Right away out the door, they were met by three red floating eyes on top of drill spikes with a materia core, little helicopter blades, and a bundle of weird moss-looking hair coming down beneath the eye. Cloud dashed in front of everyone as three streaks of fire shot from them, and blew up against his sword.

  Barret gawked, "What the hell?!" and they all started shooting. Cloud slashed ahead at one, but it slipped away, as did the others from the gunfire. The few bullets that hit the zippy abominations pierced right through and exposed wires and circuits in the eyes. But none were destroyed.

  Everyone backed into the elevator again, and Cloud fended the things from charging at them with their spikes long enough for the door to shut.

  "What was that shit?!" shouted Barret.

  "Fucking monodrives!" Biggs huffed.

  Cloud said, "They're Shinra's new favorite AI toy to attach mass-produced low-potency materia to."

  "What's the big fuckin' eyes for?!"

  "I don't know, shock value? Who cares? They're not easy to hit, so on my mark, open the door and focus your fire on one at a time."

  Cloud counted down from three, and Jessie hit the button. They rushed out immediately in a hail of gunshots and sword swings that fell into uncontrolled chaos. The monodrives flew between the firing guns and tried to get them to shoot each other. Cloud couldn't lug his heavy sword fast enough to hit any of them, and got harassed over again by their drills. His strategy did not come to be.

  The eyes glowed and their hair flapped around to rev up another round of fire. Cloud could finally get the jump on one and cut it in half through the materia core, then caught a scorching blast on his bruised arm. The wound bristled in pain, but his skin fiber held together. Barret caught a fireball straight to his vest that set his jacket alight.

  The two monodrives flew circles around and between everyone. Nobody could land a good shot and kept getting in each other's way. Jessie and Biggs desperately avoided the drills that could have easily ripped through them. Barret grew tired of shooting and tried to smack them with his gun arm.

  The monodrives' AI could detect threats and react faster than the human mind and fly out of the way of every attack, so the best tactic Cloud could form was to catch them off guard. He got on the other of Jessie from a monodrive, promptly kicked her legs out, and hit the drive with a baseball swing before it could dodge. Jessie yelped as she hit the ground, then saw the monodrive sputtering around with its damaged rotors, and blew it out of the air with submachine gun fire.

  Cloud vaulted onto Barret's shoulders, dropped behind the monodrive he was clumsily swinging at, and cleaved it in half. The three defeated bots sparked and caught fire on the floor. Everyone but Cloud sighed in relief and caught their breath.

  "Hate those fuckin' things," Biggs groaned.

  Cloud griped, "Listen to what I tell you next time. There's gonna be more of 'em. Focus your fire on one, don't shoot everywhere."

  Barret scowled at him. "Who made you our boss, wiseass?"

  Jessie patted off the scorch marks on Barret's jacket. "He's our combat expert. At least listen to him about that?"

  He scoffed and walked away. Cloud sighed and muttered, "Should've asked for more money."

  The team was in the reactor's utility access floor. It was an expansive facility chamber that went a long way down from the tower they were standing on, with plenty other structures about. It was all meshes of pipes, beams, and concrete. No guards, and whatever people were working here had cleared out. And no more blaring siren, though the silent alarm no doubt triggered those monodrives, and more.

  In the middle of their floor, Cloud stared up at what looked like a small water tower, a repository for something. The shape of it drew him in, whether the tank, or the platform around the tank, or the ladder, or the structure holding it up. He felt like it was trying to tell him something.

  It was about his head staring directly up. How often in the last... amount of time, has he found himself staring up? His head has become accustomed to that orientation, whether sitting down and scanning the plate underside in the hazy lighting, or lying on his back in a fugue state trying to make the two separate images in his two eyes reunite.

  His brain shouldn't have been recording memories in a moment like that. But one moment seemed to have stayed with him, however partially. His vision was an unfocused glimmer, a splash of patternless color. He wasn't thinking anything, not about himself nor where he was.

  But something peaked over him. It was the figure of a person. A bright light was coming from the side, burning the edge of his right eye. Sound vibrated in his ears, but he couldn't decode what it was. The figure's shadow moved around, at turns blocking out the light and restoring it. Waves of darkness washed over and went, easing the strain on his dry retinas.

  When he felt a push on his chest, he remembered how to breathe. He might have been doing it unconsciously before, but in that moment he had control and could manually inhale and exhale; feel his lungs grow and that empty void fill. He remembered his arms, chest, and legs again. He could almost move them around, uncreak his joints, get back the fluidity in his muscles.

  He saw almost an outline of her face. Soft and radiant. The hair drooping down, the bow on the back of her head... she was moving and making noises erratically at him, but he didn't want to respond to any of it. Just the sight and the sounds helped release a burgeoning tension in his body he didn't know was there. His heartbeat relaxed, and his mind drifted into a calm lull. His limbs felt hot, perhaps too much so; but he knew at the very least in that moment that he was alive. It was good.

  But whatever happened next, she wasn't there. And he was somewhere else. As he turned the clock forward as granularly as he could to find the missing beats, he remembered standing in the same Sector 5 slums. He was trying to stand discretely looking around the corner of a house, to where a woman was talking to a group of children. Pink dress, red jacket... the ponytailed hair tied in a bow.

  He wasn't sure if it was the same bow, or the same hair. But staring at her, with no sword on his back, he could feel a need to investigate further.

  Barret leaned over the railing of the tower and scanned around the underground complex. "Feelin' useful yet, merc? What direction's mako storage from here?"

  The layout of the reactor was still ringing no bells for Cloud. But since they entered the reactor from the south, it should have just been further north. But he had to figure out where north was from here.

  "Remember that you ain't gettin' paid if we don't—"

  "Shut up," Cloud interrupted. Barret watched him closely as he looked around the base while retracing their steps internally. Eventually, he pointed to a corridor at the bottom floor around a corner. "Should be that way."

  He nodded. "Then let's go! We got history to make!"

  "Hold on. The last serious attack on a mako reactor was over 20 years ago, and Gaea's population has only gone down since then. Shinra doesn't have the spare manpower to defend all of their reactors, but they've invested heavily in automated machines to fill in the gaps. There's gonna be more drones on the way to the core, but something bigger could be inside."

  "We already talked about that during yesterday's briefing. That's what you're here for, merc."

  He sighed. He was done talking.

  The team started off. They turned a corner on the way to the stairwell down, and a pair of active turrets on the wall was there to greet them with laser fire.

  That camp at the scrapyard wasn't fun anymore, so he went somewhere else. It was a lot of time searching for that right corner where people would leave him alone, clutching at the broken parts of his one remaining shoulder pad afraid to lose them, waving his new jagged scrapyard sword at anyone who got too close. The sword was too light, too thin and uncomfortable; he really missed his old buster. It made him sad.

  And then, he was sitting in a nice, dark and quiet alleyway between two big buildings, next to a person in a nice brown jacket and tailored jeans with their throat lacerated. There was a screwdriver next to him, and dusty cigarettes, and a bunch of rocks, and in his hand was... Wow! He couldn't believe it. His beautiful shoulder pad was fixed!

  If you come across this story on Amazon, be aware that it has been stolen from Royal Road. Please report it.

  The plate the pad attached to couldn't have its latches and tiny screws fixed, so he made holes of his own for bigger screws. He drove them through the plate, then pierced and grinded holes into the rusted shoulder pad to twist the screws through until the pieces were assembled once again, and fixed together with nuts. He could finally strap it back on like he used to, this time with three little pokies coming through the top.

  He felt so happy. And he did it all by himself. He tried showing it off to the guy next to him, but remembered that he was dead. He wanted to celebrate doing such a good job, and imagined a big crowd cheering for him. "Congratulations, Cloud! You did it! We're all so proud of you."

  Blocking the lasers from the rays on the wall while watching Barret blast away at them, Cloud could see from his gun that all the bursts of fire came out like little colorful explosions, more so than ordinary guns. In the flashes of red and orange light, he could see tints of purple in it as well. And the bullets hit the rays in little explosions too. Barret never reloaded, didn't have a bandolier of ammo packed into his pants, and the gun didn't pop out bullet casings. Whatever that gun was, it had to be magically powered in some way. It might not have even been firing bullets.

  Once the turrets were properly maimed and inoperable, Barret led them down the stairs. On the next floor of the tower, a depot against the wall full of inactive monodrives was mid-activation, and several were up and ready. There was a collective yelp of "Shit!" upon being detected, and Cloud rushed in front to shield them as more fireballs spat out.

  Barret yelled to Jessie and Biggs, "Get downstairs as fast as you can!" and they bolted down to the next staircase as Barret opened fire. Jessie tossed out a grenade from her belt at the depot while running.

  The Sector 5 slums were exhausting. But no matter how many things forgot in his mako poisoning episodes, he couldn't remove that urge to feel the lost buster sword in his hands. He ventured outside of the slums for the first time, to the uninhabited wastelands out in Sector 6. He was warned to stay out, but there he was anyway.

  From out of a scrap hill, a fat red abomination jumped out, probably to eat him. He hated everything about that creature; the disgusting frog-like limbs, the stupid round body with its flabby gut, the jagged spikes on its back, and the psychotic face. Its stare felt violating. He grabbed his shitty novelty sword and swung at it. The jagged blade only left a scratch on its hide.

  It bounced almost ten feet in the air, ricocheted off the ground, and launched headfirst into his stomach. He fell back on his ass as another one of those things appeared and started predatorily bouncing at him. He smacked them away with the sword, which only angered them.

  As he stood up, one shot a fireball from its mouth that blasted him in the face and burned his eyeballs. He threw one more blind hit at the creatures with the sword, and the blade snapped off the hilt. He remembered running away as they assaulted him. Hopefully nobody saw.

  The monodrive depot was blown up, and the fiery remains of a dozen of them blasted away like fireworks. But six others were fully active and ready to chase everyone down the tower. Cloud and Barret swung and shot sporadically to distract them before joining Jessie and Biggs down the staircase.

  There were two more floors to go, and more turrets on the walls to meet them on the next one. These ones shot actual bullets, and mauled Cloud as he had to rush in to keep their aim from the others. Barret opted not to help and kept running from the monodrives. All six of them detected Cloud, and put him under siege on all sides.

  He sat on a bench in town, rubbing his stinging eyes. He found water somewhere to wash them with, but now he smelled terrible.

  He was eventually able to open his eyes without them watering too much. He stared up at what he thought was a water tower through his blurry vision. The shape of it drew him in, whether the tank, or the platform around it, or the ladder, or the beams holding it up. He felt like it was trying to tell him something.

  He remembered lying face down, passed out in the dirt. His buster sword was gripped in his hand next to his head. He felt it was safe there, and hardly spared a thought to it when he dropped to sleep there. But somebody did duck down to look at it.

  He felt them try to pull it free, unsuccessfully. They tried to lightly shake him awake, but he didn't care. Only when he felt the cold touch of her fingers to his closed hand did he open his tired eyes.

  There was an energy in her touch that jolted him. And when she pulled at his fingers away from the sword, his grip surrendered with no fight. He didn't feel any need to fight, because that safe feeling was still nestled. Her touch was that same feeling.

  He watched his sword slide out of his hands and get carried away, and thought nothing of it. The pink dress, the red jacket, the ponytailed hair tied in a bow, just walked away...

  Son of a bitch.

  The monodrives were determined to get in his way as he tried to destroy the last turret. He pushed through the drills grinding against him on all sides, and while winding the sword back anx removing it as a bullet shield, he got shot again in the ear, and the cut split back open. Blood spattered on the side of his face as he chopped through the turret.

  Amidst swatting away the monodrives like a swarm of bees, Jessie shouted something from below, and a grenade flew up over the stair railing and landed a few feet away—with no pin. Cloud dove out for it, rolled behind, and golf-swung it at the bots. It blew up within a second and blasted him back against the window railing. A joint blitz of fireballs came through the smoke to meet Cloud as he stood up, and collided into his chest to blow him over the railing.

  He tumbled two stories out of the building, and Jessie yelped, "Cloud!" as he fell past them. He crashed back-first on the metal floor, and stayed there wincing from the hit while the few surviving monodrives moved to terrorize the others above him.

  He was covered in smudge marks, soot, and his own blood from the nicked ear, all from a few nobody Public Security grunts, a mob of rabid dogs, and some tiny Shinra drones armed with drills and cheap materia. It was quite a dejected feeling.

  He knew exactly where that gate was and how to get there. The Sector 5 slums were all too familiar. He marched down the roads kicking up dust with fury, carrying an old pipe prepared to kill whoever stole his only important possession. But upon kicking that gate open and starting down the path through the canyon, a voice shouted behind him. He had never heard it, but he knew who it was.

  "Hey! What are you doing!" All of the fury was washed out and he tried to subtly drop the pipe as she rushed to him. The dress, the jacket, the bow and ponytail; he could finally look at her, for real this time. She was clearly hiding a long staff behind her back, but he didn't think she could hurt him with it if she tried.

  She winced with recognition, and slightly let the tension go. "Oh. You're finally awake. Care to... tell me what you're doing here?"

  "Was it you that took my sword?"

  She lightly choked and looked down, muttering, "Uuhh..." trying to decide whether to lie or not. In the end, she gave in. "Yeah. I'm sorry, I... I thought it looked like one someone I knew used to have. And I thought you were just some junkie who stumbled on it, or something, so..." She let go of the staff fastened on her back and clasped her hands awkwardly.

  "I'm not a junkie. Who used to have it?"

  "Not important. I—it must just be a replica, I guess. I don't know. I can... I'll go get it back for you. Just stay here."

  He couldn't read what her reaction conveyed. Was she embarrassed? Did he upset her? He wished he could relive the memory and remember her body language. But nothing after that point would come back to him.

  He heard the synchronized gunfire and shouting and cheering above him. He thought about what he looked like flying past them after getting blown out of the building. It pissed him off. He crawled his tired body back to its feet and lumbered back to the stairs. Halfway up, the shooting stopped, and the gang came running down past him.

  "We took care of 'em, don't worry," said Jessie.

  Biggs gave a thumbs up. "Thanks for the advice."

  Cloud sighed and turned back around to follow them.

  On the way down the facility to mako storage, Barret followed next to Cloud and glared down at all the damage he's accrued, including that blood spatter. "Ya look like shit, merc. Those bots really kicked your ass."

  He wiped away some of the blood on his face. "It's not as bad as it looks. Ears bleed a lot."

  He chuckled. "Y'know, you'd get yourself injured a lot less if you could dispatch with shit like that from long range." He proudly gestured at his minigun arm.

  "Can't blast your way out of everything. 'Specially not something coming directly at you. I'll do just fine."

  "Really? 'Cause the guns seem to have done more good for ya here than that sword has."

  "At least swordfighting is a real trade. Any hamfisted dumbass with a vendetta can shoot a gun. Try not to be one of them if you're so committed to this line of work. Lest you risk ending up a one trick pony."

  "'Lest I risk,'" he mocked. "What, didja go to a fancy university too while you lived on Shinra's dime?"

  "Depends. Basic military academy is prob'ly university by the standards of someone with a fifth-year vocabulary."

  Barret stopped, pushed him back, and stepped within inches of his face, trying to size him up. He huffed at him like an angry bull. "Ya got quite a mouth on ya, merc. Prob'ly got a real high opinion of yourself, don't ya?"

  "Cut it out!" Jessie interrupted ahead. "Let's focus on the reactor. We'll get in, get out, and you can fight each other to the death when we're done."

  Barret huffed, and kept walking. "Yeah. We both know I'd win that fight, though."

  What a pitiful attempt to bait him.

  Cloud looked at his precious sword, and wondered what at all the significance was in trying so hard to remember the saga of losing it, and his busted SOLDIER armor. Those incidents could have been years ago. It didn't make sense for anything to matter. What's a blown up mako reactor, or a lost sword, or a dozen dead Shinra troops, or the weight of any accomplishment to him or anyone else?

  He just had to keep walking. He had to find out.