Apartment Above the Boards, Wednesday Morning

[intraspective]

Ino wasn't avoiding Zack. She really wasn't. This wasn't like the situation they'd been in last year, with both of them ignoring the elephant in the room and coexisting without ever really living with one another.

This was different because Ino had drowned herself in research since Kueng had left and had barely looked up from it for long enough to eat and shower and sometimes (maybe) sleep.

So, in a way, she was perhaps to be forgiven for not realizing just how much time she'd spent buried in years and years of painstaking work—a great deal of it done after her death—by a man whose love for her showed in the sheer amount of information he'd provided.

There was a lot of think about. And not all of it was about her death either.

Ino frowned at the report she was rereading.

[For ze guy, yo.]

Comments

[intraspective]

"Neither of us are meant for the laid back sort of life," she agreed. "And the island, even with all the hazards, is just that."

[puppy_fair]

"Yeah," Zack agreed, and then blew out a little breath. "Until it's not, but that doesn't stick around long enough to really count."

Finally, he managed to get some noodles into his mouth.

"So. Sephiroth, huh?"

[intraspective]

"Yeah," she said, not really sure what he was asking, "Sephiroth."

Maybe he just needed to hear it again.

"He goes after the President--that is, Rufus Shinra."

And, well, the Turks weren't going to allow that.

[puppy_fair]

That earned a blink and a confused tilt of his head.

"Rufus as president? But... the President...?"

[intraspective]

"Passed away," Ino said, shrugging a little. "So Rufus took over."

She was maybe not going into detail about how the President had passed away, but that wasn't really relevant, was it?

[puppy_fair]

Passed away?

Zack considered that for a moment. It didn't escape him that the President was most likely the one who had given the order to have him put down in the first place. He'd known too much about Nibelheim.

He'd known too much about ShinRa.

Zack sighed.

"Man oh man," he murmured. "There's a lot more going on than I figured."

[intraspective]

She couldn't help but smile.

That was why Zack wasn't a Turk.

"Yeah," she said quietly, then offered, "Officially the President's death was ruled as a tragic accident."

[puppy_fair]

Zack was silent for a few minutes.

"Okay, officially." But he'd been chased long enough, had seen his own status, officially. "But what about unofficially?"

[intraspective]

"AVALANCHE kills him," she said, pursing her lips for a moment. "The original AVALANCHE. Not the new splinter group I told you about before."

The one with the Ravens, not the one that liked to target hospitals and power generators like shitheads.

Ino preferred the one with the Ravens.

"Rufus ordered the news suppressed, not wanting to give legitimacy to AVALANCHE's threat."

[puppy_fair]

Elsewhere in the multiverse, Reno was consulting his notes and squinting a lot at that answer. Ino and Zack had broken their timeline good.

Zack bit the inside of his cheek.

"But what do they get out of killing the President?" He wondered. "Are they hoping a younger successor will be easier to take down? Or are they still a threat to Rufus, too?"

Zack had seen Rufus in a fight, in Wutai. He wasn't sure how one could be both calculated and reckless, but he was sure that anybody would have their hands full trying to take an older, more experienced version of him down.

[intraspective]

Hey now, Reno had helped break the timeline but good!

"Killing the most powerful man in the world is a rather significant achievement for a terrorist group," Ino noted. "Even if that terrorist group is batshit insane and wants to end the world. I'd imagine Rufus is in just as much danger from them--especially once he shut down all news of them being the ones to kill the President."

[puppy_fair]

"Only Sephiroth comes after him first," Zack mused, frowning. "Do we know where he came from, yet? How he survived?"

[intraspective]

"It looks like he... he survived in the Lifestream," Ino said, a bit dubiously.

Look, the Lifestream thing was still weird to her. It really was.

[puppy_fair]

Yeaaaah, Zack was giving Ino a look that matched that dubiousness well.

"In the lifestream?"

That didn't sound right.

It was right. But it didn't sound right.

"For how many years?"

[intraspective]

"Since Cloud knocked him into it?" Ino said, still going strong on 'dubious' there, as she reached for a report. She glanced over it. "Yeah, since that long."

So years and years there.

[puppy_fair]

"That... shouldn't be possible."

AND YET.

[intraspective]

AND YET INDEED.

"I know, but that's what happened," Ino said, a bit plaintively.

[puppy_fair]

Zack squinted and set down his noodles.

"That's bad. That... sounds very bad."

Sure, he'd been soaked in Mako himself for years and years, but that mako had presumably been refined, and he'd at least had someone monitoring to make sure he didn't die.

He had been more useful to Hojo alive.

[intraspective]

"That... does seem to be the case," Ino admitted, still looking at the report.

[puppy_fair]

Zack peered down at the report, too.

"Well," he said, after a long silence, "I guess I'm gonna have to get training."

[intraspective]

"It's a goal to aim for," Ino said, one shoulder hitching up. "Ain't going to force you into it though, Zack. You're out of Gaia if you want to be, you know that, right?"

It'd fuck them all over but--he was. And that mattered.

[puppy_fair]

"I know," Zack replied, and then turned a tired smile toward her. "But what kind of hero would I be if I can't even save my most precious person?"

[intraspective]

She leaned over to press a kiss to his cheek.

"Normally, I'd smack you for that," she said, smiling. "But in this case--I really do need you to be my hero."

Against Sephiroth, there was nothing she could do.

[puppy_fair]

"You can smack me anyway," Zack replied, an attempt at a playful note in his voice falling just short of its mark. "We'll consider it part of my training."

[intraspective]

Her smile faded.

"I'm sorry."