Wutai Mountain

[Amnesty Lazuli]

Shelke sighed and took the gun away. She shot the pipe clean in half. She handed it back to Reno. "Happy?"

"Um, yeah, thanks." He knelt down beside the kid and concentrated.

"Reno Lea, I believe Yazoo requires your attention more urgently," Shelke urged.

He waved her off. "In a minute, doll."

"My NAME is SHELKE."

"Yeah, yeah, I got it memorized already." Sin's wounds began to close up.

She sighed. "Just hurry."

[Sin]

"Wait wait wait wait!" Sin said, stopping Reno from continueing with his good arm. "Why don't you fix Loz, that way Loz can remove this metal and the bullet, before you closse the wounds up and damage me even further."

[Amnesty Lazuli]

"I believe you mean Yazoo--" Shelke corrected before Reno waved his arm to cut her off.

"I got the picture, doll." He turned back to Sin. "Fine, if that's what floats your boat, kid. Shelke, help him keep his limbs elevated or something. He's bleeding all over the place and it's getting kinda gross."

She obliged as Reno worked his magic on Yazoo. "Hang in there, mouthpiece... Geez, you really ARE messed up! Guess they weren't kidding, yo..."

He kept chattering away meaninglessly as Shelke kept Sin's limbs raised. "I understand this may be painful, but we must stem the blood flow to these extremities."

[Sin]

Sin nodded dully. "Yeah I understand... I just wanted him to stop healing me with the metal STILL INSIDE OF MY ARM AND LEG," He said, shouting the last part to Reno. "Either way, Hw can you remember who is who out of those three?"

[Amnesty Lazuli]

Shelke shrugged as best she could while still propping up Sin's limbs. "It's quite simple, actually. Codename Yazoo has a more elongated frame, which makes him taller and less bulky than the others. Speaking in terms of personality, he is more quiet than any of his siblings, and more emotionally mature. His peculiar gift is acute empathy, whereby he can sense and adjust the emotions of others, almost to the extent that he is insensitive to his own. However, if you wish to identify them by heuristics, their haircuts are all different."

[Sin]

"Isn't Kadaj the one with the shock gauntlets?" Sin said, as he pushed himself over with his good arm and leg to the wall. He leaned against it with his arm and leg in the air, feeling particularly annoyed. "Reno, how long are you going to take?" He shook his head and turned back to Shelke. "So, you know so much about me, what about you?"

[Amnesty Lazuli]

"I'm almost done over here, gimme a break," Reno insisted. "I'm yankin' this guy back from the gates of death, yo! Whaddya want from me?"

Shelke sighed and turned back to Sin. "Kadaj is the youngest. His weapon of choice is the double-bladed katana. Loz prefers shock gauntlets. In regard to myself, I was once known as the Transparent among an elite combat unit of Deepground, called the Sviets. Do any of these terms require further explanation?"

Reno backed away from Yazoo. "He's gonna be havin' himself a little bit of a nap right now. I won't be surprised if he doesn't wake up till next month." He concentrated on Sin's wounds, which once again started sealing up. "You know, kid, you seriously gotta work on your attitude problems, here. Yeah, you bailed dolly old what'sherface outta a jam, but beyond that, you got no good marks on my book."

[Sin]

"Reno, I am warning you. STOP HEALING ME WITH THE METAL STILL PERICING MY ARM AND LEG!" Sin fumed, waving his good arm in a punch at Reno. "Are you blind? Do you not see the damn metal still in my arm and leg? Now if you think you are strong enough, take the metal out. Otherwise, IF you don't mind, I will wait until either Yazoo wakes up, or Loz gets back here with Ami. Tifa is a possibility as well as waiting for Vincent and Cloud to open up the walls with Kadaj." Sin continued as he aimed another swing at Reno.

[Amnesty Lazuli]

He dodged the first swing and caught the second. "It's not like I freakin' ASKED you to go get your limbs amputated, man! I'm tryin' to help here! You wanna give me attitude, you can go ahead and heal up the old fashioned way, yo! Geez!"

Shelke watched him storm off. "I'm afraid he has a point, Sin," she sighed. "His skills of observation leave much to be desired, but even so, he is not obligated to help you. All my studies have led me to believe psychic healing is invariably a very draining process. He's already starting to wear out. And speaking of observation, you very easily could have avoided the metal shard if you had paid attention to your surroundings." She thought of further mentioning he had mixed up the brothers' names again, but thought better of it. "If I had my energy sabers, I might be able to cut these out, but I lost them in the avalanche." She reached to a device on her belt and activated it. "I can use this to track them down, if you don't mind being left alone."

((Seriously, dude... what was up with you self-inflicting that injury on yourself? Were you feeling left out of the ouch-ouch-oh-geez-that-hurts crowd or something?))

[Sin]

[Nah, nothing like that, it is that I am taking my angst out on him. I am a little stressed over my Drama, and this is a safe way to take it out. He wants me to memorize some five acts by this thusday... GAH!!!]

Sin nodded. "Yeah you are right... I will see you in a bit, see if I can't try and get that door open from this side..." He grunted as he hauled himself upwards, hopping towards the door Cloud and the others were behind. He started to look for some type of pad to open the door.

[Amnesty Lazuli]

Reno was climbing all over the ship, looking for weak points. "Got to be a button or a hole or something..."

****

Kadaj and Ami had finally made the hard climb back to the crater. The damage was enough to boggle even them. Ami surveyed the wreck. "Holy..."

"S**t," Kadaj finished.

They cautiously made their way over the edge of the hole and slid down the crumbling masses of displaced earth, rock, and ice. They spotted Yazoo's prone form and said not a word, simulatenously making a beeline for their fallen brother.

Ami checked his pulse. "Just unconscious. Thank G**."

Kadaj nodded. "Reno must have seen to him already."

A flicker of movement caught their eyes. "Sin!" Kadaj continued to examine Yazoo as she ade her way to the injured boy. "You're bleeding... and how..."

A clink and a whirr came from inside the ship. The great rock pinning the door down budged slightly as the door attempted in vain to trundle smoothly aside (for it is very difficult to do anything smoothly with a rock weighing over a ton sitting on you).

[Sin]

"Hello Ami, finally got here. Carefull of the blood, and help me try to opem this door will you?" He shifted around, and tried to find a different way of opening the door. "Cloud, Vincent, and your other brother are on the other side, not sure what condition they are in."

[Amnesty Lazuli]

Ami joined him on the side of the rock and began shoving. "Come on, we can do this... one, two, three..." She pushed with her whole weight, but the stone only rocked back and forth. She groaned in frustration and gave it another go, but Kadaj only pulled her and Sin aside. "Out of the way," he huffed, bracing himself against the shifting rubble and giving the stone one mighty shove. It moved aside, rolling down the crater's slope.

Reno, perched near the ship's sensor array, whistled appreciatively. "Talk about the cover of the Rolling Stone. Check out that action, yo!"

Shelke had finally located her sabers, lodged halfway under a rock pile. She precariously found a foothold and tried to pry them free, mindful of her still-broken arm.

CRUNCH CRUNCH CRUNCH...

She was directly in the boulder's path.

Ami paled. "Oh, shi--"

CRUNCH.

The stone finally came to rest at the slope's bottom. As the dust cleared, it became painfully apparent... Shelke had only barely managed to dodge it, her battered sabers clutched to her chest. She glanced upwards in alarm to discover the new arrivals, who all breathed a collective sigh of relief.

Reno started clapping and cheering. "Way to go, Sue Storm! Queen of the mountain, yo!" He whooped like a soccer hooligan.

Kadaj only sighed and shook his head.

Ami's face was a study in concern. "Need help down there?"

Her voice was muffled by distance. "It might be difficult to climb back up with my arm in its current state."

"Lemme fix that, yo," Reno volunteered, virtually bouncing down the slope to help her.

Ami and Kadaj looked at each other. "ADD," they said in unison.

The door finally opened. Ami tilted her head. "Not that I'm complaining, but does anyone think it's weird that it only opened after I got too close--"

If she had any further thoughts on that theory, she didn't have time to share them. Loz, who looked slightly the worse for the wear but still a great deal better off than his other siblings, abruptly fetched her inside. "You won't believe it! It's amazing! It's unbelievable! It's... SHINY!"

Ami only blinked helplessly at his onslaught of adjectives and stumbled after.

Kadaj shrugged. "Let them have their fun. You want that pole out of you?" He drew his sword. "I warn you, this is probably gonna hurt. Very, very badly."

[Sin]

"Just do it, So long as I can still use my arm and leg, I can get that ADD mental midget to fix my body." Sin said, still watching Reno bounce around like a monkey, and Loz squealing like a fangirl over something appaently shiny.

[Amnesty Lazuli]

"Fine then." Kadaj got to work, cutting the metal out of Sin's limbs and trying to avoid the major arteries. "I've got a question. Maybe I'm imagining things here, but you're seeming a lot more irritable than usual. Feels like something's bothering you-- something besides how easily Red can be distracted. Am I right?"

****

Ami tilted her head as she stared at the strange computer. "It looks pretty freaking weird to me, brother."

"But I thought you liked weird."

Vincent nodded. "He has a point there."

She shrugged.

Loz seemed strangely anxious. "Well?"

"Well what?"

"Do you SEE it?"

"See what...?" As she gazed at the computer's glassy surface, she caught a glimpse of Vincent's reflection. She'd been yanked inside to get a good look at him before...

She spun around. "Your prosthetic is bleeding--"

Suddenly a cluster of tentacles shot out of the nerve center, wrapping around her wrist and yanking her back roughly. The membranes parted, and she was dragged into the computer's center, too quickly to scream.

The computer closed around her and began to audibly hum, glowing brighter by the second.

Vincent and Cloud lunged for the controls, but Loz held them back. "No, wait a minute! I think this is supposed to happen!"

"You 'think' it's supposed to happen? Sorry, but 'think' doesn't quite cut it!" Cloud snapped. He reflexively reached for his sword--

Vincent stopped him. "Cloud, look."

The alleged ex-soldier gave his surroundings a glance... to find the creatures in the capsules around him were starting to revive, stirring in their thick fluids, some even opening their eyes. "What the h**l?"