Miasma

Chapter 14

He went for Fair because he didn't have a choice.

Sitting in the back of a pickup truck with snow starting to filter down upon him, Sephiroth bitterly reflected that he'd done what he could. Everything about his physicality was an aching blaze of fiery pain but he couldn't bring himself to regret it. There was no question in terms of whether or not he was going to try to protect Genesis...he was going to do it. He chose to forgo and usurp the limitations of his body because otherwise they were both going to get captured and he was not going to go back in a cell. At this point, his autonomy was too valuable for him to throw it away. That and the fact that he absolutely could not do this without his former comrade and there was a good possibility that his capture would end in his immediate execution. They had both worked far too hard and gone to great lengths to ensure their longevity and disregarding it in favor of his safety seemed frivolous.

That wasn't to say the alternative was less frivolous.

Subduing Zack while trying to keep parts of his physicality from sustaining serious injury via impact was harder than he'd thought. That wasn't to say it was exactly a monumental effort, but it wasn't effortless like it used to be. He had to twist himself at a weird angle to finagle the headlock and if he'd been allowed to snap the dark-haired FIRST's neck right then and there the issue would have been nil. He was listening to the tendons stretch to near-breaking when Genesis yelled for him to stop; he hesitated, and he'd gotten a blow to the face...with the butt of an automatic. It was-shockingly-the first time he'd ever gotten hit anywhere in the vicinity of his nose with something so heavy and the amount of blood pouring from it had momentarily rendered him stupid. Thankfully, it seemed like the fact he'd been able to land a blow of any type on the Great General Sephiroth had stymied Fair into lowered-intelligence levels as well. By the time they both recovered Genesis was already moving.

This would have been the end if said redhead had informed his partner he was suffering from mako withdrawals.

Zack hit the dirt with fairly little encouragement, but he didn't stay there. The former General's companion executed a double-leg takedown that likely would have held if his strength wasn't significantly diminished. As ill-fate would have it; Angeal's protegee kneed him in the groin. Genesis went so white that Sephiroth actually felt sympathetic and then promptly hooked Fair in the jaw so hard his head snapped back. This was fine because the silver-haired man was able to get on his knees and grab the younger man's arms so he could pull them above his head. It wasn't exactly a proper restraint-was likely extremely painful-but they were essentially working on impulse and neither of them were feeling kind. The gun was apprehended and he had the sincere pleasure of watching his partner rise to his knees to place it directly between Zack's eyes and snarl something about his manhood that he couldn't understand but appreciated nevertheless.

Needless to say, Fair surrendered.

This led to a lengthy argument between former General and Commander regarding what they were going to do with him. It eventually escalated into a shouting match in which both of them were pointing fingers at the other and neither of them were getting anywhere. Genesis blamed him for not paying attention, Sephiroth blamed him for taking them into a populated area and so on until it had devolved into an argument regarding who snored the loudest and who hogged the bed sheets until Zack promptly burst into tears and begged them to stop because 'Geal was in trouble' and 'didn't they care at all?'. This-at the very least-sobered them enough to ask about what had happened to his partner's childhood friend. Haltingly, the youngest of the three divulged the circumstances in wake of their absence, and with each word he spoke Sephiroth felt his spirits sink lower and lower.

Hewley was-as they had suspected-apprehended.

A bit tearfully, Zack informed them that he hadn't even made it to the sewers before he'd been arrested. Angeal had-of course-gone peacefully and quietly but it didn't change the cruelty with which they had treated him or the gravity of his sentence. His apartment had been bugged, that much was clear. When Genesis had come to inform him of his decision to defect, his fate was sealed because he didn't arrest him or disagree with meeting him. Thankfully, the branch of Intelligence that monitored that particular feed didn't come in until 1030; well past the time when the redhead had left Outfitting and made his way to the Science Division. Unfortunately for Angeal, this meant that he'd been caught on camera fraternizing with a wanted war criminal in an attempt to release a wanted war criminal. The specifics of it were irrelevant, as were his motivations. As far as Shinra was considered, Angeal was a traitor.