Prologue
She clutched the stack of folders to her chest as though they were worth their weight in gold. This time she was determined, this time they were going straight to President Shinra himself. No one else would get their hands on them—they were going straight into the in-tray and that was the end of it.
She blew at a strand of hair that obscured her vision. It was late in the day and her prim 'early morning up-do' had decided to unravel, piece by piece.
There was one more corridor to go! One more dull, grey corridor!
She'd never been in the President's office before, although she'd heard the rumours. Rumours of handsome grey eyes and charming smiles, his firm handshake and smooth voice…
She smiled happily to herself. Wait until Dela in accounting got wind of this!
For the personal assistant to the assistant to the assistant to the assistant of the President, floor sixty was a pretty big deal. Down in human resources they couldn't fit all that on a key-card, so hers simply read SECRETARY to LEVEL 24. It was a long chain of command in the PA world, but ShinRa didn't like to skimp on the details, and the highly sought after level sixty key-card in her pocket was proof of that.
Only a select few had access to this grandiose level. It was only by chance that she'd been the only secretary not on lunch, maternity leave, sick leave or a cigarette break at the precise moment the files had been handed over.
That seemed to be the case a lot, actually. She supposed it was because she didn't get out much, and didn't have much luck with men, and didn't smoke, and couldn't afford to take sick days. In fact, if there was a job that needed doing it always seemed to land on her shoulders. She was fairly certain that should she, the smallest employee in the building, ever dare to take a sick day the whole company would fail instantly. She shuddered to think of the economic implications.
She hitched the folders a little higher. The corridors up here sure were long…
But there it stood, the elevator! The shiny, well-oiled, foreboding presidential elevator!
Hands shaking she retrieved the key-card from her pocket, pressed the silver button and swiped it. Seconds ticked over…the panel flashed green…
The doors purred open gracefully and…
CRASH!
Reno stared down at the flushed, highly flustered secretary whom he'd walked straight into, an expression of bemused apology on his face. She perched her glasses skew-whiff on her head and mumbled apologetically, trying to collect her files together from her position on the floor.
He scratched his head. "What're you doing down there, babe?" He leaned over, squishing the files into some semblance of a pile and thrusting them into her arms. She looked…appalled. "Funny place to take a break."
Slightly nonplussed by her expression he held a hand out, expecting her to take it. Instead she scrambled to her feet without his help, cheeks now so red he could have sworn they were throbbing, and turned so quickly on her heel he expected to see a dent in the floor.
He watched her practically run away from the elevator and shook his head. It was official, ShinRa secretaries were weird.