From Sixth: Disclaimer: You're goofy if you think I own anything of Final Fantasy. Just saying.
P.S.: You ever heard of that one thing...? You know, with Reeve? This is just a pondering of that...a small one. He's cool, isn't he?
P.P.S.: Please forgive any crudity to the writing. While edited and proofread by yours truly, like I said, it was just a pondering of things... Thank you to the few who might read this in advance. If you think I fail, oh hay, at least I'm achieving somebody's expectations. Thank you.
P.P.P.S.: Lol, Reign Game.
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He could normally not afford to be so caring. At ShinRa Incorporated, its employees were urged to check their emotions— ethics, too— at the door. When it came to certain mega-corporations, this was the done deal. As typical megalomaniacs, these select few grew and tended to shed all human skin and don gilded suits to hide the flayed atrocities beneath them. It had only been a few years since he first wedged his foot in that laser-guarded door, and being the comparative newbie to the rest of them, still the bigwigs followed with vegetable peelers and buckets for the impassioned skin they yearned to peel, as well as the gil they wanted to graft on right after with handheld torches.
But for all his worth, Reeve Tuesti maintained his charming humility. At least, he liked to think it was charming. Top-brass preferred to debase it. Yet, it was the only trait that made him stand out amongst the corporate muck.
That, and his creative spark.
"Why don't you tell people about it?" she asked.
"It's not something I can just throw out there," he had replied in turn.
While Reeve sat on the cold, metal bench holding one knee over the other, she knelt carelessly on the filthy concrete.
They both watched the little wooden figure twitch and wobble on its pin-like legs. It was the strangest thing: a bunch of kindling glued together, moving as if it were utterly possessed.
Her hands were the most tender looking things as they took care with the doll's twiggy arms. She helped it leap and dance and prance, just like a mother and her child playing outside on one fine day.
The girl's name was Aerith, Aerith Gainsborough. Officially, she was a ward of ShinRa. But for reasons Reeve never understood nor gleaned from coworkers, she was allowed to live 'free' down in the slums of all places. He thought that, for whatever her significance, they would have given Ms. Gainsborough some better accommodations.
"You threw it out there to me... So. Is it embarrassing?"
"Embarrassing is hardly my middle name," Reeve laughed, always hearty, always sincere. "But... There are people that I work with. They, ha... If I'm not locked up in a cage, I'll be lying on a table with my ribs spread."
She giggled, albeit it was a mite thoughtful. As if what he said had been in somewhat poor taste or doubtlessly made her think of worse things, but even a subtle show of mirth couldn't be helped. In turn, Aerith's great big green eyes flitted right up into Reeve's face, both pensive and questioning. Perfect child's eyes.
"Hehe, that's funny because...of, well, lots of things. But this, this is amazing. I've never seen anything like it. Would it really be so bad to share with everyone?"
"I've been thinking about it."
"The Planet must've been thinking something very special when you were born," Aerith said, surprising the older man halfway out of his shiny loafers.
"What do you mean by that?" he breathed, astounded.
"Oh, are you one of those people who don't believe the Planet's just like us?"
"Well, I..."
"With a heart and mind and soul and everything. It's only shaped different. And it makes plans and mistakes and miracles. It's crazy but...it's really nice, too."
Aerith cupped the waddling stickman in her fingers, smiling at it flail from the lack of solid footing beneath it. The little scene, while oozing endearment, was oddly thought provoking, the most provoking thought of all being...why was he here? Reeve had never pondered it much, especially while he sat there. Until just now, of course. Just what was he doing there, chatting it up with a girl young enough to be his daughter, if not his niece from a sibling twice removed? There was no relation, hardly a friendship. The acquaintance was still too fresh to mean anything, really. They were but bound by a single degree of separation. Or two. Or three, or even the whole six yards.
At first.
Now that they had met each other face to face, such degrees were no more. The separation was null. They were here, together, when he had once been over there and she, across the way. Behind walls, across streets, below buildings. Aerith had been just a name, sometimes a picture; she hadn't even been much of a person at all until spying her on the streets this destined day.
Fourteen.
But coming along far nicer than admissible.
Of course, awkward thoughts were awkward thoughts. Especially at his age and hers.
For Ms. Gainsborough's youth, however, she seemed to understand where Reeve was coming from with his...ability. Based on her eyes alone, she seemed to see the potential in how it could awe and astound, how it could bring light to dreary lives, and even inspire. Inspiration. He was beginning to feel it, really beginning to feel something. And Reeve needed that. The previous days had been rough on him; they had been grueling and listless in their slow crawl to accomplishment. The previous days had left him burnt out at best; completely and utterly trashed at worst. Today was a good day, though, one he hoped would be the first of more to come.
Aerith casually set the doll against the folded hands resting on his knee, where it abruptly went limp. She frowned in response, picking it up again to try to urge it to life once more. But it was no use. Tenderly, the girl shook the doll at Reeve, a slight frown sat creased between her fine eyebrows.
"Poor thing... It really seemed to like being alive. So, did you make this yourself?"
"I've made a lot of them, actually," he said, his head drooping slightly in admission. "I sit in an office for forty, maybe fifty plus hours a week. They make the tedium of a full-time job easier to bear..."
"What do you do, Mr. Tuesti?"
"I'm an architect. I design things, buildings and the like."
"Oh?"
Aerith made her new perch almost directly at Reeve's feet. She was close enough now to be able to rest her chin against his knee if she wanted, which would have been a gawky move to say the least. But her eyes were wondrous; it wouldn't have been too unexpected. The title always hooked people in. Architect. He was an architect. He envisioned, he designed, he created. People were in awe of that sort of power, technical as it was.
"Architect, architect..." The girl's frown went from sad to deliberating. It was a subtle change in her face that made her appear much older than she was. Reeve could have mistaken Aerith for a girl fresh out of teenage rather than fresh into it. "By design, you mean like drawing? Wow...That must be a fun job."
"Fun without guidelines or deadlines to stifle my creativity," he chuckled.
"So you draw and you can build things and give them life! Right?"
"Not so loud..."
"I can picture it a little. You're sitting there drawing and all these little stickmen are dancing and falling everywhere, and it's funny. Oh, and fun, fun to watch, right?"
Reeve shrugged his shoulders, rocked back and forth with mirth on his rear by the girl's bright-eyed chattering. "Haha... I suppose."
"Imagine what else you could make dance... Books and chairs, and...um... Can you do that with real things, like people? And animals?"
"No, unfortunately," he said, his usually stern features turning dark and soft. "No."
"Did I say something wrong-"
"Oh, it's not that, Ms. Gainsborough, I..."
"Just call me Aerith, Mr. Tuesti," the girl told him, smiling.
"Then you can just call me Reeve. The Mr. part makes me feel old..."
"I wonder what it feels like," the girl uttered, looking away.
Reeve had turned his eyes in the direction of Aerith's gaze but he saw nothing in particular. There were only people walking by, some wandering at their leisure, others on the way to pressing business, and yet others patrolling the streets as ShinRa's somewhat faithful watchdogs. It was Midgar as it should have been and almost always was. But he had to think about it, the things she mentioned and caused him to remember. What he could do didn't work on live things, live matter. He'd learned that the hard way in his youth.
Ticker was a good cat, so good that his death left his mother beside herself for days. Mama Ruvie knew of her son's ability and pressed and pressed him to do the deed. But it didn't work out like that, much to their dismay. So they both had to move on with still that tiny hint of sorrow marring their hearts.
To this day, Reeve still searched for a way to truly preserve Ticker's memory short of stuffing the poor cat and mounting him on a stand for display.
Mama never would have wanted him around like that. She had wanted him to return to the Planet whole. Because, she believed, much like this girl had to believe.
"I'll admit," he began, urging Aerith's attention fully back to him, "that it feels like...a surge. Of something."
"Oh? What is it?" she queried, her airy, curious voice sweet enough to rot his teeth.
"I'm not sure. Perhaps you could say, it's like a bolt of electricity. It moves down my arm right into my fingertips and it stays there, tingling. Until I touch something that I want to move, that I want to influence... Understand?"
The girl looked away a second time, the motion of her neck so sharp that it appeared she was looking out for something or someone while letting her long chestnut hair whip her in the face. Reeve followed her gaze again but there wasn't a thing to see other than the usual, uninteresting passersby. Then, suddenly, she lifted a hand towards him.
"Give it a try?" she giggled. "You're a very nice man. Maybe you'll influence me to great things one day?"
The man stammered quietly at her straightforwardness. No one had ever offered to be subjected to his ability, to his touch. Of course, no one save for his mother and now this girl ever knew what he was capable of.
"Are you sure?"
"Sure I'm sure! Please?"
Aerith playfully slapped at Reeve's hands as they still clung to his raised knee. Hesitant, he lifted one, stared at it and then down at the girl. Her eyes were far more intense now than when they first crossed each other. The indescribable light that dimly twinkled unnerved him. But, thinking that perhaps he'd never see her again after this, what was the harm in catering to her small plea this once?
He reached down, palm supine and ready to take her hand in his. The girl smiled and nodded at the same time, plucking her little fist in his comparatively larger one.
Her skin was soft. Reeve couldn't help but be unnerved just a bit more.
"Oh!"
She jumped to her feet, visibly charged before they both knew it. His fingers had barely just begun tingling, too. Would she be one of few but many to be sensitive to this weird power?
"Oh wow," Aerith said breathlessly. "That felt really weird..."
She moved, energized, with near invisible ripples forming all around her. Her shoulders shrugged anxiously beneath the powder blue jacket she wore, enough that she could have shrugged out of it in less than a minute given the urgency that surrounded her too petite body.
Reeve sighed, feeling charged as well. He ran trails of the cool sensation across his scalp with his fingers through his hair. The sight was an amazing one in its own right. Aerith literally would not stop moving in place, close to breaking into dance like the little stickman he kept with him away from the office. His own touch didn't work on himself like it did with the girl. But, oh, if it did...
A lot more work would certainly get done, with spare time to boot.
"Haha..."
Aerith drew her small hands together, as if getting ready to pray, but she had only lifted them to her mouth and laughed, looking away yet again. "Wow, oh... I should really get...going. My mom must be worried about me. She thinks I'm trusting with strangers around here. Don't wanna make her fret anymore than she has to. So, it was nice meeting you, Reeve. Maybe we'll see each other again."
"O, oh, of course," Reeve nodded.
The girl had dropped a hand to shake with the man, but pulled it back knowing she'd just suffer another, what he could only assume, was an exhilarating jolt. Instead, she giggled like a schoolgirl, bowed her head and ran off down the street.
He felt something here. He couldn't pinpoint it. Perhaps, it was inspiration of his own in some twisted fashion. But inspiration for what?
"Mr. Tuesti."
"Huh?"
Before him stood a new youth— although he had to use the term loosely here. It was one with all the familiar intensity of a fellow ShinRa employee. Yet, at the same time, this was certainly not someone affiliated with his company division, if directly with ShinRa at all.
The dot in the middle of the youth's forehead alone was reason enough to assume this.
"You are...?"
"A friend of Aerith's."
"Oh."
"I don't think you should be socializing with her."
Reeve coughed into a balled up fist, discomfited by the younger man's suggestion. "I, I was only saying hello. If anything, she initiated conversation. I was just being good-natured..."
"I saw what you two were doing. If you don't want to 'end up on a table with your ribs spread,' I suggest you consider this the last time you meet with Aerith. My apologies."
Reeve's face reddened with almost frightful awe at the youth's blatant yet calmly worded threat. This sort of shadiness was warranted only by the top brass of ShinRa hierarchy, namely the president and his son, the vice president-to-be, shortly followed by Scarlet and Heidegger with their dealings in weapons and 'public safety'.
The black-haired and darkly dressed youth bowed out of the man's company, to wander off on Aerith's former trail to the depths of the slums.
"Ahem." Reeve adjusted his tie and blue blazer before rising from the bench. It was times like these that it was best if he just forgot they ever happened.