They met when he was ten. A child picked up off the streets, hardly any Midgarian capable of tripping off his tongue. But Veldt like him. Veldt liked him a lot.

Maybe it was the fact that he was small and fragile, but had held his own against the desert creatures long enough to make it into the city. Maybe it was that, despite his size and inability to communicate, he had survived eight months in a city known for its gangs and child rapists. It could have been that within those eight months he had gained a reputation in theft high enough in the eyes of local shopkeeps and restaurant owners to have earned the playful nickname of The Ghost. But really, he would admit if even slightly pressed, it was because when they finally caught the child menace, and had backed him into a corner, Veldt's gun against the kid's forehead, he looked up at him with cold, dark eyes, and with the grace of the unarmed victim who knew he would still get away, said in perfectly accented Midgarian,

"I don't like you."

The kid had a penchant for acting. He was a terrific actor. And he had made Veldt laugh. Veldt liked him.

None of that acting had come into play the day he'd been taken in, however, barely ten years old, dirty, smelling of rot, and clothed in what looked like torn pillowcases tied together, their colour lost long ago. The fear he felt was plain on his face and in his eyes, and he could hardly contain his astonishment just stepping into the grand place. He had seen the Shinra building from the outside plenty of times, but there was no mistaking the beauty of it merely standing inside. The guards who had led him in urged him on as he stopped to gaze in wonder around him, above him, one so much as nudging him in the small of his back with a gun to make him walk. His dark, curious eyes turned instantly back to the man with a glare of annoyance that warned him without words not to try something like that again.

Rufus liked the way he was so assured of himself. He liked the boy's gleaming black eyes, first. Like a beetle, and hardly bearing more expression than the insect on an average basis. The thing that caught him the most, however, that had made him come down from his father's office, escape the clutches of his nanny, and hide himself near enough the stairs to watch the procession, was the word that there was a boy coming. Boy meant young, and Rufus only knew one other child worth mentioning. He was shuttled back and forth between his mother at the mansion in Nibelheim and his father's perpetual working place so often he never had the chance to make friends. The home-tutoring didn't help, and neither did the fact that Rufus' father was coming into very high power at the moment. Rufus narrowed his eyes. His vision had been clearer ever since the last time Professor Hojo had given him his check-up and shots (which was what he was supposed to be here for now), and he didn't like what he saw on the faces of the SOLDIERs escorting the boy. They looked hungry, like they wanted to hurt him...or worse.

Cautiously, peering around with the ostentatiousness of a child raised in breeding who thought he escaped authority for the stupidity of those around him, Rufus crept from his hiding place and started up the stairs. Suddenly, and with a cry that roused the entire floor, he was pounced on and came crashing down them. A giggling form with way too much obnoxiously bright red hair for his age had tackled him and was now rolling in happiness around on the floor, pulling at Rufus' child-sized suit and gazing at him happily, mischeivously. Rufus glared daggers.

"Renaud!" he scolded in a stage whisper, before turning his attention to the adults coming in clusters and hordes toward them. Rolling his eyes, he muttered to himself "Idiot...", starting back up the stairs as all attention went to the toddler who Rufus was sure was alright. Even if he had hit his head on the way down, it wasn't like any more damage could be done to a brain like his. A leg came down beside him, and Rufus threw his small body to the side, against the wall, as the tall, lanky form of the child's father flew down the stairs yelling threats in his mountain accent. Gaia, he thought with a sigh as he continued shakily back up the stairs, he was surrounded by numbskulls.

When he'd finally made it up to the Turk floor, having taken the stairs, he was relieved to find the child alone in the room. The door across from his was open, and the broad-shouldered man who lived in the room was laying on his side, smoking slowly and reading some sort of very glossy magazine that reflected the scarred half of his face in odd ripples and shapes. Rufus spared him half a glance, which he didn't return. That was fine. He knew he was there, and that was all that mattered. Rufus knew the Turks were more on his mother's side anyway, and they never ratted him out to his father or nanny. Well, except for Mr. Teliton, but he was a douchebag all the time.

Straightening out his suit, he didn't bother to knock as he let himself into the boy's room. He peered around the door cautiously, afraid of what he might find, but saw only the child sitting on his bed, eyes huge with fear and shaking.

"Hi," Rufus said casually, not having the concept at his age that there were some people who didn't speak a lick of his language and had no idea who he was. His father was President Shinra of Shinra, Inc.! Whoever heard of someone alien to that! "What's your name?"

The boy blinked at him, his expression unchanging, and the man across the hall, Jet, took the cigar out of his mouth and watched them. He didn't bother to wear a patch over the eye that was scarred shut, and it gave Rufus chills still sometimes. Apparently it scared the boy, too, as his eyes drifted from Rufus to the creature behind him, and he stared openly. Jet cocked the better half of his mouth into a reassuring smirk, and stuck the cigar back in it to return to pretending to read. He'd been there, once, just not so young. Poor kid.

"Hello?" Rufus said, effectively turning the boy's attention back onto him. He sighed and rolled his eyes a little, coming to sit cross-legged by the bed. "You're from Wutai, right? I can tell because your eyes are black and that wierd shape." Rufus paused, and the boy looked down, seeming now to be embarrassed. He understood the blond boy's words just fine - or passingly, at least - but he was much too intimidated to speak. Rufus started a bit as he heard Evander, the father of the kid who had jumped him, coming up the stairs with the sniffling brat in his arms. Slowly, he closed the door back behind him, shutting out the noises. There was an awkward pause as Evander walked by the door, greeting Jet as he went, and disappeared into his own double-suite at the end of the hall.

"Do you like toys?" The boy's head shot up at that. Rufus' bright eyes were staring him down now, and he blinked at him in something closer to curiosity than fear, this time. He was starting to notice the strange sheen over the other's eyes. He had seen blue eyes before, and they weren't like this. These were almost...glowing.

"T-toys?" he intoned softly, and Rufus tried not to sigh again. It would just be redundant at this point.

"Yeah. Toys. Things you play with," he explained with the audacity of a privileged child. As if he couldn't know what toys were, geez... "Of course you like them. You're a kid, like me." Rufus eyed him sideways suddenly, a dramatic imitation of the look his father gave people when he knew they were lying. "You are a boy, right? You're not, like, some monster that looks like a boy, or something?" The child's expression changed to one of outright confusion, tinged with the skepticism of a child of the streets. Now he was looking right, at least in Rufus' opinion. The blond boy shrugged nonchalantly, letting the comment pass. "But you do have a name, right?" The boy nodded, and Rufus raised a fragile eyebrow, waiting. He was silent for a moment, as if wondering whether he should lie, but after a hesitation he smiled softly.

"Zheng...Jiao-Long," he answered strongly, giving his name in the order he had heard it spoken as a child. "I am...not...boy," he said, slowly, measuring his words and tripping over the accent of them. Rufus raised both eyebrows and stifled laughter behind a hand.

"You don't speak well." It was a comment, which spoken by anyone else would have ended as a question. To Rufus it was just a fun fact. He shook his head, waving his hand dismissively. "That's okay, you're a homeless boy." Tseng glared at him, but Rufus was too busy with himself to notice. "Jiao-Long," he said after a moment, tasting the new words on his tongue, gazing around as he did so as if he were contemplating the validity of it.

"You are the one who doesn't speak so well," Jiao-Long mumbled to himself in his native dialect, finally catching Rufus' attention. Just as he had begun to ask the child to repeat himself, however, the door was flung open, and Rufus' nanny barged in and scooped him up, crying about how worried she was. She was flanked by SOLDIERs, and as the men with their bluish headgear turned their gaze onto the room's occupant, he slid back a little, moving into an offensive crouched stance. He wasn't exactly a tame little thing, and he knew now that he was in it big.

"Let me go!" Rufus whined, struggling in his nanny's grasp. "I just wanted to see the new boy!" Failing to get himself out of the large woman's clutches, he turned gasping toward the nearest SOLDIER. "You'd better not hurt him, or you'll have my father to answer to!" Rufus had learned the power of this phrase, especially within the corporation, and though the SOLDIER didn't so much as turn to him, he knew he had probably just saved the kid's life. The nanny finally set him down, holding tight to his hand as she dragged him out, muttering all sorts of things about how upset Hojo was for his being late, and how he wasn't going to get dessert, or something. Rufus didn't fight the grasp, but turned around to the boy as he was dragged off.

"Next time I'll bring toys," he said, earning the glance of one SOLDIER, and a grin from Jet. As the heir-to-be disappeared into the elevator down the hall, the big man stood and brushed himself off, taking the time to light a new cigar and puff down on it for a moment before stepping past the group of armored men and into the room.

"Sorry, boys, but this one's all mine. Wanna get your experimental asses outta here before I have to call security?" He cocked his head, giving them a look of patient indifference as he waited for them to leave, or even better for one of them to interject 'We are security'. He needed a good SOLDIER-induced chuckle today. But none of them said a thing, waiting for a moment before leaving as a pod. Jet watched them go, thinking about that euphemism, and turned his back on Evander as he came to lean against the doorframe.

"Hey Eva, whaddya think of this?" he said, using his cigar to gesticulate to the boy, who was still crouched like a cat on the bed, ready to spring, his dirty, matted hair falling over his face and dark, narrowed eyes. Evander laughed softly.

"Think it needs a bath, yo," he answered, coming up to Jet's side finally and offering a hand to the kid. He didn't budge, and Evander sighed a little. Taking another step forward, and all too aware of the fact that this made the child curl back just slightly, readying his body to move, he crouched near the bed and blinked at him blandly. As he moved down various places in his body popped and cracked, and it was this which made Jiao-Long blink back at him without moving. He could totally take this cat. Totally.

"What's ya name, kid?" he asked gently. Jet watched in silence. Evander was a lot better with kids than any of the others were, that was for sure. He had one of the little monsters! It almost made Jet shudder, and he often wondered if it was because Evander had reproduced and there was a little Evander to take over for the menace some day, or because he felt sorry for the kid that all he had was the man with the fucked up sunglasses as a role model. Oh, and all the other gun-slinging, sword-wielding pyromanics and sadists around here. If the kid didn't become a Turk, he'd become a psychiatrist.

Jet giggled a little at the image of a young Evander gazing kindly ahead and saying the stereotypical "And how does that make you feel?" Hell, the idea of Evander young was enough to make him burst into gigglefits. Jet coughed a little around his cigar, and earned a glancing glare from the older man.

"Zheng Jiao-Long, I think he said," answered Jet for the kid, making him loosen some. Not that Jet didn't have good enough hearing to have known what he'd said perfectly, but it had become a habit to most Turks to put things like that at the end of statements. It made people feel better. Evander continued to watch the child for a moment more, before speaking again.

"We aint gonna hurt ya," he said, his voice quiet and expression unreadable, waiting for the child to respond. He knew better than to trust that phrase. It had gotten him very, very hurt in the past. Jet snorted at the comment, biting a little at his cigar boredly.

"Don't lie to the kid," he said, toeing Evander's foot a little, and blinking innocently into eyes that turned to glare at him. It was just the distraction the child had been waiting for, and he pounced suddenly on Evander, his small body shooting forward like a bullet and taking him down while he was precarious on his feet. Evander swore loudly, and before Jet knew what he was doing he'd pulled out a gun and shot the child, the bullet boring a deep, large hole into his thigh. The child screamed like an animal, reeling in pain and continuing to scratch at Evander's face, while the room filled in seconds with suited men, guns and knives drawn. But just as quickly as it had begun, it was over. Evander flipped the child onto his back with ease the moment he had control of his body, and pinned him down by his wrists on either side of his small, thrashing body.

"You little shit!" he yelled, shoving the child onto the floor and sitting up to pull out his own handgun, holding the child to the floor with it against his chest. The kid stopped moving, though he was still panting like an animal, his entire tense demeanour and expression betraying how much pain he was in. Jet had a big gun, and it left big holes. Evander didn't want to think about just how very ruined his new pants were. There went his latest couple hundred gil.

"I should kill you, you insolent motherfucking brat," Jet spat at him, cigar lost by now amid the many pockets of his suit, his gun still aimed at the child, though now right between his eyes, to kill. A tense moment passed, while the boy stared up at Jet with true, unabashed fright, trying not to cry or scream from the pain that his body was just now starting to dull. Then suddenly the man uncocked his gun, tilting it up and striding out. A collective feeling of relief spread through the room, and the other Turks filed out, leaving Evander to deal with the child that was supposed to be Jet's charge. The man still had his gun pressed to his chest, and was still sitting on him, but Jiao-Long found himself feeling much more at ease no less. After a moment, Evander sighed, rolling his eyes and getting off him, putting his gun away. He glared at him a bit, crossing his arms.

"I should punish you for this, yaknow," he said, blinking coldly at the child. A chill ran through his body, and he winced. Evander's expression softened. "But...you deserve one night of rest." They all did, but they'd never get it. Bending down once more, he picked the child up carefully and carried him from the room, effectively ruining the rest of the suit. Just great. Maybe, just maybe, Veldt would let him off for it and loan him one till his next paycheck. He could only hope so.

"Zheng..." Bright green eyes peered around the doorframe into the hallway, watching the retreating form of his deadly father carry the new Turk to the infirmary. Renaud smiled. A new boy! Even if he was a Turk, he was still a boy. Rufus was no fun to play with anyway, he was always getting Renaud into trouble. But this one...this one was nice and quiet. Grinning to himself, the small child slipped back into the room, closing the door behind him and climbing back into bed. He was excited. Things were really about to change around here...