Aeris frowned. Tasha didn't even care that she'd given up smoking weed last night.
Then again, Aeris hadn't had much time to tell her...Tasha'd just run from the house.
She picked up the phone and dialed.

"Sephiroth, Aeris is on the phone for you."
Sephiroth looked up from his math homework and picked up the cordless extension in his room. "I've got it, Mother!" He shouted. Then he listened over the line to make sure his mother had actually hung up.
When he was sure she had, he spoke. "Hey. What's up?"
"Something is up with Tasha, Seph." Aeris sounded strange.
"Like what?"
"I dunno." Aeris's voice shook. "I think this whole thing with Cid has got her a bit more broken up than she's willing to admit."
"Hey, what's up with you? You sound....happy..." Sephiroth said.
Aeris laughed. Laughed. "Yeah. Amazing what a little regression will do to a person." He could hear the laughter in her voice. "But seriously, Seph. Something is wrong with Tasha."
"What should I do?"
"I don't know. Just help her." Aeris paused, and then spoke again, quickly. "She was there for me when I needed her, even though I didn't want her to be at the time. And I have to be there for her, now. But I can't." She sighed. "So you get to be my representitive."
Sephiroth smiled. "Okay. When you put it that way..."
"Thanks, Seph. I'll talk later, but I'm busy right now."
"Well, see you around."
"Yep. Bye!" And with that she hung up.
"How strange." Sephiroth said to the dead receiver.

"Cid, what happened last night?" Reno asked, deadpan.
"What?" Cid asked, blinking up at Reno, who had somehow found his hideout in the park.
"Last night. What happened with Tasha that had her so messed up this morning." It wasn't a question.
Cid sighed. "I don't know, and I don't think she does, either. We were both drunk."
"Ah, fuck." Reno said, sliding down to the ground. "That just fucks it all up, doesn't it."
"Yup." Cid lit his cigarette with Tasha's lighter, and sat with his knees in front of him, idly tapping at it. "It's all fucked up. Goddamn Shera."
"You know, I think she might be in trouble, too." Reno said, idly taking one of Cid's cigarettes and lighting it with a lighter of his own. "She wasn't at school yesterday, and she wore a jacket on Thursday. Not normal at all."
Cid looked at Reno, quizzically. "You've gotten awfully perceptive in a week, Reno."
Reno grinned. "Nah, I've always been perceptive. I just let things get in the way of my receivers."

Lucrecia coughed. She was coughing a lot lately.
Which worried Vincent.
There was a knock at the door, and then in breezed Sephiroth. He grinned at Lucrecia. "I never got to finish my conversation with you."
Lucrecia looked at him. "About the donors and such?"
"Yeah...seems my mom has a little secret that might save your life, Lucrecia." Sephiroth said, smiling faintly.

"Hey, what's wrong, Tasha?"
Tasha looked up from her cake-making duties. "What? Oh, nothing. I'm just into this one..."
Renee, the shift leader for this shift, shook her head. "No, you've been staring at that cake for five minutes. The ice cream has melted." She pointed. Tasha laughed, wryly.
"Ah, the joys of working at DQ. I'll have to clean it up, too." And with that, she scraped the ice cream goo off of the cardboard and into the garbage, and the cardboard itself soon followed.
"Seriously, though, what's wrong?"
Tasha smiled. "Nothing. Everything is fine."
"Well, I hope so. Kathy is gonna be pissed off if she finds out that another one of the people who can make cakes is goofing around on the job."
Tasha grinned at her. "I'll stay on task from now on, I promise."
"I hope so." Renee said, turning back towards the front of the store, where customers awaited.
Tasha stared at the cake making table. I hope so, too. And she wasn't just talking about ice cream cakes, either.

Sephiroth coughed. Lucrecia wanted an explanation, of course, but he wasn't sure how to go about it.
"Okay. Lets make it simple." Sephiroth said, grinning childishly. "You don't know who your mother is; I don't know who my father is."
Lucrecia blinked once, and again. "So?"
"I mentioned to my mom that my friend Lucrecia had come down with cancer and she all of the sudden had a big interest in your last name..." Sephiroth trailed off.
"Anyways, we found you a marrow donor. Perfect match." He finished.
"What? Where?" Lucrecia still wasn't getting it.
Sephiroth pointed to his chest. "Right here." He grinned. "As much as it sucks to know, you're Jenova's daughter."
"I'm what?"
"You're my sister!"

Tasha sighed, tiredly. She threw the cake apron on the hook on the door and bid everyone at DQ a farewell for the night. Then she opened the back door to get to the van and then home, where she could nap.
Or not.
Cid was leaning up against her van, smoking nonchalantly, as if nothing had ever happened. He did seem kind of out of it, but that could just be that he was wearing the same clothes he'd been wearing last night and his hair was rather unkempt.
Tasha frowned and attempted to ignore the fact that he was sitting on her hood, but he wouldn't let her.
"We need to talk, Tasha." Cid said, seriously. Tasha scowled.
"No, we don't." She said, sitting down on the drivers seat and starting the engine.
"I'm not getting off the van."
"Then you're going to have a bit of a ride." Tasha said as she backed out of the parking space, a bit rougher than she needed to.
Cid jumped off the hood and watched it as it drove off. He frowned.
Why was she being so irrational?