Disclaimer: I don't own Final Fantasy VII. This fic was written for fun, not profit.
Ten-minute character-study crackfic. Seriously, does anyone write about these three?
and then they saved the
planet
The tower is tall and dark and imposing, and Jessie's standing in front of it with her hands on her grenades - rattling off fuses slowly, under her breath.
They can take out one floor. Two if they're lucky.
Wedge says they should aim for the science wing - that's where it will hurt them, where the mako is studied - and if there's a note of sharp anger in there, no one says anything. His father was a company man before he spoke up about the scientists.
Biggs doesn't care, even though he's got just as much reason as anyone to hate Shinra. He has Sector Seven's rubble in his mind's eye and a SOLDIER's sword strapped to his back.
Right now Biggs just wants them all dead.
--
Jessie knows the secret ways in - her mother was a sniper in the Wutai campaign, twice-decorated and then shot down dead during a Sector Four protest - and Wedge knows all the lower levels, the places his father took him to show him a wonderful new future. They're good at dodging guards, but when they can't Wedge punches them and Jessie makes fire whirl around them, her materia snug in her second-hand armor.
And Biggs is a country boy - Gongaga-born, a brother and an aunt and three cousins eaten up by Shinra and then his folks blown sky-high with the reactor - so he swings the sword like a club and holds it up like a shield. It's not quite the same as the hardedge blades he grew up with, but it's close enough.
When Wedge tells him he sucks at it - it's a sword, not a bat - he just shrugs his shoulders and slings it across his back. They're not quite AVALANCHE, not like they used to be, but they're still here and they have work to do.
--
Heroes save people. Wedge says they're heroes, so it's probably Wedge's fault they wind up rescuing a flower girl and something furry and intellectual - why they wind up running for their lives instead of using Jessie's explosives like they ought to.
Right before Shina finally catches up to them, the girl peers at Biggs with wide green ancient eyes, and then she glances at the sword - just once, for a moment.
He tells her he found it in Sector Seven. It's almost the truth.
--
And then the cell doors spring open, and there are blood and bodies and Jessie with her hand pressed over her mouth and her mother's armor too-loose on her shoulders, trying not to be sick.
Not even Shinra deserves this, Wedge says, not even them - and Biggs thinks maybe they do, and he was never meant to lead anything, he was never meant to make decisions like this. He wishes Barret or Tifa were here, or Cloud as unflappable as ever.
And he wishes he could go back to Sector Seven and find the bodies instead of the sword, but the Plate was too heavy for that.
They have to see what did this, Biggs tells the others. He has one hand over his shoulder, on the sword's hilt, and he remembers that his aunt and two of the cousins wanted to join the army and see the world - clockwork Shinra fighters, and he wonders what finally swallowed them up.
Maybe that's why no one argues with him.
And maybe whoever did this is on their side, fighting for all the lost people and things under the guise of the Planet. Maybe AVALANCHE has a new ally now. If not, they'll fight it and blow it sky-high. That's just what they do.
--
Biggs isn't a good leader. He sure as hell isn't a SOLDIER.
He grips the sword in both hands and thinks that maybe, just for a while, he can pretend to be one anyway.