A Drink to Victory
By the time she got back to the SOLDIER floor, most of the excitement had died down. She'd had to take a detour to snatch up Aeris' kids, but the receptionist had snuck away from her guards and beat her home in the meantime. Swift and Davis were back on the SOLDIER floor, not having met a single assailant. Anton and Rafik had gone looking for Oisin when he hadn't returned, last they knew, he'd been seen fighting in sector 7. She was telling her own story when Swift suddenly asked a question.
"Where's Den?"
"He brought one of those things to the Science Dept."
Immediately, their faces changed.
"He… willingly went to the science department? And you let him go?" Swift was staring at her.
"What was I going to do, nail him to a wall?"
"If necessary." Swift.
Davis shook his head. "Ordinary nails? You know he'd pull through."
"Manacles, then."
"Yeah, because I carry a set around in case of emergencies, and he'd just stand still and let me." Pearl said, sighing.
"Easy. Den will be fine." Davis, but with a slight tremor to his voice.
"Yes. I will." said the man himself, materialising in the doorway.
The thirds stood to meet him, but he waved them back.
"I'm okay. But I met Sparky on the way back, he says Ush is missing. He was in Sector 7."
"Yeah, we heard. His brothers are out looking," said Davis
Den collapsed into a chair.
"Uh… is something wrong?", Pearl asked, after a moment.
"Yes," said Swift, standing. "SOLDIER 2nd Class Dennis, is it true that you brought a captive to the science department? Of your own choice, you gave someone to the Science people?"
Den flinched, but held his ground. "Yes. Something."
"Are you sure of that?"
"…No." Very quietly.
"TWAGs usually aren't very vocal at first. Do you know what they're going to do to him?"
"…No. But SOLDIER's lost fifteen today, probably Ush as well. We need to know what we're dealing with."
"They didn't seem that big a problem."
"No? We got lucky as hell today, SOLDIER, it was a well planned assault. Interference from drones, assault through the main gate, withdrawing out into Sector 8 to draw out the defences before the second wave. It hit this floor and the Science department, the only two places that don't have SOLDIER support during an attack. They were going after our trainees, to try cripple recruitment, only they didn't know we only have one right now, and she got lucky –no offense, Pearl. The new batch won't be released until tomorrow."
"Wait, Ush is dead? Isn't that premature?" Pearl whispered to Davis.
He shook his head. "He should be back by now. You can't get lost on the Midgar plate, and someone would have found him if he was injured. He's either dead or in a cage, and it is very hard to keep SOLDIERs caged."
Pearl stayed quiet. The loss was having an effect, of course, but she knew very little about Oisin beyond the fact that he had good taste in housekeepers. An intruder on the grief of others, she stood to leave.
"Wait," said Dennis crossing to her. "Before you leave… I owe you an apology, Pearl. You should've been out fighting, but I never taught you the protocols, and you ended up fighting alone. I almost got you killed, I don't know what to say."
She blinked at him. "Why didn't you tell me?"
"I thought you should know the reasons for the rules before the rules, so you'd know when and how to break them if it was needed. But I was caught completely flat footed by the full scale assault on the Shinra building, I admit it, I messed up."
"Hey, don't ignore me!" Swift said, and there was a scrape of steel. Den stopped, turned.
"You really want to do this, 3rd?"
Swift hesitated, lifting his hand away from his sword. "No, sir. But I need an answer."
"Okay." Dennis spread his hands. "Am I sure there was a sentient creature in that thing? No. I'd like to believe it, but I could be wrong, in which case I may have just condemned someone to a terrible fate, but we need answers, and sending him there was the only way we were going to get them."
"You really think we'll be told anything?"
"…Probably not."
Swift's hand dropped. Maybe it was just a reflex, that movement was bred in SOLDIER from day one in response to surprises, but there was no way to know, because the materia glow from Den was faster. Before he could move, Swift was a frog.
"Ribbit," he said in response to this, and leapt away. Magic frogs were tougher than the ordinary kind, but being stepped on was still a risk.
"Y'know, that was a bit mean," Pearl said, looking at Den, who held her stare.
"No points for style, he was drawing on me."
"You sure?"
He looked away. "No."
Dennis' phone rang. He drew it to his ear. "Feek? Did you find- Shit, I'm sorry. Yeah, I'll be there."
He raised his head, looked at her. "Ush never made it to his apartment. He's probably dead."
"Uh…huh.", said Pearl trying to divine how to react from his features and failing.
"How do you feel about going drinking?"
Now this she understood, the post combat blowout. It was a ritual as familiar as buckling on armour or loading a gun.
"Reasonable… but Rafiq will be there, right? I'm still not talking to him."
"What? When did this happen? But that's fine, I doubt he'll be in the mood to say much."
"Okay," said Pearl after a moment. His brother had died, that was enough to tolerate his presence whether she liked him or not.
Davis looked up. "I'll catch up to you, I've got to get Swift fixed up."
She stopped at her mailbox out of habit on the way down, there was seldom much there apart from the occasional love letter or death threat from her fans, but today she had a note from Mikhail the lawyer, noting his failure to get an insurance claim for Banora, but that he'd uncovered some assets she might be interested in. There was also something from a Paul Sigerson from the PR department, scheduling an appointment for tomorrow.
"You'll want to go to that." was Den's only response, but then, he had other things on his mind.
Otherwise, their journey was uneventful. Anton and Rafiq met them in the lobby and handed out sunglasses, and it wasn't until Pearl was hailed by a stranger passing the Goblin's Bar that any of them spoke.
On hearing the call, Pearl turned to meet a scruffy guy in a brown jacket, very pale with crooked glasses. She cocked her head.
"I know you?"
"You should, Ms. Matheson. " He was swaying on his feet, glass in one hand. "Saw you on the news just now, you look to be doing well for yourself."
"Wait -I'm on the news?"
"Sure. Most people wouldn't have recognised you, with the helmet, but you've got those funny bumpy things on your front. In a SOLDIER uniform, no less, there's limited options for who that can be."
Three other oddly pale people–this wasn't the slums- came up behind him, in somewhat better shape. The nearest woman glanced at them, sharply drew in a breath, and said "Kev, come on, stop bothering the combat trained supersoldiers."
That name rang a bell, and then she had him.
"You gave me my mako enhancements."
Kevin Sopean, Science department supervisor, grinned. "Dingdingding! I knew you before you were cool. Something to tell the grandkids, huh?"
"You're in a good mood."
"Better than a bad'n. Not like the rest of these mopey shits, huh Dennis? Rafiq? Anton? No love for your old pals from the Science Dept?"
Den turned. "C'mon, let's go find a better class of people to associate with."
Kevin flung his glass. Den caught it, of course, but the drink splashed straight across his eyes. He didn't blink, even though it must having been causing significant pain, as Kevin screamed "You don't get to talk down to me, dog!"
The SOLDIERs stopped, turned back, and became perfectly still. Kevin's friends began edging away. He, however, closed in, speaking low and fast.
"I will take that from almost anyone in that building, but you guys ought to know better. Everything you are is because of science, everything you've achieved is because of us, you know exactly what the science department is capable of. I will not claim that we are angels, but I will not be talked down to by the people that burn down villages in Wutai and claim to be our moral superiors."
"The things you people do-"
"Yes yes, we spend all our time doing unholy things to innocent beings under bright lights. Here's a question… where do you think we get them? I don't go out into the field and bring back specimens, I post a bulletin on the SOLDIER floor or with the bluecoats. And you guys have the nerve to look down on us? Ever retrieved a specimen for the labs?"
"No." Spoken by all three, as emphatically as was physically possible. But Kevin didn't slow.
"And then you have the nerve to whine about your poor lot in life, with your superstrength and super resilience and supersenses. If you object so much to our work, why not fucking stop us, huh? You're powerful, I can even point out the relevant machines. You could… but you won't, because at the end of the day, you're concerned only with yourselves."
Dennis looked up, "You have no idea what our lives are like."
Kev hesitated, but not for long. "Let's find out."
He reached into his jacket, drew out a massive barrelled gun. His legs may have unsteady and his eyes bloodshot, but his arm was rock steady as he began to level it. The SOLDIERs reached for their swords, as Kevin kept talking.
"This is a needlegun, diamond tipped projectiles marinated in Marlboro venom. We have to be capable of bringing down big prey. You won't feel a thing. Of course, you all could take this away from me three times before I fire it…if you choose to."
Random drinkers began scrambling away. Pearl stepped aside, but none of the others moved a muscle. What was the right thing to do in these circumstances? Any of them could easily have stopped the scientist as he slowly and carefully levelled the weapon at Den's heart. By the time she decided to move, he'd already pulled the trigger.
Anton's forearm blurred. The needle was close to four inches long for penetrating thick skinned prey, and his leather glove closed on it in mid air. The projectile mushroomed and burst apart from deceleration, endangering dozens of bystanders, but Rafiq's Demi was quicker, gathering all the shards at a single point floating in midair. As the spell faded away, Den slowly extended Kevin's drinking glass, and the ball of poisonous shards of metal clinked into it.
"Enough people have died today," Anton whispered to himself. His glove was scored, but he had avoided being cut.
"There, I agree, my friend," Kevin said, reaching for his glass. "We lost some good people today."
"Good people? In the science department? What was the last thing they were working on, turning people into behemoths?" Dennis still hadn't moved.
Kevin raised his glass as though to take a sip, but his friends were back, and one man caught his arm.
But he gave his answer.
"That's next week. This time, it was a vaccine for Condor's Lung."
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