The cabin door shut with the squeal of rusting hinges and Bohdan's heavy footsteps carried him back to the storeroom. He pulled the curtain aside and said: "They're gone now."

Bakunin emerged from a heap of animal hides and sackcloth, rising slowly to his feet. The chill his bones acquired from his aimless wandering in the tundra outside had mostly dissipated, but his joints ached and his stomach rumbled. He stood half a head shorter than the man in front of him. Bohdan had been the one to find him following an old game trail belonging to a herd of caribou that no longer walked it.

Bakunin would soon come to learn that many things were not as they used to be in this place.

"The authorities here are not kind to outlanders," Bohdan said, pausing and wincing momentarily at his word choice. If something about the sentence was insulting, Bakunin didn't notice and wouldn't have cared. "It's best for you to stay hidden from them. For us too."

"If my presence is a danger to you and your people, I can move on," Bakunin said with a shrug. This place held no attachment. Nothing did. Everything had been taken from him already, including his life, and Bakunin was coming to find he was in no great hurry to replace any of it. Some might have thought of this all as a second chance, but Bakunin didn't need one. The world had failed him, not the other way around.

"No, no, they can go to hell," said Bohdan. "Maybe they beat strangers for fun in the city, but out here we are civilized."

He clapped a big broad hand on Bakunin's shoulder and began leading him to the door.

"Listen, let's have some food, some drink, and I will tell you about this place. If you want to go on or you want to stay it is your choice, friend, but I would disgrace my village if I didn't see you had a full belly first."

Bakunin followed Bohdan out of the cabin and by lamplight in a mess hall he listened well into the night to a very familiar story.

Wutai was gone and so was Shinra, but maybe vengeance in spirit would be enough.

Two Weeks Later

Bakunin sold Bohdan and his cousin Veli on the concept of revolution. It wasn't difficult. Bakunin knew they had the heart for it. The Sonoran boot hadn't crushed their pride in all its years pressed to their necks. It only angered them, built in them a useful fury just waiting for direction.

They were exactly the kind of men a revolution needed.

The three of them wore heavy coats with scarves drawn up over their mouths and noses. Hunkered on a hilltop in a sparse copse of withering pines, they watched the road snaking off over the horizon. In one direction, the capital, still visible to them in the distance as a dark grey wound and a cloud of choking smoke and exhaust. In the other direction, the fort. Bohdan pointed the gunmetal shapes trundling out of the city toward them.

"You know what to do," Bakunin said, and he stood and walked down to the road.

It wasn't long before the caravan of supply trucks reached his position, slowing when they saw him standing in the middle of the road. The driver of the lead truck rolled down his window, shouting something lost over the rumble of engines.

Bakunin smiled serenely and looked up at the sky. He held his palm out as though checking for rain.

"Kuwabara, kuwabara..."

Everything happened in seconds:

Two trees fell behind the rearmost truck, blocking the road.

The lead truck floored it, lurching forward until...

...Bakunin threw his heavy coat aside, exposing the katana sheathed at his waist. The materia inset in the grip glowed green and a bolt of lightning struck the truck's engine. It burst in a ball of flame and the scream of twisted metal.

The Sonoran guardsmen began to scramble out of the vehicles and Bakunin drew his blade and cut them down as they reached for their weapons. From the rear, Bohdan and Veli took down the stragglers with a woodsman's axe and a blacksmith's hammer.

Grim work by their faces. Bakunin seemed unbothered. When the dust settled, Bakunin wiped the blood from his blade and sheathed it. He looked over the stillness of the scene, save the flickering flame burning in the lead truck's engine.

"Well, you can't have a revolution without supplies. Let's see what the state has so kindly gifted us."

The three men threw open the back flap of the lead truck and peered inside.