Helios, Thalen, and Kurai arrive at the Moogles' workshop-restaurant. The machines are still humming from the day's synthesizing. The Victorian Moogle, leads them upstairs to a small loft built above the restaurant. The air smells faintly of ozone and cocoa powder.
"Not much, kupo, but it's cozy!" says one of the Moogles, bouncing on a stool.
Helios thanks them with polite precision, scanning the room automatically—habit from months of sleeping in half-functional places. Thalen stares at the mess of blueprints and snack wrappers, equal parts amazed and overwhelmed.
Helios smiles faintly. "Perfect. I place where I can write and eat suits me."
Kurai lounges near the window, unimpressed. "Smells like burnt sugar and annoyance."
"That's innovation," Helios answers dryly. "Go easy on the kid. I'll be back in an hour."
She arches a brow. "You don't trust him to breathe unsupervised?"
"You're the one I don't trust to supervise if I don't mention this."
Her glare could peel paint. Thalen looks between them, caught in the crossfire.
Helios just grins, adjusting his coat. "Train him for me when you can. If he starts whining, bribe him with ice cream." Then he slips out the door before either can retort.
Outside, Traverse Town's narrow alleys glimmer under dim lanterns. Steam rises from chimneys, rainwater pooling in the cracks. Helios walks alone, his footsteps echoing softly as he passes through the gate into the Second District.
The place is quieter than usual—the Moogles said that there were fewer Heartless now, thanks to Leon's patrols. The air hums with latent tension, like the city is holding its breath. He passes the hotel, the gizmo, and the fountain still carved with butterflies.
It was strange being back here so long without trying to see Leon and his group. This is where Radiant Garden's survivors rebuilt their lives—scraps of a lost world stitched together with courage and hope.
Helios remembered the last time he saw Cid—sweat, smoke, the roar of the Eclipse Drifter taking off, Cid slumped unconscious in the cockpit while the city burned behind them.
He'd scrambled parts of the man's memories before sending him away, cutting out every trace of those final days. So in Cid's mind, he saved himself and never met Helios as Radiant Garden fell.
"He taught me how to program and build," Helios murmurs. "And I left him with a hole where that bond should've been."
He stops at a small corner garage, light spilling from the windows. The faint rhythm of machinery hums inside.
Helios pushes the door open. The smell of metal, smoke, and hot oil rushes out to meet him. Inside, an older man works beneath a hanging lamp, his hair gray, his posture still solid. Sparks jump as he welds something that looks like a stabilizer core.
"Cid," Helios says quietly.
The sparks die. Cid looks up, squinting through the haze. "If that's another Moogle tryin' to sell me overpriced bolts, I swear—"
His sentence dies halfway through. He stares, eyes narrowing in confusion that slowly shifts to disbelief.
"…Kid?"
Helios inclines his head. "Yeah, it's me."
For a long second, neither moves. The lamp hums overhead, filling the silence with a mechanical heartbeat.
Cid sets down the welding torch. "I'll be damned," he mutters. "Well, I'll be damned. It's been months with no sign of ya, so I was starting to believe ya were dead, or worse. I heard from Leon and the gang that ya were okay and stopped by here, but never visited me. Hurt my feelings, kid."
Helios smirks faintly. "Sorry about that. There were so many things to do, and I was always just passing through."
"Still got that mouth on you. Don't worry, kid, I don't blame ya." Cid wipes his hands on a rag, then gestures at the cluttered bench. "Well, don't just stand there. Grab a seat before you start collectin' rust."
Helios sits, his eyes wandering over the familiar chaos—half-built engines, old flight cores, scattered Gummi blueprints scrawled in handwriting he instantly recognizes. For the first time in a long while, something like nostalgia cuts through the static of his thoughts.
Cid lights a cigarette. The flame glows orange, painting his face in warm shadow. "When Leon told me about Merlin also being here, I figured you'd visit more often. But then Merlin said that those things that destroyed Radiant Garden were after ya, so you could never stay in a place for too long."
"Trouble and I travel in the same circles. Yeah, the Heartless, ah, that's what we call those things, they do chase after me. So I can never stay in a place for too long. It's a little funny that I'm always in trouble," said Helios as he silently praised Merlin for giving him such a cover story.
"That's not a joke," Cid grumbles. "It's a diagnosis."
Helios chuckles softly. "I'll take it as concern from an old friend and mentor."
Cid eyes him for a long moment. "You look like you've been rebuilt more times than my engines, and that's saying something, kid. What happened?"
"Too much," Helios says simply. "But that's not why I'm here."
Cid exhales smoke, watching the thin stream curl toward the rafters. "Then what? Don't tell me you came all this way for nostalgia."
"I came for your expertise," Helios replies. "I'm working on an interesting new system with the Moogles, and I need your skills. It will be a system that bridges emotion and circuitry—turning hearts into structured data."
Cid groans. "You're tryin' to make computer programs feel, aren't you?"
"Not just feel," Helios corrects. "But also understand."
"That's definitely something that blows up."
"Then I'll make sure it doesn't blow up."
Cid laughs once, sharp and tired. "Same old Helios. Still makes everything sound easier than it is. I wonder if that's a personality trait."