"Since it is necessary for the prince to use the ways of beasts, he should imitate the fox and the lion… it is important to be a fox in order to understand the snares, and a lion in order to terrify the wolves."-Machiavelli

The Prince

"The president is dead."

This fragment of information rattled out from inside a hazardous chemical protection suit, amplified harshly through a set of speakers. Custodian 05, whose helmet was off despite regulations because he'd needed to vomit, heard the news unaided by his radio.

"Shit." He said, after wiping his mouth. Then, raising his suit's microphone to his lips, "Really?"

"That's what I heard from the guys upstairs."

"Holy… I mean, it's confirmed and everything?"

"Turks all over the goddamn place. Trying to keep it from getting out too soon, like that was the worst of their problems."

"Oh what the fuck. What a fucking disaster."

"You can say that again."

Custodian 05 leaned against the pipe of his disinfectant hose, surveying the stretch of hall still in front of him that waited to be sprayed down. It was lit by the dim green emergency lights that made human skin look ghostly and turned blood the color of crude oil. There was still quite a lot of blood marbling the floors.

"What do the upper levels look like?"

"Beat the hell up. But nothing like down here. Not up to our asses in SOLDIER guts, anyway."

Custodian 05 retched. A team up ahead of him was hosing the walls and trying to isolate sparking light fixtures. The fires had all been put out by now, the smoke soaked up by neutralizing gases. There wasn't enough mako in the lights to be much of a problem; but there was plenty of smoldering plastic and melted ceramic to warrant the chemical safety suits.

Long scars on the walls looked as if some enormous beast had run its claws along the interior of the hallway; and it might have been, given the rumors of what Shinra kept in its basements.

Teams had been finding pieces of the Science Department staff so viciously mauled they could not be identified. In some ways the SOLDIERs had gotten off easy. Their slaughter had been quick and efficient, while the scientists had received the brunt of their attacker's malice. One level of the High Security Labs had clearly seen earth-materia action. It looked like a landslide, and it would take serious excavating equipment to free up.

"Custodians, clear the area, move aside!"

05 and his companion dodged to the edge of the hall, making way for a team of medics barreling down the passageway while trying not to slide on the floors slick with chemical wash. Between them they hauled a stretcher bearing a limp uniformed figure, unique in that he was not encased by a plastic body bag.

"Is that…?" 05 blinked.

"Probably the colonel."

The upper-floor crewman whistled, the shrill decrescendo distorted by his suit's filter. "There goes the hero of the day. Lucky son of a bitch."

"Lucky for us. How much worse would it be down here, if he hadn't been there?"

"I'm trying not to think about it."

Custodian 05 put his helmet back on with a grunt. "Well, at least someone'll get a raise out of this mess. Better him than me."

.

It went without saying that the colonel would be promoted.

SOLDIER needed a general; now, after this unforeseen and expensive tragedy, more than ever. He was young, certainly, but so had been his predecessor by traditional standards.

The decision was made while the colonel was still recovering in the hospital ward, unconscious and not in a condition to vote on the matter. The promotional ceremony itself was just a formality; in reality he had been acting as SOLDIER general for almost a year now, ever since his superior officer, Sephiroth, had vanished from his post at Nibelheim.

In Sephiroth's absence, the colonel had displayed a natural aptitude for leadership. He'd even come to the attention of the company president for his accomplishments concerning the terrorist group AVALANCHE.

Now, of course, the president was dead, and that was all the more reason to resolve the issue without delay.

Fortunately his promotion would be popular with the troops; the young commander had made quite a favorable impression with his single-handed defense of Floor 67. Without his efforts, Sephiroth would have raided the headquarters undetected, like a rabid wolf in a pen of drowsy sheep, and the body count would have soared uninhibited.

As it was, the only significant casualty of the evening had been the president of Shinra Inc., a loss that would probably be mourned by an exceedingly select minority- one that did NOT include his surviving heir-in-exile.

In the now-overflowing emergency care ward, a swarm of imposing figures merged into huddle of muttering and clicking footfalls. Clustered around a single recovery-unit, the primary Shinra Heads of Department resembled nothing so much as reluctant vultures.

Beneath the circle of pinched faces, the colonel's eyes were closed, his handsome face tranquil under an oxygen mask. The lapels of an indigo uniform hung open on his heavily bandaged chest, rising and falling so slowly it was scant indication he was still alive.

The heads of department nodded in mutual assurance. This was the only thing to be done. The hierarchy was in complete disarray; there was no one but themselves to finalize the decision.

And this would be a good decision, at least for them.

The collective authority of Shinra looked forward to having a popular, idealistic, and above all human replacement for Sephiroth. While undoubtedly a boon to the military and the key to Shinra's continuing monopoly abroad, Sephiroth had been altogether too troubling, too alien and unmanageable for their tastes. Lying here was someone who they could all understand; someone who had come to power though the traditional means of nepotism and bribery. Not the child of strange science, but of a rich family from an even richer and more influential alliance of aristocrats, many of whom held stock in Shinra Electric Power.

The colonel was, to the best of their knowledge, a talented and good-looking figurehead, charismatic enough that he would put a good face on their operations and draw little fire from the public sector. He was gifted and competent, but not supernaturally so.

They might even be able to bully this one, and that thought was comforting.

Brigadier-General Heidegger exchanged looks with his more voluptuous counter-part, Chief Engineer Scarlet. The two of them shared a unique understanding and mutual ambition. They had been the only objectors to the young colonel's promotion. Heidegger had been perfectly willing to absorb the entire SOLDIER program into his own division, Public Safety and Defense, but Hojo would hear nothing of it, and his vote held more weight. The professor was conspicuously absent from the gathering, as he generally was from all staff meetings.

"What are you waiting for? Do it already!" jittered Director Palmer, perpetually manic and unpleasantly cheese-faced as always.

Heidegger turned his imposing bulk on the diminutive Director of Aeronautics and Space Exploration. "As if you had a damn thing to do with the workings of the military, or any other useful department! Stay out of business that doesn't concern you!"

"Shut up and get on with it." drawled Scarlet, pouring smoke out of her mouth with each syllable, ignoring protests from the head nurse. "The press is waiting for a statement from you upstairs and I don't want to be the one to tell them that Shinra Inc. has been castrated as well as beheaded."

In the heated silence Heidegger bristled, but having no orderlies around to manhandle, he simply scowled and produced a red leather case from his pocket, opening it to reveal its gleaming contents.

The medal was gold, though its color was significantly washed out by the green-tinged lighting of the emergency ward. On its embossed face was a beautifully ornate lion's head, snarling in defiance of evil. Heidegger pinned it roughly to the unconscious hero's lapel. It sat well against the blue and white of his uniform. Somewhere inside the pin, a digital recognition occurred that was silently registered in a database in the lowermost floor of Shinra HQ. The deed was done.

The heads of department looked at each other, and then back to the unpolluted face of colonel Treize Khushrenada, now general, relieved to find nothing intimidating at all about his sleeping visage.

And this was a blessing, because it meant that they would have only one threat to deal with this quarter, and that one thing was very, very worrying by itself: The return of the prodigal son.

.

Gold was the color of the clubroom ceiling, and gold was the color of every other checker tile on the floor. It was the color of the plates on which expensive food was served, and of the shimmering lamé that draped across the breasts of opportunistic women, and the chairs they sat on, and the rings on their arms and fingers, and the trim on the tablecloths, and the shining surface of the bar. The metal straw that was used to chime indelicately against the side of an empty wineglass was also gold, though the glass was unfortunately made of fine crystal, which cracked up one side and shattered into itself.

"Drinks! Drinks for all of you, my faithful and devoted throng of spineless, boring, harpies! You, who don't have the grace and ambition God gave a one-legged blind Chocobo; yes, you! My pestilent flock of idiots… Let me fund your hopefully fatal habits, so that I may be rid of your company sooner!"

A sloshy cheer of self-congratulation rose up from the ranks of party guests. The club owners cheered as well, aware that there was no damage to their property, staff, or customers that this offensive, boy-faced tycoon couldn't reimburse on the spot, as they had discovered over the months that he'd spent as the Gold Saucer's reigning prince.

Currently, the evening's darling was standing atop the bar counter in white patent leather shoes, scuffing the surface with the ease of one who has never had to clean scuff marks off of a polished surface and the impunity of one who can afford to ignore the complaints of those who do. With a seemingly bottomless supply of both Gil and bad humor, he had gained quite a following of perpetual socialites and boozers who were willing to put up with any kind of verbal abuse as long as they were entertained.

"Rufus, baby, you are so drunk." Giggled a tall brunette escort with exaggerated curvature, tugging on the blonde man's sleeve. "This is the second time you've bought drinks for the house today."

"So? I can afford it. I can afford everything here."

The brunette licked her cherry-red lips and slid closer. "Does that excite you?"

"Not even remotely." Rufus slid heavily into his chair. "Just because something's expensive doesn't guarantee it's not cheap." He looked the woman in the eyes with casual viciousness, his own bloodshot and glassy.

The woman who'd courted his arm that week smiled with no humor, running her fingernail along the edge of the bar with a horrible, thin noise.

"Cute." She uncrossed her legs and stood, half a foot taller in heels than the Shinra heir. The young man hunched around his glass of vodka, his face frozen.

The escort tweaked his collar, faintly disgusted. "You never change out of this pretty white suit. You look like pigeon shit in cotton candy, baby. Spoiling all the fun." With that, she left him for greener and less abrasive pastures.

A giant chromed clock adorned with a kaleidoscope dial struck midnight, playing a carnival tune over the drone of intoxicated revelry and heavy dance music.

Rufus sprinted to the bottom of his glass and clutched his head. The peppy cacophony of arcade and bar noises offended him to his very core, as did the glitzy decor and unabashedly useless nature of the Gold Saucer itself. He hated literally every inch of its gilt mushroomoid structure, and yet he couldn't make himself leave. Where else was there for him to go?

He decided he wasn't nearly drunk enough yet to think about it.

It had been 43 hours and twenty-eight minutes since his last contact with Tseng. If he was drunk enough, he could stop himself from adding seconds to the tally. Tonight, even abusing the inebriated Saucer guests wasn't helping him keep his head together. Not enough.

The inactivity was killing him. He needed something to do, something SHINRA. He missed the congested heart-beat of the city, where the steel grind and enzyme juices of bloody, pulsing life happened.

Total freedom had been his father's idea of a cure for willful youth and ambition; no responsibilities, constant parties, expensive cars, expensive women, unlimited allowance, political immunity, and all the trouble a rich boy with a pretty face could get up to… that was supposed to ensure he lost interest in a real company position.

With the disappearance of SOLDIER General Sephiroth, Rufus had gotten his hopes up. Surely, a blow to the company's security like that would mean a recalling of all available assets? A recalling of him? Could his father really afford to keep him away, at a time like this?

But apparently, the old man had never even considered it.

Loss of authority had been a long, painful slide for Rufus. At first, the unbearable nearness to his father had been made acceptable because as Vice President, he'd been allowed some modicum of actual power. But, oh, how he had stretched and pushed at the boundaries of that honorary position! When he'd inevitably become a nuisance to Shinra Sr. and his cronies, they'd shunted him to a corollary branch of Public Safety and Defense. It had chaffed at first, as the first of many such blows. But at least he'd been given control of the Turks stationed in Midgar. That had been a godsend.

There was a directness to that position that Rufus had grown to love. Observing the city from its streets, he'd see the faces that carried out his policies, and witnessed first hand the consequences of his orders; something he doubted his father had ever had to do.

The only adverse consequence Shinra Sr. had ever had to put up with as a result of his actions was his son.

The Turks had remained the locus of Rufus's world for several years, until once again overstepping some finicky territorial boundary of his progenitor's, he was exiled to Junon under the pretense of looking after the one, measly, salt-corroded mako reactor stationed there. And he had done his best- he'd been productive as hell, in fact. By the time he was finished, that reactor was processing enough mako to power a real city, instead of a disgusting, folksy, backwater fishing village. Not that anyone appreciated his efforts.

But then had come the deathblow: an enormous Weapons Development project slated for Junon Harbor. Rufus had been out on his ear with a single phone call, stripped of his license, stripped of authority, denied access to all Midgar passcodes, robbed of the Turks... spat out. Left with nothing but a boiling, insatiable frustration with everything his father did and stood for.

Scarlet had watched as the newly-exiled VP walked onto the deck of his 'birthday present', a yacht bound for Costa Del Sol, from the window of the freshly vacated office.

His office.

She'd smiled at him, a long cigarette holder between her manicured fingers. He would never forgive her for that.

When he'd grown sunburnt and tired of Costa del Sol, Rufus masochistically turned to the Gold Saucer, feeling drawn to it as a playboy graveyard. It was a place for him to stew in his own self-pity while he waited for any kind relief from the company; or until he died of misery in the tawdry embrace of the world's most glamorous, gold-plated shithole.

But he couldn't make himself give up on Shinra Inc.

Tseng, dependable, unsparing, eagle-eyed Tseng, had been sending the news and gossip and whatever else he could report from Midgar on a daily basis. Rufus had depended on those transcripts as if they were the only things supplying him with nourishment. They kept him alive. As long as he had information, he had hope.

But it had still been six years of increasing disgrace, two and a half years since he'd been home, a full year since he'd had any real influence in the company, nine years since his mother died, 25 years since his birth. And 43 hours, thirty-one minutes, and four seconds since my last contact with Tseng.

Rufus took a long drag on a cigarette and put it out in the drink of his neighbor. Then he ordered a bottle of vodka.

Fuck it. Today, he would kill himself. He would take a shotgun to each and every singing asshole in a moogle costume, every clown, every gold-digger, every arcade geek, and every John wearing a glittery tuxedo, and then he'd leap off the tallest balcony into the desert below. Slumped over the counter, Rufus barely had the willpower to lift his shot glass. He stared at its contents instead, swirling the transparent liquid around the bottom of the glass, wishing he could somehow drown in it.

"Fu-Ru-fy…" there was suddenly a bleach-blonde female at his elbow, wearing a pink headband with bobbling antenna. "We miss youuu Little Prez… Come over to our table and be angry. My friends and I…" She giggled in a vaguely pornographic way, "We're out of drinks…"

At that second, Rufus's phone buzzed in his pocket. His hand was on it like a cowboy in a quickdraw contest, eyes suddenly crystal clear and knife sharp.

The bleach-blonde waited for him to finish, checking her nails as distractingly as she could. But the Shinra heir was a million miles away, staring into the distance with a sleek, weightless phone pressed into the palm of his fingerless-glove. There was something unsettlingly still about him, as if he'd been replaced with an identical carving of himself.

The cellphone snapped closed again with a minimal flick of the man's wrist. The blonde looked up, lips puckered and expectant. "I hope that wasn't a girlfriend, Rufy. You know I only like single m-"

She finished with a startled shriek; this was because a full tumbler of vodka had just been coolly and deliberately poured over the front of her dress. Blinking, she dripped in stunned, drunken silence.

The empty glass was tossed carelessly over Rufus's shoulder, where it shattered at the feet of several other yelping guests. The blonde socialite sputtered, a profanity burning on her tongue that never emerged. The room was now uncharacteristically hushed, and a chilly half-smile formed like rime on Rufus's lips.

"Buy your own damn drinks." He said, addressing the whole club. Turning his back on the room, a bright yellow 30,000 Gil Lifetime Gold Saucer Pass flicked out behind him as if it were a candy wrapper.

The Shinra heir stepped out onto the balcony and walked over to the rail, where love-birds were admiring the endless display of fireworks and the bright desert stars. A moment later, one such star-gazer burst forth with a strangled scream, eyes fixed below the protective railway of the promenade.

Chaos broke loose as more eyes followed in the same direction, and a comical stampede of terrified, wind-tossed patrons, overturned tables, and broken glassware exploded around the lone standing figure, whose platinum hair whipped in the swirling wind as a helicopter landed amidst the debris.

A red and white diamond was emblazoned on the hull, obscured by an impish face that peered out of the open hatch door; a pair of goggles reflected the bright cascades of fireworks from atop their owner's head.

"'Ey Boss. Long time no see."

Rufus nodded in greeting. "Reno."

"We're here to escort you back to Midgar… Mr. President."

The new CEO of Shinra Electric Power Company felt his shoulders shake with barely contained elation. He stepped onto the helicopter, and allowed himself a chilly, triumphant laugh.

He was going home.