50 Chapter Eighteen: Quieter Than Wind, Part I

Lance looked up at the expansion of black. It was calming, seeing all those stars decorating the sky. They reminded him of city lights.

The quiet rush of cars and traffic floated up as Lance looked ahead. Zidane and Zooka were close by, bodies pointed in opposite directions and heads beside one another, the flat landscape of the rooftop allowing them to lie down and look up at the night sky. Lance wasn't surprised by the fact both of them were there; if anything, he was softly comforted by it. The buzz of the traffic below them suddenly vanished, the sound fading like a tide moving pulling back from the shore.

"You're not an alien, right?"

"No, Zoo." The smile in Zidane's voice was unavoidable. "I'm not an alien."

"Good." Zooka's head rested against Zidane's, her stare still on the sky. "It'd be weird if you had extra fingers."

Zidane let out a single, quiet laugh. "My tail doesn't count?"

"I like your tail." Zooka reached up, Zidane's tail rising to be held. "It's soft."

Zidane's eyes shined even against the darkness.

"Thanks."

Lance noticed a smile of his own on his face, not bothering to cover it up. He had seen too much, experienced too much, to ignore the relief.

Zooka turned her head a little bit, enough to see Zidane's eyes out of the corner of her own. "Where'd you come from, then?"

"Um..." Zidane thought hard. "Really, really far underground."

"Oh." A moment later, she spoke again. "Why?"

"It's better that way," Zidane replied after a brief pause of his own. "It's safer."

"Can I go there?"

Zidane shook his head and Lance could tell the gesture was painful for him.

"Not right now." His mouth opened again, then closed, whatever words he wanted to add remaining unspoken.

The silence traveled into seconds and then, quietly, Zidane spoke again.

"There's parts of it you'd like," he said. "There's animals you've never seen and foods you've never tried. The sky's different, too."

Lance felt the smile on Zooka's face. "I like our sky."

"I like our sky, too."

Lance felt drawn to look back up again. He ignored it, staying focused in front of him, taking in the light feeling the moment brought. Everything seemed weightless, the city perfectly balanced between a sky of black and the glow of lights below.

Zidane sat up, his tail pulling away from Zooka's grasp. He turned around, a crinkle in his eye as he smiled at Lance.

"This memory doesn't count. Personal side-note."

"Yeah, that's fair," Lance said with light sarcasm. He grinned, the memory's atmosphere drawing him to his surroundings again. "I can see why you picked it, though."

"It's one of those moments I've always cherished." Zidane turned, looking over the city. "Everything was on pause for a while. There wasn't anyone else up here; no one I had to hide from..."

Keep your guard up for, Lance added.

"Yeah." The thought must have been loud enough for the crossbreed to hear it. Lance felt the smile come onto Zidane's face as he spoke again. "Maybe that's why I'm so willing to go through everything else that's happened in my life. I know moments like these are coming up."

Another emotion came; a light feeling that Lance could only describe as bliss. His attention came back to him, stare moving up to see Zidane had turned back to face him.

Pale blue eyes fell to the ground in response, their color slowly draining as he spoke. "So, if it's alright with you I'm going to skip ahead a little bit. It's just—the memories I have after this are fairly personal. Zooka, she taught me a lot... about a lot of things." A small, tremble traveled up his stomach, but the emotion spilled over into a grin. "She still does."

Lance managed to nod, trying his best to detangle a knot in his stomach. He fought back the feeling of discomfort, listening as Zidane continued on, his voice leveling out into a casual seriousness.

"Since the orphanage closed down, Kazuo didn't have any work. Any savings he had went to keeping the kids healthy and happy, so when it shut down we were living off money from his friends and those that worked in the orphanage before. He'd get these checks in the mail, but eventually they stopped coming. I did what I could to help, but there wasn't a lot because I wasn't thieving anymore."

Lance thought back to the memory with the necklace, and Zidane smiled at his surprise.

"So you were completely done?" Lance asked. "How'd you get out of it?"

"Oh, I was definitely still in. We didn't travel outside much, but during the times that we did, I guess someone recognized me and told Arzo I was back. He showed up, didn't ask any questions, and I went back to breaking into people's houses. I wasn't stealing, though. Not in the literal sense. Back then it was tough for me to clone anything; whatever I tried to duplicate wasn't good enough to pass for a total copy. So I had to spark the people I took the food from. Make them come up with another way to get more money, or give them an idea on how to take better care of their kids." He shrugged, eyes dimming a little. "It was a tradeoff, I guess."

Lance thought about Zooka. "Is that something she taught you?" he asked, finding himself unable to say her name directly.

Zidane nodded. "It's one of them. I still hated taking everything, though."

Quieting, Lance wondered if Zidane was still thieving at his current age. But he'd already asked that question, back when Arzo had first been introduced. He hadn't gotten an answer.

"So what do you do now?"

"I clone," Zidane answered. "Make a copy of whatever I take, keep that copy active until it's been eaten or used up." He raised a hand, rubbing an eye with his palm. "It takes a lot of energy, but there are ways around it."

"So you never got out."

Zidane let his hand fall, and in the moment where his eyes turned black, his voice came to Lance's mind.

"I still have a reason for staying."

The scenery in front of him was swept away, a small kitchen taking its place. Lance sat at the head of the table, Zooka to his left and Zidane to his right. Across the table near the sink, scrubbing a dish with a small amount of soap, was Kazuo. Zooka got down from the table, taking her half-eaten plate with her. A few feet away from Kazuo, she stopped walking.

"Kazuo?"

"Yes, Zooka?" Kazuo turned around, the plate he held dripping with water.

Zooka lifted her plate up to him. "You didn't eat anything."

The caregiver gave a weak smile before turning back. "I'm alright." He grabbed a nearby rag, drying the plate. "It's important for you to eat."

"But I saved some for you..."

"I'm alright, my dear."

Lance's focus was drawn to Zidane, who stared down at his plate, flattening the last piece of broccoli with his fork.

"So our living conditions weren't great," he told Lance. "This went on for a little while; we survived for another month until Kazuo sent us somewhere else." Steel blue eyes met his. "You've noticed that jacket I wear, right? You've seen the symbol on it?"

It took Lance a moment to retrace, pull himself out of everything Zidane and shown him and go back to his own memories. He remembered seeing a glimpse of the symbol, when Zidane rose from the cabin's couch and began walking towards the connected kitchen.

"Some kind of medical symbol, right?"

"Half right." The symbol Lance was trying to remember appeared in the air; the one with a rod and two snakes twisting around it, wings displayed proudly at the top. The symbol began shifting, morphing into something else. The rod was replaced with a slim rifle, the wings becoming larger and more frayed. Even still, they were presented proudly. Fiercely.

"MOCT. I told you a little bit about it. Back when you didn't trust me."

Lance barely matched his grin, feeling a little bit of guilt touch his stomach.

Zidane rubbed his hands together, continuing on. "So, basically it's a training system that takes every medical profession—doctors, nurses—and puts them under well-rounded combat training. And takes every profession that has to do with combat training, and puts them under medical training."

Lance leaned back in his chair, trying to figure out the point. "Creating the perfect soldier, right?" he asked, remembering.

"Yeah, exactly, creating a perfectly-balanced soldier. Someone they can pick up and say, 'Hey, you're doing surgery' and maybe a few days later use the same person and assign them to go to combat." Zidane waved a hand. "Supposedly it's a better war tactic. I don't ask too many questions."