DISCLAIMER: the entire first scene with zack is taken from SQEX. i admitted it, happy now?

WARNINGS: yaoi, boy's love, violence, swearing, lemon in future chapters

PAIRINGS: renocloud, zackcloud, whatever else i spontaneously decide to add later

happy reading.

This was it. This was the end of him. The end of one of the greatest SOLDIERs in history. But at least… at least it was all for him.

Zack lay eagle-spread with his Buster Sword in his hand on the cliff over the mesmerizing scene of Midgar in the distance. He was so close. Why did Shinra have to get in his way? Gunshot wounds riddled his chest and swirls of red mixed with the clear rain water. He could barely breathe, let alone move his head just inches to see if he was alright, if Cloud was still alright.

Cloud twitched from the steady downpour of rain on his numb body. He jerked his arm over to his right and dragged himself out from behind the rock where Zack had hid him. And there Zack was, lying there on the ridge. It was almost as if he was just doing as he always was. Slacking off on the job. Dozing off with his sword in his hand, as if for one moment in their lives they weren't at risk of being ambushed by Shinra troopers.

Cloud gripped the muddy grass desperately crawling over to his seemingly lifeless friend. He took one look at Zack's condition and had to choke back tears. "Zack…"

Zack looked into Cloud's eyes with a meaningful smile on his face, "For the… both of us."

"Both of us?"

Zack reached up to touch Cloud's soft golden hair and slowly brought his face closer to his own. Cloud's blank and confused eyes merely stared at him as Zack pressed his lips against the blonde's. Zack held him there for a moment before releasing him, "Live. You'll be… my living legacy."

Cloud sat up straight again, his hair imbrued with Zack's blood.

"My honor, my dreams…" Zack pushed the Buster Sword into Cloud's hands. "They're yours now." Right at that moment, Zack realized that this was the right thing to do. Letting Cloud go. He'd be okay, Zack was sure of it. He took one last look at the blonde's gentle face, those eyes as blue as the oceans, and his beautiful hair that was dripping with rain, and closed his eyes.

"I'm your… living legacy…" Cloud repeated softly, a look of confusion and yet desperation on his face. Somehow the scene before him didn't seem real. He just couldn't comprehend the idea that he was actually gone. Cloud let out a agonizing yell into the rain filled sky as memories of Zack flashed before his eyes against the clouds.

"Embrace your dreams."

It seemed so short now.

"If you want to be a hero…"

Zack couldn't be dead.

"You need to have dreams."

This couldn't be the end.

"Thank you… I won't forget." Cloud stood up with the sword in his hands, heavy with remorse. His eyes took in all of Zack for the final time. His long raven hair that stuck up in whimsical spikes not unlike his own. His violet, Mako-tinted eyes hidden by closed eyelids hovering in between death. "Good night…" Cloud whispered as he turned away from the 1st class SOLDIER, "Zack."

The SOLDIER gazed into the rain-filled sky, his eyes flickering from the droplets and his soft smile fading crooked on his face. Was this the right was to die? "Hey." Everything was going to be alright, right? "Would you say I became a hero?"

"I slack off too much, eh? You gonna stick me on probation? Well, that ain't gonna stop me!" The Turk flicked the long ponytail of red hair over his shoulder, "Not a chance, yo!"

Reno adjusted the flashlight he had set between his head and his right shoulder, and continued typing on the laptop in the dark. "The Turks haven't had a job in ages anyway. What's a little slackin' off gonna hurt? God dammit, Rude. Why didn't you watch the left hallway? If you hadn't dozed off, I would have gotten away with it too!" He typed in the painstakingly long password he memorized a few hours earlier under his Rufus's table with his laptop and clicked LOG IN. After a few moments in suspense, the red-head punched his fist into the air victoriously, "Yes! Now, let's see what secrets you aren't letting they rest of us Turks in on, Rufus."

"Load him onto the truck. We need to dose him at once if we are to use him in the future."

"Hey, hey, hey. What do we have here?" Reno hacked into an encrypted folder and scanned through the files. "Who are these guys? A genetically enhanced human… Ain't Hojo dead? What kind of mad scientist is it this time?"

"Hold him down and don't let go."

"Yes, sir. But are you sure we should be doing this—"

"Fool! If we succeed, this man will be even more lethal than Sephiroth himself!"

Reno's eyes widened as he finished reading all the files, "Wutai Continent, eh? What a mission. With this, I'll show that pompous idiot that Reno ain't just a stupid slacker, yo! Rufus, you underestimated me."

"I'm beginning the process."

"But he's still conscious!"

"Just hold him down."

Reno snapped the laptop shut, stood up, and brushed the dust off his carelessly thrown on Turk uniform. He adjusted his goggles with one hand and smirked to himself, "But first… I'm going to need a little help for this one."

Cloud's eyes snapped open at the sound of the phone at his bedside. He sat up and rubbed his eyes, trying to wipe away the image of his dead friend from his closed eyelids. What bad memories. After shaking his head fiercely to rid himself of the depressing thoughts, he answered the phone in a low voice, "Hello, Strife Delivery Service. You name it, we deliver-"

"Cut the crap, blondie! I got a job for you, yo!"

Cloud slammed the phone back down on the receiver. It was Reno. The last time he called for a job, Bahamut SIN nearly obliterated Edge. He was not going to accept it this time, even if Rufus got down on his knees and begged.

The phone rang again. Annoyed, Cloud picked up the phone and said harshly, "What?"

"What, sorry?"

It was a customer. How embarrassing. "Oh, sorry. Strife Delivery Service." He quickly grabbed a paper and pen from the drawer and started writing, "Uh huh. Yes, yes I got it. I'll have it delivered by this afternoon. Around three, yes. Thank you. You're welcome."

Cloud put the phone down again looking at the address on the paper. That was odd. Reno didn't call again. He usually wouldn't stop bothering him for hours until he agreed.

Cloud wandered blindly towards the mirror and then looked up at his reflection. He gazed into his own Mako tinted eyes tiredly. He hadn't thought of Zack's death for years now, so why would the dream come and haunt him again? Why now?

"Cloud? Cloud!" Tifa's voice echoed up the stairs interrupting his thoughts. Dismissing his mind's questions, Cloud made his way down the stairs and into the bar. Tifa looked up from wiping glasses with a wet towel. "Someone's here for you, Cloud!"

The red-haired Turk sitting at the bar raised his glass of beer in greeting, "Yo! I gotta job for you!"

Cloud swiveled on his feet and walked straight back up the stairs. "You have got to be kidding me," He muttered when Reno ran up after him.

"You takin' in a word I say? Listen to me, yo!"

Cloud rolled his eyes and kept walking up the stairs ignoring Reno with little effort. How annoying.

Reno skimmed a hand through his hair, "Well, if you aren't gonna listen to me at all…" He took a deep breath and began yelling, "Cloud Strife is a spiky headed dolt! He's a wuss! Cloud lost to me twenty-seven times, yo! He's so weak that Sephiroth beat him with his eyes closed! And his sword doesn't even begin to reflect his puny real one-"

Cloud spun around and punched Reno square in the face. "Shut up." And with that, he slammed the door shutting himself in his room.

"Owww," Reno groaned with his hand over his nose. Well, he wasn't going to let this guy get the better of him. Not this easily. "Yo, Cloud!" He banged his fist on the door. "I'm not even kidding about this job, yo! You're gonna wanna take this!"

Silence.

Reno sighed and pulled out his Electro-Mag Rod from a holster on his belt, "Hey, this is a nice door, so I didn't wanna do this, but get yo' blonde ass out of there—" He swung his arm back and…!

Cloud opened the door again causing Reno to fall flat on his face. "I need to make a delivery," He said in a low voice as he walked towards the stairs again carefully making sure to step on Reno along the way.

"Dammit, Cloud!" Reno jumped up again, "Don't think I ain't gonna come with you, yo!"

With a quick word to Tifa about where he was going, Cloud stepped out the door and picked up the package from the storage room. He walked over to the street and revved up the engine for his motorbike. "Better ride off before Reno takes this chance to stalk me again," He thought as he kicked the kickstand up and started accelerating away.

"Yo, Cloud! Get back here! It's important!" Reno started sprinting after the motorbike which was steadily increasing speed with his target on its back. "Rrg." Reno bent down and launched himself into the air, landing smoothly on the motorbike with his back against Cloud's. "Seriously, yo. You gotta listen to me on this one," Reno said as he tapped Cloud's shoulder with his stun baton, "If you don't take this job, it's really gonna affect you and Tifa's lives—WAGHH!"

Reno instinctively reached behind him with his free hand to grab Cloud's waist as he swerved the motorbike around a corner sharply to throw Reno off. Cloud looked down and blushed, "Idiot! Watch where you're grabbing!" He swung his leg over the seat and roundhouse kicked Reno right off the back.

Reno skidded to a stop violently on the street. "Ughh…" Coughing in the dust, he picked up his baton and slowly got up. Ultimate failure. This guy was feisty. He cupped both his hands around his mouth and yelled at Cloud's retreating figure, "They're planning to destroy Edge!"

"What?" Cloud hesitated at these words. This didn't bode well. "Maybe I should find out what's going on," He thought biting his lip. Cloud hit the brakes abruptly and turned around so suddenly that he almost hit the nearby buildings. He slowed to a stop next to Reno, "Get on and tell me what your mission is."

Reno smirked, "Now, that's more like it, yo!" He hopped on with his back facing Cloud again. "No more sharp turns or kicking me off, yo. Or I might just grab something again."

Cloud accelerated to his original speed once more, hoping Reno didn't see his cheeks heat up to a light shade of pink. "Just talk."

Reno stuck his retractable stun baton into his holster and crossed his legs on the seat. "Well, if I didn't tell you before…"

"You didn't," Cloud muttered. If he could recall, Reno spent half the time today just telling Cloud to listen to him. Although, that was partly his fault too.

"…I got stuck on probation because I was going to pull a prank on Tseng and that idiot Rude fell asleep on watch," Reno continued, getting annoyed just thinking about it again. "We haven't been getting any jobs lately, so I've been slacking off and shit, yo."

Cloud pulled his goggles over his eyes as they increased speed on the highway. "Just get to the point, Reno."

"Alright, alright, cheeky," Reno rolled his eyes, "I hacked into the Turks' main system to get a mission, so I can get off probation. Since, thanks to my shitty luck, we usually get the good jobs when I'm not there." As Cloud started weaving in and out of the cars on the road, Reno subconsciously put his arms around Cloud's waist again to keep his balance. "Well, in a nutshell, another psychotically ambitious scientist has—"

Cloud flinched, "Reno."

"Yo."

"Get your arms off my waist."

Noticing this himself, he immediately withdrew his arms and merely shrugged, "Oh, sorry." He gripped the seat instead, even though it was less supporting. "Stop driving so fucking recklessly then! I'm gonna fall off!"

"Why do you sit like that then?" Cloud muttered as he drove off the highway, slowing down in the process. "It's like you're asking to be thrown off."

"Shut up, yo!" Reno yelled over the wind rushing by. "Like hell I'm gonna sit with my chest against another guy's back! You gotta be shitting me if you think any guy's gonna enjoy that."

"He's got a point," Cloud grudgingly admitted to himself under his breath.

"Anyway," Reno continued, "It's not clear whether the experiments are related to Hojo or not, but I'm willing to bet that he at least played a significant part in the initial planning of the tests. They were trying to make a Mako-enhanced human, yo."

Cloud raised an eyebrow at the familiar description. "Isn't that exactly what they did to make—"

"SOLIDERs? Yeah," Reno finished with a half-hearted nod, "But the concentration of Mako in the experiment's bloodstream would be far greater than mere Shinra SOLDIERs. It's pretty confidential in itself, but the Turks got some recent intel that the experiment was in its final stages... and that it would have at least as much destructive power as Sephiroth himself. And you gotta admit, yo, Jenova cells or not, that shit is pretty fucking scary."

Sephiroth. Cloud shivered at the name. He tried to bring a calamity to destroy the entire planet only a few years earlier. Sephiroth was crazy, not to mention the fact that he stabbed Cloud more times than he could even count. The delivery boy slowed to a stop in front of a weapons shop and slipped off his goggles. "Wait here," He said to Reno as he got off the bike with the package in his hands.

Reno paused for a moment, as if pondering for a moment whether he should actually listen to the blonde. Evidently, the thought process took no more than literally a moment because the Turk merely shrugged and followed Cloud into the shop.

Upon hearing the redhead's footsteps behind him, Cloud rolled his eyes and asked, "Alright, well, do you have any information about the head scientist himself, or at least the location of the lab?"

"That's the problem, yo," Reno sighed, putting his hands behind his head leisurely, "Apart from rumors that the lab is situated on the Wutai Continent, none of the Turks' resources have any information on the lab, or the head scientist. Yo, I know it's pretty much a shot in the dark here, but with the rumors that are spreading Underground, it's a safe bet that Edge is among the majors cities these scientists are targeting."

"So, you basically have no information whatsoever."

"Well, if you put it that way, yo..." Reno paused to wait for the delivery boy to hand the package to the shopkeeper and have him sign the necessary forms. After giving the man a short nod in thanks, Cloud began walking out of the shop and towards his bike again, clearly ignoring the red-haired Turk. "Hey, I know the name of the experiment though!" Reno called out to Cloud's back.

Slowing mid-step, Cloud turned around to look at the other man.

"His name is Kir Facaz. Are you in or out, yo?"

pretty short first chapter, but what can i do.

EDIT: this entire fic is in the process of being edited. i'm too much of a moron to put up the entire edited version up at once, so please put up with my stupidity in that there are going to be a point where chapters will not necessarily match up and my writing style is going to look like it just had a complete about face. i'm sorry?