Enide-Dear

Secret rituals Reeve wasn't sure if this was necessary, but he couldn't take any chances. ShinRa was too corrupted; he had tried to change it from the inside out but for every small step forward, there were too many in the wrong direction. Even as head of Urban Development he didn't have the power to make the lives of Midgar citizens better. At least not as much better as he would have liked to. The plate destruction had been the final straw; he could no longer pretend the company he was working for was anything but evil. But he couldn't leave either. That would be to let the evil forces in ShinRa have full reign without even him being there to try to stop it. He needed away to contact resistance without it ever being traced back to him. And that meant going back to a part of his life that he had hoped to be over for decades. He looked around the abandoned train graveyard. This place had a bad reputation of children disappearing and yes, he could feel them there, floating around in

Survival It was a long way from Corel to Midgar and the ghosts followed them the entire way. Barret knew they weren't real, only phantoms conjured by his traumatized mind from shock and blood loss but it didn't matter. He didn't have the strength to banish them or even ignore them. It took all the strength he had just to hold Marlene close and put one foot in front of the other. Marlene clung to him, small and warm and human. Without her he would have probably lost his mind somewhere in the waste lands. But even she couldn't banish the ghosts swarming around him. It would have been easier, even, if they had accused him, wailed at him or attacked him but they didn't. His friends, his neighbors....people whom he had known all his life, talked to and laughed with and worked alongside now walked next to him or in his footsteps, like a mass exodus of the dead from the ruined mining town. We should have listened to Dyne, they said. We never should have let ShinRa build the reactor, they

This is for sephcounttheways in the FF7 Fanwork Exchange '21! "And this," Zack waved a red materia ball in the air, "is a Fire. See?" He slotted it and pointed. A ball of fire shot across the training field and obviated the target. "Now, to use materia you must..." "You had that hidden in your sleeve." Cloud glanced up at his first boyfriend under his bangs. "You can't fool me just because I am a country boy, Zack." "I...what?" Taken off guard by the much unexpected question, Zack almost dropped the Ice materia he had been fiddling with. "I had what hidden in my sleeve?" Making a dismissive gesture, Cloud pointe at the still smoldering target. "I don't know. Some kind of device to shoot fireballs. Like a mini flamethrower." "Why would I have a flamethrower up my sleeve?!" Still not understanding what Cloud was getting at, Zack scratched his head. "To mess with the new guy, of course." Sincere blue eyes turned towards his. "I have seen it before, you know. But you can't

A/N: This is an ask straight up my ally! I l love the Tseng/Vincent similarities and I have played with them in fanfics before. "Well." After just the briefest pause, Tseng closed the door behind him, shutting out all sound of the crowded Turk area outside his office. He turned the lock. "I must admit I did not expect this." The other man had frozen bent over the computer on his desk. Brown eyes with just a hint of red shining through stared up the Head of Turks. A hand covered in a Turk gun glove reached slowly up towards what was undoubtedly a gun holster under the suit jacket. Tseng almost smiled. "Do not bother, Mr. Valentine. If you have gone through all this trouble to look authentic I am sure you have a copy of the standard Turk gun and not your normal Cerberus. Which means you bought it on the black market. Which means I allowed it to get there. Which means it doesn't work within ShinRa walls." The hand stopped reaching just as slowly and the man straightened

The claw wasn't his, but it was the only part of Vincent he could carry with him as the tunnels got more and more narrow. Perhaps it was ironic that the monster the three had been hunting had gone for the demon-man first, but Cid didn't much believe in coincidences. Vincent was by far the most dangerous of the three of them, the one best suited at tracking down the beast that had been stalking and killing without mercy in Midgar for weeks. Finally Vincent had accepted the mission to hunt it down and enlisted the help of Avalanche and Cid had come of course, even though he had been complaining the whole time that he was too old for this shit and that monster hunting made his knees ache. Vincent had smiled and greeted them all and split them up in two groups. He himself had chosen to go with Cid and Nanaki. Nanaki because his nose made him an excellent choice for finding a monster and Cid because Vincent said the pilot 'made him feel safe'. They had both failed. Cid

"I have marked todays mission areas on the map." Tseng laid out the Midgar Map on his desk. Its worn edges showed that this was not the first time this particular map had been brought out. "I want patrols in the following areas. Rod and Shotgun, you take the Loveless Avenue." "Sure, boss." "As you say, sir." "Reno - Reno are you feeling well?" Tseng looked up from his map and frowned. The normally so talkative red-head had his lips pressed together so hard they were white. He was staring at the map with a strange intensity, ignoring almost all the other Turks. When he heard Tseng's voice he looked up. Maybe he tried to smile but it came off as a strange grimace. "Yeah. Sure. I'm fine." he hesitated and then started to say something. "Boss..." but Rude's elbow in his ribs cut him short and he went back to staring at the map, ignoring everyone's questioning glances. His suit was even sloppier and dirtier than normal. "I'm fine." he insisted. "Good. I want you and Rude to

Cloud's hand shook a little with excitement as he carefully unpacked the action figure. At 15, he was really too old to play with dolls - at least that was what the other kids in Niefelheim told him. He tried not to listen. His dreams about the future - the future he would make himself - was the only thing that brought him any joy in this backwaters town. Besides, he was the village outcast anyway. Might as well do whatever he wanted and get bullied for that, instead of trying to fit in and still get bullied. He'd been collecting Soldier action figures since he was big enough to see them on TV and start his hero worship. It hadn't been easy because they were expensive and his mother seldom had money to spend on frivolous things. But once Niefelheim was finally connected to Internet, it had become a lot easier to bid on second hand figures online. He already had a few third-class Soldiers, such as Roche on his bike and Kunsel; they had been fairly cheap and easy to get

Trail of Blood - Elena Blood could look in a lot of different ways, Elena knew that. There were nosebleed, which was a kind of watery, diluted red because it was often mixed out with tears and snot. The opposite of which was period blood, there mere mention of which made most males not Turks look pale and sickly, which was often dark red and and lumps in it. There were blood from superficial flesh wounds which was never as bright red as in movies but still not as dark as blood form a potentially fatal deep organ wound. Blood spilled in pain, blood spilled for fun, blood spilled almost without a thought. She liked to study it. Even Turks needed a hobby after all. But she had never seen blood like this before, and she had seen the green-tinged mako blood of Soldiers, not to mention the almost black, tar like blood of that strange creature in the Niebelheim mansion cellar. She followed it, intrigued. Whatever it was, it had bled all over the floor of the science

Rude barely took the time to remove his shades before burying his face against Reno's chest with so much force the red-head almost dropped his cig on his partner's shirt. Reno took one last drag on the fag before flicking it away. Safety first and all that shit. "Mission went that bad, huh baldy?" he muttered as Rude rubbed his face between his pecs. "Not mission. Head." Came the muffled answer. Reno nodded. Rude's migraines never came during missions and not even every time after, but when they decided to show up, they pounced like a bitch. He started to dig through his grimy pocket and came up with a handful of pills in all sizes and colours. He held up a white, innocent looking one. "Want something for it?" It was Rude's time to nod, holding out his hand for Reno to drop the pill and then swallowed it dry. He didn't even look at it; Reno knew pills. Reno managed to scuffle them both on to a sofa where he could lay down and Rude still keep his face plastered to him while he

A/N: Return to the bad old Days with Family Bliss...warnings for mentions of violence A/N2: Idea by Boomchick! Cid wasn't a very good cook but he'd been wanting to try to cook tempura for months and now he finally had a chance. The cooking oil was boiling gently as he whistling slapped shrimp and vegetables into batter, waiting for it to reach a higher temperature. Kadaj and Yazoo was sitting by the kitchen table pretending to chop vegetables but most likely just waiting for the chaos to ensue. Well, there would be no chaos today, Cid swore to himself, this would just be a nice homecooked meal, damn it! He looked up as something huge and silvery flashed behind him with tell-tale streaks. "What ya got there?" Cid asked suspiciously as Loz reappeared at the other end of the room with something obviously cradled in his arms. "I swear if it is another pet...." "Um, no?" Loz froze in his clumsy attempt at sneaking, fidgeted a little, and finally relented. He held up his arm with a