The Final Case
An FF7 Detective Story
Chapter 3
Usually, one might say "this place has seen better days" when presented with a place as rundown and filled with despair as Tifa's apartment. But I doubted it, good times had probably never visited Seventh Heaven, and I knew they had been horribly lacking from Tifa's tortured life. The smell of musty decay was everywhere, infesting the place like a cancer, saturating you with it's stench. Wallpaper dangled from the walls in half-peeled strips, the stained floral pattern seeming as if it had simply wilted away. The stairs groaned as if the planks were inhabited by some tortured soul trying desperately to escape the hideous confines of the place. Muffled sounds echoed from the bar beyond, ghostly whispers that seemed to hover just on the edge of understanding, and it only added to the chilling atmosphere. How anyone could get any sleep in such a place was beyond my understanding.
As I reached the top of the creaking stairs, Tifa turned to me, her ample bosom bouncing lightly in its ill-fitting enclosure. Ensuring that I did not stare too long, lest I share in the fate of many of the bar's denizens, I met her gaze and was surprised to find an intense sadness there. Tifa was always a hard case to crack, she was a range of obviously conflicting emotions and desires, guarded by a toughness that scared away anyone with any kind of intelligence whatsoever. I knew to keep my distance, as this femme fatale had more than her share of problems I didn't want to deal with. But it was still comforting to know that somewhere underneath her toughness and ravishing figure, there was still a person that had some feeling left in her. It was that person I would have to reach tonight, if I were to get anywhere in my investigation.
"Show me the picture again." She demanded, the sadness vanishing from her features as her mental defenses came back to her. For my part, I merely nodded and handed her the photograph of the spiky-haired man. "Yeah... that's Cloud. I guess he made it into SOLDIER then... I wonder if he still remembers me." She continued, wistfully. There was obviously something more to the story between them, but I only pried when I was paid to pry. I knew far too much of others' dirty laundry already, and had little desire to know more.
"I'm not sure about the SOLDIER part. He's got Mako eyes, but I have been through most of the SOLDIER records and haven't found his name referenced anywhere." I responded as I reached into my coat and pulled out a second photograph, this time with a dead man's haunting visage staring up at a sky he would never see again. "Do you know this man?" I asked.
"I don't know him, but I recognize that face. I'll never forget that face... He was the SOLDIER with Sephiroth during the... incident. Why are you here? Why are you asking me this?" Tifa began to choke up, the painful memories bringing back an intense pain that seemed to almost overwhelm her.
I had been wrestling with the necessity of telling her the truth ever since leaving my office. A Private Investigator doesn't stay in business long by trusting people, so it's never an easy decision to spill your guts out. Yet something told me that if anyone could be honest and loyal, it was Tifa. Sure, she would make a mangled disaster out of your face if you crossed her, but if you remained a loyal friend to her.. she would defend you with her life. At peace with my decision, I spoke the words that brought a look of utter horror to her hardened features.
"I have been hired to track down Sephiroth." I said simply, my voice emotionless and flat.
"Wha...wha...what? He's dead. He has to be dead!" Tifa's face suddenly filled with rage and pain, her features covered in scarlet.
"Shinra doesn't seem to think so. And for once, I take them at their word." I risked a comforting touch on her hand, squeezing it lightly with a degree of sympathy. Some might accuse me of being heartless or cold, but it was all part of being a true professional. I could afford a slight degree of empathy here, as Tifa wrestled with her painful past. She held onto my hand like a lifeline, squeezing it tightly with intense feeling.
"What does that have to do with Cloud?" She asked, wiping away her tears and pulling her hand away from mine suddenly, her defenses restored again.
"I'm not sure, but these photographs were included with a packet of information handed to me by my employer. It might be that Cloud knows where Sephiroth is. At any rate, it's a starting place. According to the information I have, Cloud made it to Midgar, though his friend here did not survive." I continued, pointing to the second photograph. "I need to find him, and I think perhaps you do as well." I added, my voice nearly a whisper.
"I will help you find him." She began, her voice strong and confident again. She smiled seductively, and in that moment I understood the full measure of just how dangerous this woman was.
"Do you still keep in touch with Barret?" I asked cautiously. "I have something in mind that could use his unique... touch."
"Yeah, he still comes in often enough, mostly to drop off Marlene. He'll probably be in later tonight. But he's usually got the rest of the Avalanche gang with him. Most of them don't like you." She replied flatly. I didn't need her to tell me that, Avalanche and I had many dealings in the past, most of them bad. The hot-tempered street gang turned self-declared eco-terrorists thought they knew everything, and that just because they could fill the sector with scandalous graffiti and blow up a few unmanned relay stations, they were to be universally feared. With Sephiroth on the loose, it's doubtful that Shinra paid them any more attention than they paid to the piles of rotting garbage that fermented all over the ruinous city. None of that mattered though, raw Gil had a language all of it's own, a tongue far more persuasive than mere words.
"What are you going to do about our friend outside?" Tifa asked, breaking the silence finally.
"Even the rats need to eat sometime." I replied, a twisted smile on my face as I headed down the ghostly, creaking stairs. Of course there was the minor matter of who or what the assassin worked for, but I doubted I would discover much from the corpse; the man had obviously been a paid professional. With all the lights in the apartment switched off, I silently slipped out into the darkness, careful to avoid disturbing any of the refuse littering the alley. I found the corpse where my revolver had left it, face down in the mud and grime of the damp alleyway as if he were slowly melding with the festering garbage and wreckage which surrounded him. Faint tapping sounds hovered just on the edge of my awareness, and I could imagine the massive rats of Midgar's underworld licking their lips with anticipation, their hungry, beady eyes staring greedily at the blood-drenched remains. Something attracted my eye in the darkness, a faint glow that seemed to emanate from the corpse's back pocket. I reached inside and felt a smooth glass-like surface, revealing a tiny green sphere that seemed to pulse with some kind of shimmering energy. I knew what it was, of course, but it had been years since I had actually seen materia, much less held one in my hand. Whoever the assassin worked for was obviously not lacking for funding, if they could afford to send out assassins equipped with the rare magic-bearing orbs. With that disturbing thought echoing in my mind, I vanished back into Tifa's decrepit home in the back of Seventh Heaven, the orb safely tucked away within my coat. Behind me the rats began to feed, fighting amongst each other for the choicest morsels of tender flesh.
