Fanfiction = No Ownership or Profit = An Obvious Statement

Back To Reality

Chapter Five: Ever Outclassed

By FullMentalPanic

Concept by HazzaTL3

"Let's watch the sunrise."

"Zack."

"I haven't seen one in ages." With a twelve foot bound, he'd reached and disappeared into heavily leaved branches.

Cloud slid to a halt below on a mixture of small stones and dry earth. It couldn't possibly be as bad as it seemed, but it felt like everything was rubbing raw against his infantry uniform. Even if it wasn't a good idea, stopping was a relief.

"We need to go," he insisted in a low voice.

"I hear ya," trickled down from the tree top as Zack answered at a similar volume. Light crunches indicated his descent, and then there was a rustle and frenzied flapping. Cloud tensed as a warbling squawk abruptly cut off.

Zack dropped to the ground, a large bird under one arm, its beak held closed in his left hand. "It's too early to wake up the neighbors...is there anyone nearby?"

"Nobody local." Shinra was definitely closing in on them.

"So then," one hand shifted slowly up to a feathered neck. "How hungry are we?"

He eyed the muted feather pattern critically. "Not for that." He remembered exactly how that critter tasted. It took about ten hours of prepation to get it anywhere near passable.

Zack didn't argue. "Be free, little guy."

The 'little guy' had a seven foot wingspan, and created a small dust storm with its exit. Zack seemed willing to watch until he was staring at a flying speck, but Cloud tugged him back to the task at hand with a brief, "Let's go."

Cloud exhaled quickly as they set out again. Flexing his fingers in and out brought sharp stings as the gloves pulled against his detaching nails. It was better than the dragging burn of chafing.

"Think we can run along a ridge or something and see the sun come up that way?"

"Won't be up anytime soon. That'll give you a rash."

Dodging around the bush with feathery purple blooms, Zack cast the sky a doubtful look. "It's already getting light."

"Unless you're on a peak it'll take at least forty-five minutes to clear the horizon."

"Mountain sunrises really cultivate patience, huh?"

"We're running east," Cloud pointed out. They would see daybreak without any need to change their direction and speed.

"Yeah...I kind of wanted to really soak it in. What's that?"

Cloud glanced at the boughs with greenish fruit on their left. "Not poisonous."

Out of the corner of his eye he saw the sway of branches that showed Zack had just snatched something off of them. A few seconds after a crunching bite he heard a gag.

He smiled slightly. "Also not ripe."

Half expecting Zack to throw what was left of the fruit at him, he readied for a dodge. However, all that came from that direction was a sigh and another bite.

"You are hungry," Cloud observed with a touch of accusation.

"Yep," he said around a mouthful. "Still got enough Lifestream that I can mostly trick my tongue into tasting something else, though. How about those?"

Growing over tumbled boulders were vines with misty white berries. "Poisonous."

Zack groaned and came into view on Cloud's left. The trees were still thick enough that they were only seeing patches of sky, but on the ground there was enough space to run roughly side by side. Upon hitting the forest last night, they'd had a fast consultation about traveling quickly or unobtrusively. Speed had won out with both of them.

They hadn't done anything as blatant as breaking every branch they brushed against, but there was trampled grass and snapped twigs in their wake if anyone tried to look for them. It was paying off, however. They'd had hardly any stops during the night, and the current upward grade was starting to encourage his hopes.

"This might be the final ridge before we're on the east side of the range."

"Seriously?" Zack crunched with a grin. "Quick."

"We ran almost straight through the night. Those are pretty long this time of year." In fact they'd had suspiciously smooth sailing. "We didn't get attacked by any predators or anything...maybe we should be worried."

"It's weird," agreed Zack as he examined the core before shrugging and tossing the whole thing in his mouth. "But not bad."

"Might not be the last ridge."

"There's not some balance that has to be maintained with a failure for every success. Sometimes you just get a series of fortunate events, no strings attached. Is that edible?"

"No." Power of persuasive thought or not, Cloud was a little disbelieving that Zack could consider eating anything. Cloud was reliving several bouts of motion sickness whenever he thought about food. Swallowing convulsively, he wrestled down the rancid slickness that seized the moment to make an appearance.

Riding on the edge of vomiting, he clenched his hands into fists, hoping the piercing discomfort in his fingertips would keep him from having to stop and heave. It did, but also flared out of control, filling his hands with fire hot as a forge. For a few interminable heartbeats, it kept burning more fiercely. Making his skin tight, singeing the hairs on his arms, filling his nose with smoke.

It's not happening, he reminded himself forcefully. Looking down, he took determined note of the unmarked skin of his arms. Not burning, not sliced, not shot, not blackened with stigma. He'd been betrayed by his own body so often, though, it seemed each blink would open his eyes to blood or dark disease.

Cloud pulled his focus over to black hair as Zack sprang up the side of the mountain, moving starkly in his dark uniform between the plants and trees heavy with new, green growth. The shuffle and stamp of their gait covered the sound of heartbeat and breath, but it was chilly and humid enough that exhaled mist was visible. Cloud centered himself on the proofs of life. Breathing deeply through his mouth and then his nose, he drew in more reassurance from around him.

He couldn't smell any blood seeping through the bandages, meaning none of the gunshot wounds had pulled open. Zack mainly carried the scent of sweat with an odd, shifting undertone, likely bits of Mako. The air was heavy with pollen and moisture, and Cloud realized he could pick out the types of evergreen, softwoods, shrubs, and sudden wafts of grass.

An increase of eastern wind brought a breeze whooshing over the peak they had almost breached. Cloud registered the difference in scents already warmed by the sun, air that was clement instead of brisk, and bodies, metal, cloth, sweat.

His eyes slammed to his left. Helmets he recognized cleared the ridge, two, three, four. Dark uniforms came into view and he was choking on smells of mud, rain, and blood. The lightness of morning was drowned, dark grey. Solid, shadowed walls lit faintly with green. He ground to a halt.

"Mornin', boys," Zack called out cheerily. If he'd slowed at all, Cloud couldn't see it.

The group of Second Class SOLDIERs jumped forward, rapidly moving closer. Zack immediately dropped his speed, but didn't stop. Cloud hastened to catch up and keep pace. As if in response to Zack's change in gait, the SOLDIERs had slowed as well, but they were still coming toward them.

Threading his fingers behind his head, Zack kept walking with casual confidence. "Who'd have thought we'd run into someone else from Shinra out here?"

"Unreal, right?" returned the tall one, maybe as tall as Zack. All of them were taller than Cloud.

"Yep, we're glad to be heading back in. You guys take care." Zack was edging them right and upwards, even as the swarm of purple uniforms tried to cut them off. Advancing from the left to keep them from reaching the summit, getting closer with every breath.

With a leap that he somehow managed to pass off as unintentionally getting him further away from their pursuers, Zack had made it to an overgrown ledge still closer to the ridge. Cloud's own jump wasn't nearly as inconspicuous, but it did put him squarely between the two classes of SOLDIERs.

Everything in him was straining to burst beyond their gambol. To either get away or attack. They were in a terrible place for a fight. The grade was getting more and more sheer as the elevation increased, giving them a surface only a little less steep than a cliff. Trees and shrubs sprang randomly from the broken rock, hiding loose stones and earth that could trip them up.

The SOLDIERs had the high ground, moving down and toward them in as close to formation as they could get on the slope. There was a shrinking seventy-five feet between them. He and Zack were still a good three hundred feet from the summit. If they couldn't throw off this charade he was pretty sure none of them were buying, he could at least make sure the first one in the line of fire was him.

"What happened to his helmet?"

Cloud blinked and almost stopped. With a yank that almost cost him his footing, he was manhandled to the far side of Zack.

"One of those casualties of random encounters." Zack spoke easily, an arm over Cloud's shoulder. "Earlier we tangled with...something cranky."

He saw the exact moment where Zack blanked on a specific species to offer, and he jumped in. "Screamer."

"Very unfriendly." Zack grinned widely, continuing to walk them backwards.

Cloud narrowed his eyes at the now sixty-five foot distance, and refused to trip on the rocks that loosened under his boots.

"That what happened to your insignia too?"

This time, it was Cloud who straightened momentarily as Zack reclaimed his balance, never losing his grin. Cloud only just stopped himself from staring at where the broad SOLDIER emblem used to be belted around Zack's stomach. It had never been reattached after being used for escaping the containment tubes. The infantry at the manor probably had it.

"Yeah, that was also when -" Zack pulled Cloud closer with the hand on his shoulder, bringing the other up near his ear, still moving uphill. In words hard to make out, Zack muttered, "Eyes on our blindside. Laugh."

Zack went back to mostly upright, laughing uproariously. Cloud managed a sickly chuckle, casting a glance at the approximate two hundred and fifty feet to the peak. Checking directly behind them would be terribly obvious, but maybe that was what they were left with.

"Sounds like a good story," said the tall SOLDIER across the sixty foot distance.

"Well, I think so," Zack asserted. "But maybe you had to be there."

There was no way to do this subtly. Turning under Zack's arm so he was facing uphill, Cloud hooked his right hand through the First Class's elbow and propelled them to a slightly faster speed.

"Sir," he threw back, trying for something close to how he'd sounded in the infantry. "We're behind schedule."

"Better get going then. We should connect next time we're all in Midgar." Zack's right arm shifted until he grasped Cloud's forearm.

Almost looking back at the tight grip, Cloud kept his eyes on the two hundred and ten feet to the crest of the mountain. Were they down to fifty feet between them and the SOLDIERs? Less? His throat tightened as he pulled them to a greater pace.

"Why not now?"

"Deadlines," Zack made the single word heavy with good humored aggravation. "You guys know how it is."

"I know that infantryman is going to get docked for losing his gun."

They knew he was unarmed. There were suddenly four fingers around his arm. Forty feet? It was still nearly two hundred feet til the ridge.

"When was the last time you looked over the new tech for the Public Safety Department? He's packing more than all of us combined."

Cloud swallowed a groan. There was permissible bluffing, and then there was offensively obvious lying.

"I think we'd like to get a closer look at that."

Three fingers, thirty feet. About one eighty from the crest. His uniform moved against him like sandpaper on roadburn, and he pulled them both south, horizontal to the peak, distance from danger more important than distance to safety.

"Before the models for retail officially hit the market? Now that would be jumping the gun."

Four fingers, back to forty feet.

"What's the spilling of a few company secrets between departments?"

Five fingers, fifty feet. Cloud put them on an angle for the mountaintop once more. By the time the next verbal exchange was over, maybe he could turn one hundred and eighty feet into one hundred and sixty.

"Have you never met the Turks?"

"Right." A new voice, higher-pitched, younger? "We should do things by the book."

"Guess so," agreed the primary speaker. Weapons proficiency must have been what got the group of SOLDIERs to Second Class, since it wasn't wood lore. They were loudly tromping over everything. Cloud could feel them getting closer. The maybe leader's voice was at almost over the shoulder clarity when he said, "Callsigns, sir."

"You really want to do all the necessary paperwork that comes with turning this into an official encounter?" Zack doubted. They were back to three fingers and just a tick of speed away from running. One hundred and fifty feet to the ridge.

Cloud barely registered the more than one return, only First Class paperwork, lower ranks verbal, director and Turk reports. That third finger was almost gone, they were on the edge of twenty feet. Any of them could jump that. He turned his head.

"It's -" A number that he actually remembered, one probably listed as killed in action. They weren't likely to know that just from hearing it. "H Seven -"

Far back on his first day, the drill sergeant had screamed in his face about peripheral awareness. The harsh voice and the face not five years apart from his fourteen year old self filled his ears and vision, and something very heavy hit his shoulders.

Propelled down and forward, Zack was plowed down the hill with a kick, their grip ripped apart, and the tops of two of Cloud's fingers felt distinctly clean and numb. Earth grazed his nose as he wrenched his face to the side. His cheek crunched against the ground, but he didn't feel anything break.

Through his hair, around smalls rocks crammed into his field of vision, he saw Zack spiraling down a drop in the cliff, purple converging, and right above his own head -

"After him! I've got this one!"

Cloud got both hands under him as another SOLDIER raced down the incline to where Zack was skidding out of his line of sight. There was a crouching weight on his shoulders and back, and he pushed up, bucking to throw it off. One of his legs was kicked out and he thumped back to the slanted mountainside.

Trying to roll, away, down, he surprisingly easily succeeded. Then the material at his collar and shirt front was gripped and the back of his head cracked solidly against a craggy stone.

His vision streamed, he fought for air, feeling the strangled material near his neck, just the tightening of a fist away from choking him to uselessness.

"One out."

Almost too quiet to be intentional, Cloud focused on the voice and drew in a steadying lungful of oxygen. Instantly, everything near his neck constricted.

His hands latched on to those tangled near his throat. Straddled, pinned, blood rushing downhill to his head, he had seconds.

"Kid, I don't know what that copy said to you -" The Second Class had barely spared Cloud a glance, his attention on the fight that Cloud could hear but not see. " - but stay down."

Cloud wrenched at the hands, profoundly relieved to be rewarded with a full inch of breathing space.

The SOLDIER's head whipped back, and Cloud met his hidden gaze in defiant challenge.

A curse was bitten off, the pressure around his neck increased tenfold, and then, shouted down the hill, "They're both SOLDIER!"

Fingers were blocking total constriction around his throat, but breathing still wasn't easy. Cloud kicked, striving to get off the ground or dislodge the uniform on top of him. He got less than a foot of clearance that didn't shake the pinning weight. However, the SOLDIER did slide further onto his chest.

Curling his lower half, Cloud drove a knee into the back hunched over him. Too high to nail a kidney, but enough to knock the body forward. Adding his hands to the motion launched the Shinra outfitted fighter off of him entirely.

Twisting over into a crouch, he could see where the SOLDIER was coming out of a roll, back to Cloud, sword undrawn, slung shoulder to hip.

Cloud lunged, his hands closed over the hilt, he pulled away from the magnetic holster. The SOLDIER's grip bracketed his own, arms bent behind the helmeted head and yanking the weapon removal to a halt. Jumping back, Cloud swept the blade in the space between them, trying to rotate the grip far enough to break the other's hold.

The SOLDIER whirled with the movement, swiveling under his arms to stay fastened securely as the sword flashed through a circle. Eyes on the blade, he didn't catch the shifting stance in front of him until, again, one of his legs was knocked out from under him.

He hauled down as his balance gave out. The other heaved upward, hardly wavering...a solid point to pivot around. Taking both feet off the ground, he pulled himself to the unmoving sword hilt. Legs close to his body, he swung and pushed himself up and over the SOLDIER's turning head. Out of the corner of his eye, he registered another purple uniform leaping up the hill, and then he drove himself down. He had just enough control to aim, and sunk both knees into the flesh of the back above the hips and below the protective cage of the ribs.

Stiffening, gasping shrilly, the SOLDIER toppled toward the slope, but didn't let go of the sword. Fully prepared to stay planted in the other's back until they both crashed into the ground, Cloud's plans were derailed when the falling fighter tucked into a roll at the last second.

It would have driven him face first into sharply exposed granite, and Cloud let go and leaped off to avoid it. A second later he took another step downhill to avoid the whistling arc of the sword's backswing; weak, but still completely able to cut.

Dodging into the space just cleared by the sword, Cloud tried to close in on the clearly disoriented SOLDIER. He was forced back as the blade sliced in front of him. The rock and earth underneath him dislodged, and his back impacted with the rough bark of an enormous evergreen.

Not trapped, yet. The SOLDIER he'd been fighting was upright and turned toward him. Running uphill, closer still, the other Second Class bounded toward him with blade unholstered and gleaming. Sounds from whatever was happening further down the grade grew louder with every heartbeat.

Act now. Act now before it gets worse.

"Heads up!"

Tearing his eyes upward, he saw Zack, thirty feet high on a branch of the tree above him. Turning back to ground level, the nearer SOLDIER slowed as he was pelted with large, green pine cones. Feeling curiously like laughing, Cloud leapt up the tree.

The bark was soft enough to burrow his own hand and footholds, and moments later he was on the branch beside Zack's.

"Uphill," he advised urgently.

"Yep!" Zack agreed as he lefthanded a last pine cone. "Let's stay high."

Running atop their respective branches, Cloud had an instant to think about the balance it took, and then they both launched to the next tree. Scaly pine boughs scraped, and it was a blend of pulling himself through branches and dashing over them as they made their way around the conifer.

Unlike the last evergreen, their current one wasn't very close to the tree line above it. One high branch did extend toward a bough of similar thickness on an even larger behemoth. At least twenty feet between them, besides a ten foot height difference -

Doable, he told himself.

They crunched onto the branch that was their launching point at the same time, Cloud slightly in front.

"Time it!" he called back.

"Right!"

Sprinting forward, they stayed single file. If they didn't jump at the same time, one of them would have to waste precious seconds as the bough stabilized or the leap could be dangerously underestimated as the swinging branch absorbed the extra force.

Still ten feet from the tip, Cloud crouched before everything was too thin to run on. He felt Zack similarly hunch behind him.

You're in front, he's waiting for your lead. The branch bent downwards and then started to rise. Don't mess up.

It was a clean, perfect arch, far enough to get them to where the limb was more than a few inches thick. Then, whirling, shining steel sliced before him. Fifteen feet ahead of where they would land, the sword collided with the bough like a splintering gunshot. The entire arm of the evergreen dropped out beneath them right before they touched down.

None of the other branches were near enough to do more than flick against them as they plummeted. Cloud strained back for Zack, hoping that he could fling or propel his friend somehow closer to the tree. The blindly flung hand spun him in the air. He caught a glimpse of Zack, too far for either of them to reach the other, the ridge, a mere fifty feet away, and the ground, too close.

He writhed in the air, pulling his body around and his limbs under control. Letting his legs collapse as they hit, he went into a sideways roll. Shoulder, back, slammed into irregular stone and soil. Stand up, he could slide further from the peak, and he could hear shouts and running steps drawing nearer.

Senses unhinged, he struggled to his feet, scrambling on coarse gravel. There were two SOLDIERs on the hill above him, blades drawn. He swung right as the enormous limb, slowed by surrounding branches, finally crashed to the ground near its tree. A third Second Class dropped beside it an instant later, his sword faintly streaked with sap.

Cloud slid a foot behind him. Darkly spiked hair brushed the side of his vision just before he bumped into Zack.

"Hey, hey, hey," Zack cajoled down the incline, easing himself back to back with Cloud. "We could still all get home without something unforgivable happening."

There had to be another three SOLDIERs where Zack was facing, unless the First Class had taken any of them out in his own skirmish. He shifted and stumbled as he looked at his own uphill viewpoint. Zack leaned into him supportively. The Buster Sword was still attached and undrawn.

Casting a glance over his right shoulder, Cloud sighted another purple uniform past where Zack's left arm reached back to his sword hilt.

"Going once," Zack voiced persuasively.

The Second Class uniforms in front of Cloud started to close in. The surrounding circle was tightening. Why wasn't Zack using his sword arm?

"No? Okay then." Zack shifted and Cloud stepped forward to give the Buster Sword room to draw free. He glanced left and Zack's right arm swung into view, and all he could seize upon was elbow crushed, red streaming.

"Come and get served."

A/N: This time I actually have the excuse that all of my saved files got deleted between this chapter and the last one. Losing everything I was working on is kind of forgivable, or at least reasonable, right? Zack's original "Irasshaimase!" isn't quite encompassed by "Come and get it." My translation isn't perfect either, but I think it gets closer.