Chapter 868 - 867: A Look into the Past: Finding Where It All Went Wrong."

When everyone had finally settled into the spacious room, the time came to shed light on the events of five years ago—on those days when Sephira suddenly lost her mind, wishing to destroy humanity and subjugate the Planet.

Even though the squad already knew that the true puppeteer behind this catastrophe was Sephiroth, Barret still hoped to hear the full picture in the hope of catching even the tiniest thread that could lead them to the other invaders from other eras.

Fortunately, Alex did not have to rack his brains over how to explain to his friends the very concept of the multiverse and temporal anomalies. After the battle with the Whispering Harbinger, each of them had seen with their own eyes fragments of possible realities—both those that could still happen and those that had already sunk into oblivion. Exhausting lectures on the space-time continuum could safely be omitted: reality was already cracking at the seams, and right now that concerned them least of all.

While the company was settling onto sofas and chairs, Alex carefully placed his hands on Aerith's shoulders, beginning the promised massage session to rid the girl of the muscle pain that had accumulated after the exhausting march across the wasteland. Feeling the warmth of his palms, Aerith squinted blissfully and smoothly settled more comfortably on his lap, completely surrendering herself to the power of the relaxing movements.

"Well then, since we're finally all together and have a quiet minute, spill it, Claudia. Tell us everything about yourself and your old acquaintance Sephira. Maybe the key to finding these bastards is hidden in her past," Barret muttered gloomily, leaning back against the sofa and looking expressively at Claudia standing by the window.

"All right… If Tifa doesn't mind," Claudia said quietly after a slight pause, casting a cautious glance at Tifa sitting nearby.

"Me? By all means. Everything's fine, go ahead," Tifa shook her head softly, though with a slightly strained smile, giving the green light.

"If I remember correctly, you two teamed up as partners right before that ill-fated trip to Nibelheim, right?" Alex inquired quietly, skillfully kneading the stiff muscles on the neck of the Aerith who was melting with pleasure.

"Something like that… Before that I had only heard legends about her. And if no one else has any questions, I'll begin. It was five years ago, when I had just turned sixteen. Work for SOLDIER in those days seemed unbearably dull—pure routine that did no good at all, and I simply had no enthusiasm for such assignments. And suddenly… the dream assignment arrives. A real mission with the war heroine herself, Sephira. Believing in my own luck then seemed simply impossible…" Claudia began recounting her past in a calm tone, thoughtfully leaning her shoulder against the wooden window frame and crossing her arms over her chest.

Claudia unhurriedly continued to unwind the tangle of memories from five years ago, describing their departure as part of a small squad that, besides herself and Sephira, included a couple of ordinary Shinra guards whom even within the corporation itself were usually called "Grunts" behind their backs.

Alex knew perfectly well the true background of those tragic events that had wiped Tifa's and Claudia's hometown off the face of the earth, but he had no intention of interrupting the storyteller. He was far more occupied with caring for Aerith, whose tired shoulders he continued to rhythmically knead under Claudia's monotonous voice.

Pausing the massage, Alex slid his gaze over Tifa sitting nearby. Tifa's own face at such a moment reflected an entire storm of heavy, contradictory emotions—first and foremost deep confusion.

She remembered those days perfectly well, for it was she who had led the squad up Mount Nibel to the reactor, and in her memory a completely different face next to Sephira was clearly imprinted. Sensing Tifa's growing tension, Alex softly lowered his palm onto her shoulder. Feeling that warm touch, Tifa started, turned her head, and met his gaze.

Alex slightly raised his chin, silently asking: "Everything okay?" Tifa sadly shook her head, for a second covered his hand with her own palm, tightly squeezed his fingers, and immediately released them, returning control over herself. Alex sighed and transferred his gaze to Aerith, who quietly exhaled and pressed her back more comfortably against his chest. By this moment Claudia had already reached the account of their arrival in fog-shrouded mountainous Nibelheim and the demonstration of Sephira's formidable combat mastery.

"So, Nibelheim… Hold on, wasn't that where Shinra's very first mako reactor was built?" Barret frowned, transferring a heavy gaze from Claudia to Tifa.

"Yes… It all began that ill-fated autumn. Something strange was going on with the reactor, the readings were jumping, and the entire village was on edge," Tifa confirmed constrictedly, raising a clouded gaze to the ceiling where the shadows of the past came alive again in her imagination.

"And what exactly was the problem? Was the reactor leaking, threatening to blow sky-high, or just putting on green fireworks for the locals in the evenings?" Dean inquired caustically, leaning his torso forward, resting his elbows on his knees and twirling the glass of alcohol in his hand.

"You could put it that way… But back then no one really understood anything. And then rumors started crawling about some new nightmarish monsters that had proliferated in the surrounding mountains. Fear among the residents grew with each passing day," Tifa answered with pain in her voice, nervously interlocking her fingers.

"And did the local villagers sit around with their arms folded? Did they immediately run to bow to Shinra?" Yuffie inquired, rocking on her chair.

"Unfortunately, no. At first the men tried to clear the mountains on their own. Of course, nothing good came of it. The monsters turned out stronger. And in the end the mayor of Nibelheim had to officially request help from the corporation," Claudia shook her head, looking out the dark window.

"A strange choice—to send a green newbie in the company of a war veteran to eliminate such an important object," Alex threw skeptically, resting his chin on the crown of the quieted Aerith.

"The corporation sent whoever it considered necessary. When it came to the planet's first mako reactor, they trusted only the best," Claudia threw coldly, turning and bestowing a heavy, prickly look on Alex.

Meeting Claudia's prickly, warning gaze, Alex smiled conciliatorily and slightly raised both hands, showing that he intended to keep complete silence and not interrupt. Sighing heavily, Claudia continued the narrative from the moment their small squad—herself, Sephira, and a couple of accompanying Shinra guards—crossed the wooden gates of Nibelheim.

Retelling her dialogue with Sephira on the threshold of the village, Claudia suddenly made a strange, barely perceptible slip: for a moment the construction of phrases and intonations sounded as if she were recalling the events from a man's point of view.

But it was such an insignificant slip that no one paid attention to it after Claudia mentioned how Sephira spoke about her parents and that Jenova was her mother, whom she considered dead after her own birth. Noticing this slip, Dean immediately grew alert and cast a quick glance at Alex.

The latter only barely perceptibly shook his head, making it clear that a mental interrogation was not worth arranging yet. Seeing this gesture, Dean merely nodded his head and turned back to Claudia, leaning back against the sofa. Further the story touched on a short conversation with the local mayor, after which Sephira magnanimously gave her partner a couple of hours to stroll through her native streets before setting out for the reactor.

"And where did you end up first, the moment you returned home after so many years of separation?" Alex inquired softly, not stopping the smooth, relaxing movements of his hands on Aerith's lower back, who had already practically melted with pleasure in his embrace.

"I… First I just walked around the streets, looked around. Nibelheim had barely changed in the years of my absence. But in the end my feet themselves led me to that very water tower where we… that is, where I usually spent time in childhood," Claudia answered, slightly hesitating, and settled more comfortably on the wide windowsill.

"And how did it feel to be back at the very top after so many years?" Tifa smiled with nostalgic warmth in her voice, mentally returning to those carefree days.

"I don't know… Probably a strange nostalgia washed over me. I hadn't been home for a whole two years, after all," Claudia nodded restrainedly, leaning her shoulder against the cold glass.

"Before you roll further along the plot, I have one more little question. I hope you first of all visited your mom, since a free minute turned up?" Alex quickly interjected, interrupting Claudia and not letting her change the subject.

"Yes… I'm also terribly curious whether you dropped in on your mom?" Tifa immediately supported him, turning on her chair and staring at her friend with lively curiosity.

"Well… yes, then I dropped in on her. She was fine… Listen, let's not dwell on this, it's completely unimportant compared to what happened next," Claudia sighed irritably and briefly ran her palm over her forehead.

"Oh no, wait a minute, this is exactly the most interesting part. Personally I demand that you give us all the family details from cover to cover," Barret spoke with a sly smirk, crossing his arms over his chest.

"I want to know what she was like too!" Aerith added enthusiastically, sharply turning on Alex's lap and staring at Claudia with eyes wide open from curiosity.

Supporting the general mood, Yuffie and Red XIII also expressed a fervent desire to hear the story in all details so that the full picture of the tragedy of five years ago would finally come together.

For Alex, however, a far more pragmatic motive was hidden behind this curiosity: he couldn't wait to check exactly how this monstrous mishmash of other people's false memories and erased personalities coexisted in Claudia's consciousness. Seeing the unanimous support of the squad, Claudia sighed heavily, resigned herself, and began from that very evening when she crossed the threshold of her parental home.

Claudia shared memories of her father, who had died in her early childhood, and of her mother, who had remained alone after her sudden departure to Midgar. At these words Tifa quietly lowered her eyes and sighed—she remembered perfectly well how lonely the elderly woman had been all those years. That was precisely why Tifa had tried to visit her almost every day, not letting her drown in melancholy right up until Claudia's return.

Listening to this monologue, Alex noted with surprise that this time there was not a single conceptual gap in Claudia's story. She detailed, almost lovingly, the sweet little things of their last conversation, although at the very bottom of her eyes a sharp, prickly pain was clearly hidden—the realization that this bright memory was the last thing she had left of her mother.

"We saw each other after two long years of separation… And this meeting became the first. And the last," Claudia finished constrictedly, sharply turning away to the glass and hiding her gaze in the darkness of the nighttime city.

"Sorry. I… damn, I shouldn't have pressed you like that," Alex immediately lowered his tone, feeling an unpleasant prick of conscience for having stirred up someone else's unhealed wounds for the sake of a cold fact-check.

"Everything's fine. Five years have passed since then, and nothing can be fixed anymore," Claudia shook her head bitterly, not in the least angry at Alex for asking her to talk about it.

"Your mom was a wonderful person. And she will always be with you as long as her image lives in your heart. They say a person truly dies only when they are forgotten," Aerith said in a soft tone, lightly sliding off Alex's lap and settling next to Claudia on the wide windowsill.

"Thank you… Can I continue?" Claudia answered with a weak smile, feeling how the sincere warmth of Aerith made things a little easier on her soul.

"Go ahead, spill what happened next. It's about time we got to the very essence of this story," Barret waved a hand conciliatorily, trying to steer the conversation into safer waters.

Softly but firmly pushing away the Aerith who had climbed in with comforting hugs, Claudia tried to focus on her thoughts. Pouting offendedly, Aerith did not argue or complain—she merely lightly jumped down from the windowsill and immediately returned to her rightful place, settling again on Alex's lap to continue the interrupted massage session.

When tense silence once again reigned in the room, Claudia returned to the details of their preparation before setting out into the Nibel mountains, to the abandoned Shinra structures, and to the strange remark Sephira had dropped back at the inn about how everything around seemed vaguely familiar to her.

Back then those words had sounded only like a quirky whim, but now they acquired a completely different meaning. Soon the figure of Tifa appeared in the narrative, who had undertaken to accompany the squad as a guide along the treacherous mountain ridge. At these words everyone turned in unison to Tifa.

She merely nodded briefly, confirming the fact that she herself had asked to be a guide, hoping to face her fears head-on and finally overcome them. However, behind this outward calm a storm was hidden, and Tifa's eyes betrayed deep confusion, for her own memory stubbornly preserved a completely different version of those events.

Noticing how hard this silent presence in someone else's memories was for Tifa, Alex imperceptibly leaned forward and quietly whispered a couple of words into the ear of the Aerith settled on his lap. She only squinted questioningly in response, met his gaze, immediately understood everything, and obediently slid onto the floor.

Without losing a second, Alex softly patted his knees, silently offering Tifa to take the freed place in order to relieve the accumulated fatigue. She was momentarily taken aback by the unexpectedness, but, finding no strength to refuse such care, uncertainly stretched out her legs, allowing them to be arranged on Alex's lap. Claudia, meanwhile, had already moved on to the moment when under Tifa's guidance they reached the first measuring complex on the way to the main object.

"So you didn't even manage to go inside properly before a local mutated creature immediately charged at you?" Dean interrupted the storyteller with a lazy chuckle, throwing his legs onto the coffee table.

"It wasn't a plant, it was a complex for measuring mako emissions. Are you even listening to the difference, Dean?" Alex corrected him, rolling his eyes while parallelly continuing to confidently knead Tifa's stiff calves.

"What the hell difference does it make where exactly that crap crawled out?! Wasn't it fucking obvious from the very beginning that all this carrion crawled out precisely from the plant? There simply are no other options!" Dean protested with an excess of emotion, jabbing toward Alex with his glass of bourbon.

"Back then none of us even guessed at the true scale of the threat. Especially about that monstrous secret that Shinra was hiding in the very heart of the complex," Claudia shook her head, jumping down from the windowsill to stretch her aching legs a little.

"And what secret was this fucking corporation guarding?" Barret frowned, pulling the bottle of bourbon closer to fill his empty glass.

"Exactly that… which, as it seemed to me then, pushed Sephira beyond the edge of madness," Claudia answered dully, walking around the room and turning to the quieted squad.

"You mean Jenova?" Yuffie unexpectedly tilted her head to the side and threw out with childlike directness, having settled on several pushed-together chairs instead of a sofa.

Catching the direct gaze, Claudia slowly nodded, confirming Yuffie's guess. Before delving into the details, she made a small pause and added: the true nightmare turned out to be not Jenova herself, who had already been resting for a good five years in a sealed sarcophagus under the complex, but what exactly Shinra had been doing in parallel in these mountains besides banal energy extraction. Hearing this, Barret snorted contemptuously, expressing the general opinion: Shinra and humanity are things just as incompatible as they are predictable.

Claudia smiled weakly and continued her unhurried circuit of the room, moving on to the next episode. The moment she spoke of crossing the rickety suspension bridge under the howling of the storm and the terrible lightning strike that split the support cable, she faltered for a second.

Her face distorted from a sharp, piercing pain in the back of her head; she convulsively raised her hand and pressed her palm to her head, unsuccessfully trying to quell the pulsation. Noticing this clouding, Alex instantly engaged, softly intercepting her attention with a pressing question: what happened right after the bridge collapsed and they miraculously avoided death?

Feeling the support, Claudia shook her head, swallowed the viscous saliva, and continued from the moment when one of the accompanying "Grunt" guards was swept away by the raging stream of water. Of course, she and Tifa knew the true background of those events. Only Tifa did not know that the drowning fighter whom Zack, who had arrived at the last moment, pulled out of the boiling river was actually Claudia herself, while the second guard simply had no luck that day.

"And what happened to that guy who was carried away by the river? Did he manage to survive?" Aerith inquired quietly, softly pressing her cheek to Alex's shoulder while he continued to confidently knead the quieted Tifa's legs.

"Yes… He was lucky. Downstream the riverbed widened, the turbulent flow weakened, and he managed to climb onto the bank," Claudia said uncertainly, casting a glance into the corner of the room as if she herself could barely believe her own words.

"And what happened next, when you finally recovered from that shock?" Dean inquired, rising from the sofa and stretching his shoulders that had stiffened from long sitting.

"We went around through natural karst caves. Inside it turned out incredibly beautiful… and creepy; the entire space there literally glowed from giant mako crystals," Claudia answered gloomily, stopping at the coffee table and pouring herself a little alcohol into a glass to wet her dry throat.

"Hold on. Shinra—and left such a mako vein untouched? Since when did they suddenly become so noble?" Barret chuckled with undisguised mockery, nonchalantly leaning back against the sofa and crossing his arms over his chest.

"I don't know. Back then the corporation's geological survey plans concerned me little," Claudia answered, shaking her head and setting the glass back on the table.

To finally return the conversation to the needed channel, Dean briefly reminded them of the common goal and asked Claudia to continue from that very moment when they left the glowing caves behind and emerged at the main entrance of the underground Shinra plant.

Nodding lightly in agreement, Claudia leaned her back against the wall, crossed her arms over her chest, and resumed the story. The longer she spoke, the brighter the contrast became: the former Sephira, whose actions and care for subordinates evoked sincere respect, seemed the complete opposite of that ruthless bitch with whom they had recently had to deal.

Even Barret listened to her with noticeable surprise, although they all knew perfectly well what abyss had separated her past and present. The narrative smoothly approached the fatal descent into the secret laboratories under the complex.

When Claudia began detailing the huge hall filled with rows of pulsing mako capsules, Alex concentrated even more, expecting the key moment of mental infection. And the answer followed immediately. Claudia mentioned a massive sealed door with a large, eye-catching inscription "Jenova."

Making a short pause, she admitted that in that second when Sephira froze before this locked barrier, something elusively broke in her posture and gaze—a frightening detail that in the turmoil no one had attached significance to at the time. Alex finally put all the elements of the mosaic together.

The proximity to Jenova's body even through the thickness of metal created an ideal resonance, allowing Sephiroth to break through the mental barrier via the streams of the Lifestream. Analyzing what had happened, Alex came to the final conclusion: this fatal incident was an absolute, unshakable temporal point, an invariant that in one form or another was reproduced in each of the parallel realities.

It was this breach in the fabric of the world that Sephiroth used as a permanent gateway for penetrating into their timeline. Having received exhaustive confirmation of his guesses, Alex considered further listening superfluous.

The rest was painfully predictable: Sephira's agonizing attempts to dig down to the truth about her origin, the rapid immersion into madness under the obsessive, poisonous whisper of another's will in her head, and the fatal certainty that all these destructive thoughts were born of her own mind.

"So she simply switched on Chosen One mode, and that didn't bother you in the slightest? When a person starts proving with foam at the mouth how unique she is and how much she surpasses everyone else, didn't a single warning light go off in your head?" Dean inquired with noticeable skepticism in his voice, bestowing a heavy, unblinking look on Claudia.

"I… I don't know. In the end we simply returned to the inn… But the moment we crossed the threshold, Sephira immediately locked herself in her room and wouldn't let anyone near her anymore," Claudia shook her head wearily, pulling a chair closer and collapsing onto the seat without strength.

"Oh, and I remember how the local headman was planning to throw a grand banquet with Real SOLDIER. And when the news reached him that the dinner was canceled, he took it completely the wrong way. Father then had to listen to his endless whining in the kitchen for a good half of the evening," Tifa interjected with a light, nostalgic smile, smoothly removing her legs from Alex's lap after the completion of the relaxing massage session.

"All this is of course insanely funny, but what did Sephira end up doing? At what exact moment did she finally go off the rails?" Barret exaggeratedly threw up his hands, vainly trying to catch the watershed between the normal state and the catastrophe.

"At some point she simply went into the Shinra mansion and barricaded herself in there tightly. Probably by then that voice inside had completely subordinated her mind," Claudia answered, slightly frowning, interlocking her hands more tightly on her chest and leaning back against the chair.

"And I remember that mansion perfectly. The most massive building in the entire town, built long before the reactor even appeared here. True, the rent for those lands for many years nicely kept the entire village afloat," Tifa sighed quietly, with pleasure stretching out her fully rested legs.

"Oh yes, classic of the genre—the best little place to finally go off the rails. I adore these old mansions; some kind of creepy shit is always going on in them," Dean chuckled sarcastically, rising from the sofa and stretching his legs that had stiffened from long sitting.

"Well, in some ways you're damn right, Dean. There's simply no better recipe for going mad—just lock yourself within four walls alone with an obsessive idea of getting to the truth at all costs. Am I right, Claudia? She was literally obsessed with the thirst to learn the truth about her true origin," Alex said, unhurriedly stepping toward the half-open window, striking a lighter and releasing a stream of cigarette smoke into the night coolness, at the same time casting a probing look at Claudia.

"You're absolutely right. Back then her thoughts revolved exclusively around that," Claudia nodded with a heavy sigh, mechanically waving a hand in front of her face to disperse the approaching cigar smoke.

Alex said nothing more. Turning back to the window, he continued to unhurriedly draw on the thin cigar, flicking ash into the night coolness of Kalm. He already knew the further chronicle of events down to the smallest details. Sephira would spend an entire unbearable week in the stuffy archives of the mansion's underground library, greedily leafing through the yellowed diaries of Professor Gast—the former project leader.

And the more revelations about her artificial birth she absorbed from the pages, the more she yielded to the poisonous, obsessive whisper of Sephiroth. He was penetrating deeper and deeper into her consciousness with one elementary goal—to break her will and make her yet another tool.

Sephiroth saw how much this anomalous timeline differed from the others and clung with all his might to the chance of obtaining the power that could finally awaken Jenova. Listening to Claudia's quiet, dull voice recounting in the background that fatal confinement in the library, Alex threw his head back to the night sky and followed the full moon with his gaze, exhaling an even ring of gray smoke upward.

Reflecting on exactly which nightmarish entities Nyarlathotep had once molded Jenova from, he was not in the least surprised by her ability to influence the minds of the Sephiroths even from a state of deep bio-sleep, forcing them to blindly thirst for her awakening.

Bringing the cigar to his lips, Alex barely perceptibly smirked. These arrogant dummies who had imagined themselves chosen so zealously strove to resurrect their "mother," not even suspecting that for this ancient creature they represented exactly the same biomass and food as the Lifestream itself.

Exhaling two streams of smoke through his nose, Alex shook his head in resignation: what motives at all had guided Nyarlathotep when she decided to cross in one vessel the blood of a descendant of the Great Old One and the Black Goat?

"Yeah, well, fuck…" Alex muttered under his breath, rubbing his forehead in annoyance and completely dropping out of the context of the general conversation in the room.

"You're right… This really is fucked. I still keep asking myself the same question… Why didn't I intervene earlier? If I had simply come to the mansion a couple of days earlier… Maybe I could have saved the village," Claudia answered quietly, coming closer and wearily leaning her elbows on the windowsill next to him.

"Tens of thousands of people ask themselves the exact same questions, Claudia. But all these 'what ifs,' 'if onlys,' and 'maybes' are just garbage for the poor. The past can't be rewritten. Unless, of course, you've got a time machine lying around in your pocket," Alex said in a sobering tone, instantly orienting himself and turning to Claudia.

"Yeah, even if one had been lying around—nothing would have changed for shit. Those Gray Farts would have immediately jumped out of every crack and given you a magic boot right back into your present," Dean inserted with an openly sour face, knowing better than anyone else in this room what it was like to deal with broken timelines.

At these words a heavy, oppressive silence hung in the room. Yuffie, Tifa, Claudia, and Barret lowered their eyes in unison. Each of them had their own indelible tragedy behind their soul—scars of the past that they would have given everything in the world to erase.

But no one tried to argue with the harsh reality: the dead cannot be returned, and that meant only one thing remained—clenching one's teeth, forge one's own future and go to the end against the destined fate. Sighing heavily, Claudia continued the story, moving on to the most terrible moment—to that night when the maddened Sephira arranged a slaughter on the streets of Nibelheim, mercilessly sweeping away everyone who tried to stand in her way to Jenova's sarcophagus.

At these words Tifa shuddered. She tightly clenched her fingers into a lock, feeling how that cursed picture rose again before her eyes: the lifeless body of her father, pierced by Sephira's cold blade. Noticing how pale the girl's face had become and how strongly her hands were trembling, Alex softly extended his hand and affectionately touched the top of her head. Tifa started and raised her eyes.

Meeting his warm, encouraging gaze and soft smile, she felt how the choking wave of panic in her chest began to recede little by little. Lightly touching her nose with a finger, Alex nodded soothingly and, sitting down on a chair, settled between her and Aerith. Claudia, meanwhile, was finishing her confession.

"And that's the last thing I clearly remember… I rushed after her to the reactor, and further—as if cut off, everything as if in a thick fog," Claudia said with a tired groan, rubbing her temples and sweeping a heavy look over those gathered.

"What the hell, Claudia?! You seriously decided to wrap up at the most interesting place?! What happened next?!" Barret boiled over, jumping up from his seat with a completely stunned expression on his face.

"And I remembered… This story was spun in all the news broadcasts. We watched them at home with Mom back then. At first they reported that she had gone missing during secret exercises… And a couple of days later the plot was rewritten and they officially announced that she had heroically died in battle. Right, that's how it was," Aerith drawled thoughtfully, tapping a finger on her chin and looking at the ceiling.

"Shinra's information dumps are pure brainwashing! Only complete idiots can believe the shit they pour into people's ears!" Barret protested with exaggerated arm-waving, casting a reproachful look at Aerith.

"Hey-hey, take it easy! So by your logic I'm also a complete idiot?" Aerith peeped indignantly, pouting and poking a finger at herself.

"Not at all. You're our charming little witch. And don't listen to this old grumpy bear; all he has on his mind are explosives and plans for diversions against Shinra," Alex smiled cheerfully and affectionately stroked her soft hair, because of which the frowning Aerith immediately squinted contentedly.

"And still… why did she decide to show up only after five years? Or… now it's already he? Why did Sephiroth keep silent all this time?" Tifa said quietly, almost in a whisper, lowering her gaze to her own palms and returning the conversation to the gloomy reality.

"What difference does it make now why. Since these bastards decided to crawl out of every crack, we'll have to explain the rules to them by our methods," Alex answered softly to her anxiety, continuing to lazily run his fingers through the strands of the quieted Aerith on his shoulder.

"True enough. Enough racking our brains over who hid where—empty speculation is zero use. It's already late to philosophize. Let's give our brains a rest; tomorrow's going to be a hard day," Dean summed up, yawning widely, tossing off his jacket and confidently heading toward his bed.

The moment Dean dropped the word about rest, an oppressive, irresistible drowsiness instantly washed over the room. The organism of each of those present sounded the alarm, demanding payment for almost a full day of continuous marching and exhausting shocks. Aerith softly patted Tifa on the shoulder, nodding toward the corridor—it was time to wrap up.

Hearing that everyone was dispersing, Yuffie emitted such a suffering, exhausted groan as if she were being forced to run across the entire wasteland again. She nonchalantly sprawled across two pushed-together chairs like a cat languid in the sun, with her entire appearance showing a complete lack of desire to make even a single movement.

Such an amusing picture caused quiet laughter from Aerith and Tifa. Exchanging glances, the two of them without further words scooped Yuffie up under the arms and half-dragged her toward the exit. Lingering on the threshold last, Claudia turned, exchanged a short understanding nod with Alex, and quietly closed the heavy wooden door behind her.

By this moment Barret and Red XIII had already occupied their sleeping places, preparing to sink into deep sleep until morning. Dean, muttering something indefinite, buried his nose in the pillow and instantly began snoring next to Steve.

And only Alex did not even think of lying down. The drowsy peace of the night held no attraction for him whatsoever—besides, what joy was there in lying in a lonely bed if there was no one next to him whom he could tightly press against himself?

Grabbing the unfinished bottle of bourbon and fishing a brand-new book from the depths of his bag, Alex nimbly climbed onto the wide windowsill with his feet. Cracking the window open for fresh night air and settling more comfortably, he opened the first page.

Ahead was an entire night that he intended to spend reading, so that with the first rays of the sun he could set out for a walk through the awakening Kalm and close the question of spare clothes for their motley company.

To be continued...

(Alright then, another chapter is done, and we've covered the Nibelheim incident—though I did condense it quite a bit, without losing anything essential. Now it's time to move on to other plot points, specifically the next phase of my plan. I'm trying my absolute best to pick up the pace, but damn, it's physically impossible to fit everything I want into a single chapter. Still, I'll aim to get out of the town of Kalm as quickly as possible so we can head toward Junon. Anyway, I could go on forever about what I originally intended, but it is what it is. Time to go grab a bite to eat. Peace, love, and remember—the path forward is always right in front of you, even if you happen to turn around.)

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