The words swirled through his head.

There was no sister.

You are nothing more than a pawn.

Tsviet.

All for naught.

Restrictor.

Failure.

Disgrace.

Vengeance.

His eyes snapped open.

He was inside a mako tank. His surroundings were shattered ruins, blood and rusted metal lying all over the floor.

His fists clenched. His last memory was the Tsviets tearing the life he'd thought he'd lived from him. They were not here. How he longed for them to be.

He longed to tear their lives from them, like they did him.

His arms raised and pummelled on the glass, his mouth open in a silent scream. Cracks started to form in the tank. With one more furious punch, the glass shattered and he fell to the floor, coughing. He stood up slowly and again looked around. He glanced at his hands, which were now gloveless. Blood trickled from his knuckles.

Good.

Bauer was alive.

He raised his head and laughed. It was a sound of pain…of relief… Maybe even of madness.

Bauer took a shaky step forward and spotted a report. It proclaimed that Deepground was launching a counter-offensive on the WRO after their first offensive ended in the capture of Shelke the Transparent and the 'death' of Azul the Cerulean. His fists clenched. Two Tsviets with one bullet. His face grim, he threw the report to the ground and walked out of the facility.

Once out, he was startled to find that it was a mako reactor. He'd been in the basement for a brief period of time.

"Hey!" a man's voice called to him. He turned and saw a Deepground soldier pointing his gun at him. "Who are you? State your…"

Bauer lashed out at the man, kicking his feet out from under him. He then took the man's gun and slammed the butt into the helmeted head. The soldier went still.

He looked around covertly, then stripped the guard, replacing his accursed Tsviet uniform with that of the Deepground soldier. Once that was done, he shouldered the rifle and shot the trooper in the chest.

For the first time in his life, Bauer had killed a man.

This would not be the last time, either.

He put on the helmet and made his way towards a nearby transport, packed with Deepground troops.

"What's taking you so long?!" one of them demanded.

"An escaped prisoner," Bauer replied calmly, thankful that the helmet masked his voice. "He won't be a problem anymore."

The answer seemed to satisfy the man. "Come on, get in. It's about time we show those WRO bastards what's what!"

Bauer nodded, though he had no intention of killing any WRO troops. He stepped into the transport, his fingers clutching the rifle to stop himself from ripping every single soldier in the vehicle apart.

The WRO Headquarters were in ruins. Bauer looked up at the building and walked past the hulking mass of metal that had once been a mech. Oddly, it had claw marks and bullet holes all over it. Were the WRO using monsters now?

He checked his belt to make sure his new pistols were still there. He'd managed to…convince their former owners to part with them.

Two Deepground troops ran up to him. "Hey, I thought we were getting…"

Bauer shot them both in the chest, killing them. He found that, unlike Rosso, he did not enjoy killing; rather, he saw it as a means to an end, that end being the ultimate defeat of the Tsviets.

A woman's voice suddenly broke through his reverie.

"Shelke! Get out of here!"

He stopped, listening to the voice.

"I'm sorry I wasn't a better sister."

Not knowing why, Bauer followed the voice. When he got to the source of it, he found a woman using a slowly-breaking mechanical arm to prop open a door.

Behind her was Azul the Cerulean, his muscles knotting, his ugly face twisted into an expression of horrid glee.

"Shelke…" the woman murmured, and his ears propped up. He'd heard that voice in his head, many times. "Know that I will always…love you…"

The door slammed as the woman's metallic arm was crushed. Azul chuckled to himself and reared his fist to deliver a killer blow.

Bauer leaped towards the woman, tackling her out of the way. He immediately stood up and pointed his rifle at Azul.

The Tsviet glared balefully at him. "Why do you stand in my way?"

Bauer gritted his teeth but did not reply.

Azul stopped. "Hail Weiss."

Still he did not move.

The Cerulean chuckled. "No matter. I will kill you as well." He raised his fist.

"You betrayed me!" Bauer suddenly roared.

Azul froze, his face confused.

"You betrayed me, and left me to die!" He lowered his rifle and ripped his helmet off; he drew his pistols. "Remember me now?"

Azul smirked. "Weiss will be quite interested to learn that you still live. Perhaps you are more than a pawn."

"More than you know," Bauer sneered.

Azul chuckled to himself and walked away, his footsteps thudding.

The red-cloaked man looked at the steel door, confused. Hadn't Shalua only recently been standing there? What happened to her? What about Azul? His gaze moved to Shelke, who stood there, her eyes wide, muttering, "Why?" over and over again.

The door started to slide open. Startled, the man flicked back his cloak to grab his gun. Behind him, Shelke gasped.

A man with dark hair in the Deepground uniform walked in, carrying Shalua over his shoulder. His face was set, but showed no hostility. "Put the gun away," the man murmured. "If we're gonna save this woman's life, we have to act now."

Shalua now resided in a mako tank, her good eye closed. A team of two WRO officers – one a medic, the other a mechanic – were working on a replacement unit for her lost arm. Apparently, she would be able to actually use this one, rather than have it rest limply by her side.

Yuffie Kisaragi stood in front of the mako tank that contained Shalua, her face worried. "They said she might not wake up. Even though that guy saved her…" She looked at the man in the Deepground uniform, who was leaning on the door, his arms crossed. "…her injuries are severe. It'd take a long time to get her fixed up." She wheeled on the red-cloaked man. "Vincent! You were there! Why couldn't you have helped her?!"

The man – Vincent – looked away from her.

Shelke walked in, her face still blank and expressionless. "She is a fool."

Yuffie walked to her and made to slap her, but Vincent held her back.

A gun cocked behind Shelke's head. Yuffie gasped.

The strange man was holding a pistol to the Tsviet's skull.

"Why?" Shelke asked tonelessly.

"Why?" the man spat, his voice ragged. "You have the nerve to ask me why?! You damn well know why! You gave me a false life, only to rip it away from me!"

Vincent looked at him. What the hell's going on here?

Shelke turned to face him. "Bauer Fray," she said, her eyes flashing with some form of emotion. Fear, perhaps.

The man's finger twitched on the trigger, but he did not pull it.

She looked him dead in the eye for a moment, before murmuring – in two voices, it seemed – "I am sorry."

Vincent gasped. He knew one of those voices.

The man's resolve began to waver and he dropped to his knees, sobbing. The gun lay beside him, forgotten. He continued to sob, his fingers tightening on the floor.

Vincent walked up to him and placed a hand on his shoulder. The man looked up and nodded, the tears stilling. He stood up and retrieved his gun, holstering it.

"My name is Bauer Fray," he told them. "I was once a Tsviet, before they betrayed me." He did not look at Shelke when he said it. "If you intend on fighting Deepground, I will help you."

Bauer looked up at the mako tank that contained the woman – Shalua Rui, he'd been told – with an odd expression on his face. He'd changed out of the stolen Deepground uniform and now wore plain grey clothing, with an armoured vest over it. The WRO logos had been removed from the vest, a request from Bauer himself.

"Worried about her?" a gravelly voice asked. Bauer turned to see the man he now knew as Vincent Valentine walking towards him, his metal greaves clicking on the floor.

Bauer shook his head. "Not exactly. It's just…" He trailed off.

"Hm? Just what?"

He sighed. "I feel as if I'm…connected to her. I…I can't explain why. I just do. And… Until a few hours ago, all I wanted to do was kill both Azul and Shelke. Then…" He looked up at Shalua again.

Vincent grunted, then looked at the brave woman himself. "When I first met Shalua in Edge, she said she was searching for her reason to live."

"Hm?" Bauer turned to him.

"It was Shelke. Ten years ago, Shelke was taken from her by Shinra as a SOLDIER candidate. They put her into Deepground instead. Through experiments, she was made emotionless, and trapped in the body of a nine-year-old, dependant on daily mako injections."

Bauer dropped his head. She was as much a victim of Deepground as he was.

"Shalua lost her arm, her eye, and many of her organs fighting against Shinra," Vincent continued. "All for her sister."

Bauer was choking up at the tragic tale, but he pushed it aside. "Your point?"

"Everyone has a reason to live, a reason to fight. Yours was revenge."

"Was?"

A trace of a smile appeared on Vincent's stoic face. "I think that you might just have found a new one." He nodded to Shalua and left.

Bauer's eyebrows knitted together. What did Vincent mean by that?

From the corner of his eye, he saw Shalua's good arm twitch. His eyes widened; he ran to the door and called for a medic.