Disclaimer: FFVII not mine. Just playing with it for a while.
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Underlings
Part 1
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"HELEN!"
She sighed, saving her file, and got up for the sixth time in the past hour. Seventh, she amended as she went toward Brant's office. The sixth had been the tantrum about the broken copier upstairs. The one before that had been the shit fit over the "missing" Nibelheim file; it had eventually turned up on his desk exactly where she'd put it two hours ago, right under the business section of his newspaper.
And let's not forget number four, the criminal case of the timing of my coffee break. If he's going to pick that exact moment to try to print out a two hundred page report, instead of going and getting it from the files like anyone else with half a brain, he can damn well learn to unjam his own damn printer!
What a moron.
The door's nameplate read "G. Brant. Senior Accounting Assistant." Outside the office, she took a deep breath and practiced a demure smile. "Sweet and helpful," she muttered, putting her hand on the doorknob.
It twisted out of her hand as the door was jerked open from inside. A broad face, red with anger, was thrust right into hers.
"HELEN!—oh, there you are," Brant snapped as she recoiled and rubbed her ringing ears. "I need that cost report from Hojo. It's two days late! He never gives me his cost reports on time, and I'm the one who has to answer to the Accounting Manager of Shin-Ra at the end of the fiscal month, not him!"
Sweet and helpful, sweet and helpful, sweet and—"Shall I send him up a memo, sir?" Oops. She'd forgotten to unclench her teeth before speaking.
He didn't seem to notice. "Don't bother. I want you to go up there and stand over him until he gives it to you. I don't care what he's doing!"
Only her three years of grueling experience kept Helen level as she stared at her boss. Finally she managed, through a frozen smile, "His office is on 68, sir. I'm not cleared for that floor."
Brant swore and went back into his office. "You can take my keycard. If the slimy SOB has a problem with that, he can damned well get his own paperwork in on time so we don't have to come looking for it!" He rummaged through the stray papers, reports, and newspaper sections on his desk. "Where the hell—"
"Clipped to your right jacket lapel, sir."
He picked up his jacket from the back of his chair and pulled off the keycard. "Don't lose it," he warned as he came back and stuffed it in her hand; she had to grit her teeth again, and bite her tongue. Hard. "And I don't want to see you back down here unless you've got that report in your hand! Now go!" He shut the office door in her face.
She stood staring at the door for a minute afterward, fuming, her mind turning out all sorts of choice retorts now that it was safely too late.
Then again, it occurred to her, as she slowly clipped the card to her own jacket, if I'm up on 68 looking for Hojo, Brant'll just have to unjam his own printer after all.
Helen began to smile, genuinely this time, as she headed for the elevators.
---
She pressed the "UP" button and settled in for a rather long wait. With so many people coming and going all the time, it could take up to ten minutes to get an elevator sometimes.
The more she thought about it, the more this little trip seemed like a minor godsend rather than an imposition. She'd done overtime last night because Brant had insisted he needed her around while the maintenance techs worked on his computer. Then someone from Weapons Development had come down to argue some of the finer points of his latest expense report with Brant; in the ensuing two and a half hours of peace, she'd gotten well ahead in her work.
Of course, she could think of better ways to spend this little vacation-at-work than talking to Professor Hojo. She'd encountered him a few times; when he didn't carry on a one-sided conversation choked with scientific jargon, he seemed to eye her like one of the research specimens he was so obsessed with.
She heard the faint hum-rumble of the elevator approaching. That was quick. The elevator chimed, and she moved a few steps back in case anyone was getting out.
The doors slid open.
The trio inside the elevator stared out at her, and she blinked. A large, glowering crew-cut black man with—wait, was that a gun attached to his arm? She froze. The pretty but tough-looking brunette woman beside him smiled a bit too innocently. Helen's eyes moved on to the blonde young man standing in profile in front of both of them.
She recognized the First-Class SOLDIER uniform, if not the man wearing it. He turned his head and glared at her from under his spiked bangs. She gulped and took another step back as his narrowed, intense blue eyes glowed.
"I'll… get the next one…" she said faintly, taking another step back.
The blue eyes remained fixed on her until the doors slid shut and the elevator proceeded upward.
She stood there blinking, trying to recover her composure.
On second thought… I'll take the stairs. I need the exercise anyway.
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It was slower, but Helen had pulled herself together by the time she reached the 68th floor. She stopped to catch her breath, then made her way past the control rooms. The large testing room with the glass-walled specimen chamber was empty. A tech in the little control booth above waved at her. She waved back and came up the ramp and into the little office with "Prof. Hojo. Head of Science Dept." on the door.
Hojo's secretary, Lucy, was sitting at her desk, typing away. The door behind her was firmly closed. Lucy looked up over her glasses and smiled. "Hi, Helen. What brings you all the way up here?" As Helen approached, Lucy saw the keycard with Brant's name and picture on it. She tsked. "Is he trying to get you sacked? No, don't tell me; let me guess. The cost report?"
Helen rolled her eyes and leaned on the desk. "The cost report. He said not to come back without it."
"Well, you might as well sit down and cool your heels, then—he left half an hour ago." Lucy glanced at her desk calendar. "Said he was going to Lab C to check on the results of some tests, and after that he's got an executive meeting."
"I guess he didn't give it to you…?"
Lucy shook her head and smirked. "You know he never does. He enjoys handing it to Brant personally, two or three days late and handwritten in his illegible chicken-scratch. It's some kind of science geek power trip, I think."
"We 'science geeks' get so few thrills in life, Ms. Zera," said a dry, nasal voice. "You shouldn't begrudge us our few modest pleasures."
Helen spun around and found herself looking into the hard, black little eyes of Professor Hojo. She was actually taller by a few inches, but it only made her feel more like some gangly alien creature about to be put to the scalpel. She blushed.
"Hiya, Professor," Lucy said cheerfully, unperturbed. "Those tests work out for you?"
His gaze flicked aside to his secretary. "Quite well, thank you, Ms. Zera." He looked back at Helen. "Can I help you, Ms. Larkman?" His gaze fixed for a moment on the photo keycard clipped to her jacket. "Find you a better photographer, perhaps?"
She blushed even more. "Mr. Brant—"
"Ah, yes, the cost report," Hojo drawled, with a glint of humor. "Well, I cannot spare the time to finish preparing it just now. I must get downstairs for the executive meeting, and I have several other matters to attend to afterward. Perhaps you might spend the time downstairs in the employee lounge."
She blinked. Was he really serious? "Thank you, Professor, but I've already taken my break—"
"No matter. I hardly expect you to sit in my office and stare at the walls until I am available. If anyone questions you, you may refer them to me." He glanced at his watch. "I really must go. Ms. Zera, I believe you have not taken your break. Please keep Ms. Larkman company in the lounge until I return; I expect to be finished in no more than half an hour." He placed the file folder he'd been carrying into a basket on Lucy's desk and shuffled out.
Helen turned to see Lucy's jaw hanging, and laughed. "You weren't expecting that either?"
Lucy shut her mouth, and then grinned. "He must've really liked the results of those tests. Let's go!"
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This time they took the elevator—without incident, to Helen's relief. The lounge was a comfortable place, the acoustics arranged to provide a soothing hush, melodic with the soft flow of the water in the fountains. They took a table toward one end and Lucy went to get them a couple of coffees.
"Hey, Larkman! The hell are you doing back up here? Wasting company time is my job!"
Helen looked up and saw Ruby sidling up to her table. She smiled. "Not worried about Tseng catching you, Ruby?"
Ruby smiled and tossed her long black hair. "Nope. He checked in yesterday when he came back from his assignment, but he got sent right back out again. Fact, all the Turks are out. It's just Ellie and me up there, and we're bored out of our minds. We've done all our work. Now she's writing fake love notes from Reno to Rude and I'm looking for dating prospects in the SOLDIER records."
Lucy came back over as Helen and Ruby were laughing. "Hey, how goes it in the Shin-Ra Department of Dangerous People, Ruby?" she asked, plopping Helen's coffee down in front of her.
Dangerous people…
"Ruby, have you gotten any new SOLDIERs in lately?"
Ruby shook her head. "If by lately you mean in the last couple months, no. We've got a few in training that'll be ready in a few weeks, but they're at the Junon facility. Why?"
"I saw one on the elevator awhile ago that I didn't recognize. First Class."
Ruby raised her eyebrows and tapped her purple-painted nails on her cheek. "That doesn't sound right. All the Firsts are out on assignment right now—I checked the board. Are you sure it wasn't just a Third who washed his blue uniform with his red underwear?"
Lucy snickered, but Helen shook her head. "I don't think so. He looked like a First." Blue eyes, burning into hers…
"Ohooooo!" Ruby crowed, looking at Helen's expression. "Was he a babe? Should I be interested? Maybe he's a special recruit and his paperwork got delayed or something. He must be hot stuff, if he's already First Class." She stood up. "If you're just killing time, why don't you come upstairs with me? We can try and look him up in the records on the network."
"You can do that?"
"Sure! If he got recruited and trained in Junon, they'll have his records on their system, and the hard copy might not have made it across my desk yet."
Lucy stood up, but Helen hesitated. "Professor Hojo told us to stay down here until he was done with the executive meeting…"
"He said 'perhaps'," Lucy reminded her. "It sounded more like a suggestion than an order to me. I don't think he'll really care—he just kept you up here to annoy Brant."
"And no one deserves it more," Ruby added fervently, lowering her voice a bit. "That little pissant used to be up in the Turks' office every other day, hassling people about their expense reports." She snickered. "But not anymore. Do you remember the conniption he had last month when Reno turned in that prank expense report about a trip to the Honeybee Manor at Wall Market?"
Helen did remember. Brant had gone up to the Turks' office in person to rake Reno over the coals for that one.
She'd been present when Tseng had personally escorted Brant back down from the Turks' office. Tseng had asked him, in that hard, dead-level voice and with that hard, dead-level gaze, to kindly send inquiries regarding employee expense reports to his department via ordinary communication channels. Brant had gone meekly back into his office, subdued; Tseng had nodded politely to Helen and strolled out.
It had been one of her best days on this job.
Helen smiled finally, and stood up. "Okay…let's go."
---
There wasn't a lot of activity on 66 when they stepped off the elevator. The doors to the big executive conference room were open; no one was inside yet. Ruby led the way around and down another hallway to the door that read "Turks Central Office" and "SOLDIER Central Administration". "How come you're crammed into the same office, anyway? You'd think the Turks would rate their own," Lucy said as Ruby opened the door.
"The Turks had their own," Helen answered promptly as they stepped inside. Both desks in the outer office were unoccupied. "This was it. But the operations budget for SOLDIER got cut back some after Sephiroth died, and they got moved in here to make room for another department." She'd seen it in a report.
"Yeah. Tseng bitched for six months, but the President wouldn't listen, and he finally just gave up." Ruby picked up a handwritten note sitting on Ellie's vacant desk. "Aw, crap," she said, scanning it. "Speaking of Tseng. Looks like he called for information. She's downstairs digging through the files for something—she'll probably be gone a while." She tossed the note back and sat down at her own terminal. "Okay, let's see." She called up the network; Ruby and Helen leaned on the desk, looking over her shoulders.
She entered her password and accessed the Junon database. "Okay, Hel. What'd he look like?"
"Blond hair. Blue eyes. Um…maybe five-ten. Wiry."
Ruby typed, and entered the search. The result came back quickly—no matches.
She frowned. "You sure about the eyes?"
Helen nodded. "Definitely blue."
"Hmph. Well, lemme see." She removed the height and weight information and tried again. One match. "This him?"
Helen leaned closer to the photo displayed in the file, and shook her head. "No." The eyes were blue, but paler; the hair was darker—almost a sandy brown rather than blonde—and far too short, with no spikes.
Ruby frowned. "He's one of the Junon recruits, but it lists him as pending reassignment to this facility when his training's done. You sure that isn't him?"
"I'm sure."
Ruby tapped her fingernails on the keys for a moment without typing anything. "Well… I could check the classified files… I can do that without extra authorization, but that'll send up a red flag to Tseng and the President. Not sure I want to open that can of worms."
"But if someone's running around in a SOLDIER First Class uniform who shouldn't be, isn't that something they need to know about?" Lucy pointed out.
Ruby shrugged. "Not if he's a special recruit. If he is, Tseng already knows about him. Besides, who'd be crazy enough to try to impersonate a member of SOLDIER?"
Helen stared at the screen without seeing it. Those intense blue eyes glared back at her from her mind's eye. "He wasn't alone. There was a big black guy with him. He had a gun-arm."
Ruby turned to stare at her for a moment. "Well, why didn't you say so? That I can check!" She turned back to the computer and switched to another database, typing rapidly. She hit Enter.
Three suddenly pale faces stared at the screen.
Name: Wallace, Barrett, read the file. Background: Founding member of terrorist group known as AVALANCHE. Right arm surgically replaced with gun-arm attachment. Suspected in the bombings of two Midgar Mako reactors and the plate collapse that resulted in the destruction of Midgar Sector 7.
Threat Level B-1: High. Capture at any cost. Preferred alive.
"That's him," Helen whispered.
"You mean…he's in this building right now?" Lucy whispered back. "We have to tell someone, don't we?" She looked at Ruby. "We're in the SOLDIER office, can't you call somebody?"
Ruby was staring at the screen again, and she hit a key to advance to the next record. Helen blinked as the sweet-faced brunette woman's picture appeared. "I saw her, too! She was with them in the elevator!" Lockheart, Tifa was also listed as threat level B-1.
Ruby pressed the key once more, and Helen gasped.
The blue eyes stared intently out at her again from the photo. The image didn't capture the Mako glow, but it didn't matter; the cold, arrogant menace came through quite clearly.
Name: Unknown. Background: CLASSIFIED
Threat Level A-1: Maximum. Kill on sight.
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End Part 1
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