't know... and as soon as I start prying into minds, he'll realize I'm onto him.

****

Kadaj kept eyeing Cloud... He saved my life back there. I suppose I should... He sighed. Thank him.

He got up and began to approach the flight panel.

[Ru]

"Electronic explosives?" Cid repeated, scratching his chin thoughtfully. Then, he let out a short barking laugh, "Man - it's a point of pride? D*mn...anything that runs on electricty, or even on an electrical system is fairly easy to disrupt. I mean, if you don't do it right, obviously you're the one takin' flak instead of the bad guys, but...with the right kind o' pressure, those thing'll go haywire. Preferably while we're still outta range. Mass destruction for them, while we sit back here waitin' for them to regroup."

He nodded in a satisfied kind of way, glancing over at Cloud, and completely misinterpreting the rather startled look on the man's face. "Don't tell me you're gettin' airsick," he muttered skeptically, not noticing Kadaj's move towards the main group of speakers.

[mistervillainman]

Tseng had an idea about what was going to happen, so he decided to exclude himself from it and instead turned his attention to the airship.

"So where did you pick up this thing anyway?" He asked Cid, knocking on the dashboard.

[Amnesty Lazuli]

Cloud jerked as he realized someone was addressing him. "Uh, no... I'm fine. Just... thinking of a bad memory." He's GOING to be one when I'm done with him this time, whether he likes it or not.

Kadaj tapped him and he jumped, reflexively pulling his sword from the sheath. Kadaj dodged back, slightly started. "Count to ten, Strife," he recommended. He took a deep breath. "I have something to say, and you had better listen and understand it the first time, because I will NOT repeat myself." He stared at his feet and spoke almost inaudibly. "Thank you... for saving my life back there."

Cloud, still poised with his sword at ready, wondered what kind of stunt Kadaj was getting ready to pull... but when it dawned on him that he meant it... he lowered the sword slowly. "It's... not worth talking about."

Kadaj felt something inside him lurching... he blinked and it rapidly went away. "Well... just for the record. I'm grateful. Wouldn't have blamed you if you'd just let it happen... you could have, but you didn't. I know that. That's all." He spun on his heel and walked away, wondering why he was feeling so irritated all of a sudden...

Joey tilted her head. Cloud, we have to do something. His presence is definitely on board somewhere... but for the life of me, I can't figure out how to find him without getting us all killed.

Cloud watched Kadaj walking off to talk to his brothers and sister... just idle talk, it looked like. Working with them refused to sit right with him... but to find out they had sacrificed their lives to keep from hurting someone else... it made them look different to him somehow.

Jared beamed at Cid. "That's a strategy we've been dying to implement, but we never had the hackware to pull it off... mostly because you could only buy it from Shinra Rising, and the black market stuff didn't do c**p. Let's think along those lines. Plus, I have some other ideas about how we could use the Sierra to our advantage... pardon a dumb question, but what are her speed/maneuverability stats?"

He saw Tseng approach and tried to not act obvious... it was OK for Joey and Annie to act like family with their parents, but Tseng didn't even know yet that he would adopt Fruxus one day... he turned away from him, knowing that he at least would notice he was a dead ringer for his old man...

[Ru]

Cid nodded, appeased by Cloud's response; if there was anything Cloud had in abundance, it was bad memories. What really kind of threw him off was Kadaj. The last he could remember, he'd been fighting to the death with Cloud over the ruins of Midgar. Apparantly, he'd turned over one h*lluva new leaf if he was now willingly thanking people for their help. "D*mn," he muttered under his breath, perhaps feeling a little more respect for the group. At least, he felt like it wouldn't be too hard to trust them to help.

He turned his attention back to Jared, "Yeah, y'can't buy anything on the black market without some kinda previous knowledge about what you're specifically lookin' for - you'll get conned so fast your head'll spin." He fought back a proud grin at the request for the Sierra's basic information.
"I designed her myself. 'S far as I know, she's the fastest thing in the air - can outrun anything I've seen so far. And she can turn on a dime, although that'll throw you outta your seat if you aren't holdin' on. Got cannons on the front, bay doors down in the cargo hold, and an extra set of engines in case you need a little head start."

[mistervillainman]

Tseng nodded in approval as he inspected the controls.

"One of the finer models of airships I've seen. The other one, the Ragnorak, that one was easy to track down when I was still hunting this bunch. I even blew it out of the sky once. Be a bit harder to do that with this one."

((I'm Tseng, not Jared, hehe))

[Amnesty Lazuli]

Jared processed all that quickly. "Good, good... I like what I am hearing..." He started pacing. "I think I'm starting to see it..." His eyes were getting distant. This always happened when he saw the elements falling into place... "We use the hackware to set off the explosives, but that will only take out so many of them... So we split ourselves up, right? I know, I know, I said earlier to ALWAYS stick together, but that doesn't make sense in an open arena... Half of us, talents divvied up equally, one to be dropped on the north side of the Inn a distance away by the ship to draw their attention, and then we pull the ship back to beyond their radar and come in from the opposite direction to blast h**l out of them with the cannons before dropping the other half of our forces on them..." He was in full military mode, muttering his plans out loud and running them through his mind. "Yeah, that just might be our ticket!"

[Ru]

((sorry, MVM - didn't see your post))

"Glad you think so," Cid replied to Tseng, unable to keep a slightly wary look from reaching his face at the man's mention of blowing airships out of the sky. Ignoring this nagging bother for the moment, he instead tried to piece the plan together in his mind as Jared described it.

"So we can do a kind of duo approach thing on the inn," he reiterated, working out the motions with his hands, "We just gotta be careful not to hit our guys when we come in from the other side with the big guns. And you gotta remember - if we trap 'em too hard, things're gonna get desperate. Nobody fights harder when they know they've got nothing to lose."

[Amnesty Lazuli]

Jared nodded agreement... he knew that firsthand. "OK, so we're dividing this moveable feast into units. There should be at least one Remnant in each one, not counting Ami because her ESP is shot. Reno, Joey, and Annie are the ones that need to be defended most, because they're the ones this mission ultimately depends on."

Ami blinked. "Why do I find this prospect not a little disturbing?"

Reno rolled his eyes, his manner exuding sarcasm. "Ba-rum-bum-bum. You're slaying us."

Jared raised his voice. "I'm serious. They are the only ones that can evict Jenova from the baby. Not even Blood can help with that. But what I'm not sure of is, can we afford to keep them all together? If they split up, there's less danger of them all being captured at once, but if they can't all work against baby Jenny simultaneously, they won't have any effect."

"It sounds like a distraction is in order," Cloud decided. "They'll have to stick together, but we have to keep the focus away from them."

Jared nodded. "Sounds right... so that means Kamen's in their group, to shield their presences. Also Loz in case they need protection." He sent Joey a smirk. "I know they can take care of themselves pretty good, but just in case."

Joey shrugged and grinned back at him. He turned back to the others. "So how do you guys wanna divvy up the rest? I think we better have two groups-- Cloud in one, Cid and Vincent in the other."

[matt]

Unknown stood up as Akira headed towards Asuka. "Uh, oh... he's mad" Asuka said almost laughing. Unknown stood in Akira's way. "That pregnant dog petrified me back in Nibleheim." Asuka shouted angrily. Unknown ignored this and said. "If you want us to come with you" Although he seriously doubted they would trust him, "Then I have to go with Cloud. And I guess these two shouldn't be togethor."

Blood seemed to have left a short while after the battle ended.

[matt]

Into the Aiirship thingpit stepped the familliar figure of Blood accompanied with a stranger. "Look who I found." The stranger stepped forwards into the light and was revealed to be Ryushi. Ryushi stepped forwards looking at all the new faces. "Geez, when did our group get so big."

[Amnesty Lazuli]

((Dude... backlog a little bit. We aren't IN the caves anymore, man... we're on Cid's airship now, trying to patch up before we attack Kalm Inn.))

Ami gaped as she saw yet ANOTHER figure returned from beyond death... "What... how... who...?"