Crossing Lines

Percia sat on the front step of the house with her PHS in her hand as she stared at the screen and tried to decide what to do. Shears sat near her, leaning against a barrel which had been pushed up against the side of the house, and was watching her like a hawk since her jump earlier. Really, she didn't blame him, but the incident had shown her what she'd wanted to know—his words earlier, swearing himself to her service, were entirely true, in all senses of the words. She could trust him.

On the other hand, could she trust Tseng or his word, especially after everything she'd heard? For what it was worth, he didn't really have a reason to lie to her about that, but—would her father have really tried to kill Lady Shinra? Despite the past incident with Lady Shinra and the President both playing favorites, and her father having been helped by the President, she knew Verdot wasn't Lady Shinra's enemy.

"Tseng wasn't lying," Shears suddenly put in, making her look up at him. "What he told you is what he absolutely believes to be true, and the thing which sort of cinched it for me in his favor was how he admitted his error. I know Kariya as the Death God of the Battlefield—same one or not?"

"As far as I know, Kariya used to be an anti-Shinra terrorist, and he uses bombs, so probably. No one's explicitly stated it yet, though. Why?" she asked curiously.

"Kariya's a straight arrow—he's vicious to his enemies, but he's also loyal, skilled, and doesn't bother with lies, can even spot them a mile away. I know, I tried to pull one over on him once. It didn't work, even though it was a practiced lie. If Kariya's the one who corrected Tseng, he'd have to believe he was passing on the truth," Shears shrugged. "That means you should take him at his word and call your Director directly."

She gave Shears a faintly amused look, then turned her gaze back to her PHS. "There was just one flaw in what he said—I know personally from my father that he..." She paused for a moment, then sighed and said, "I don't know about that incident from way back even before the one with baby Sephiroth, but I know Dad has a lot more respect for and trust in Lady Shinra than Tseng's version of the story indicated. Dad even told me bluntly not too long ago that, if things had happened differently, he'd be just as loyal to her as Vincent is—he reveres her. So when Tseng said Dad tried to kill Lady Shinra—that just doesn't make sense to me."

For a minute, Shears was silent, then commented, "Turks play a very dangerous game with death, and President Shinra is holding their nooses. Their only mitigating factor is Lady Shinra. Just the fact that Turks on opposite sides of the 'battle line' can be so helpful to one another should show things aren't as clear-cut as 'us against them'. On the other hand, if President Shinra had any reason to doubt his ownership power of at least half the Turks, what do you think he'd do to all of you to make sure he could keep control of you? I mean, since he's a control freak and he obviously has shockingly little power over his wife, and probably his son, too?"

First, the younger woman looked up at him sharply, then blinked in surprise as she processed what he was saying, then gaped, "Do you mean to say my father is setting up an elaborate lie so the President doesn't start offing Turks in an attempt to have some sort of control over them?"

With a bit of a shrug, the man replied, "I've seen more convoluted shit than that. I also think he has his own reasons to have loyalty towards the President, but if what you said about his view of Lady Shinra is true, he has a reason for going so far. And Tseng still didn't lie to you, so if you're going to make the call, you'd better do it before your big boss turns in for the night—he may even have already done so."

Percia blinked again, then sighed and nodded, finding the correct number on her phone, then letting it dial as she lifted it to her ear. After a couple rings, a very confused, male voice asked her, "What happened that you felt you needed to call me rather than your father, Percia?"

"Yeah, calling you directly was actually Tseng's advice, but even if I'd called Dad, it would have needed to go to you anyway," she replied dryly. "I seem to have inherited a group of bandits, and now I need to figure out what to do with them so they have the basic necessities and something to keep them busy."

There was an extended silence, then a long sigh. "Explain, please." She told him more details on what had taken place, then waited as another silence followed. Vincent then said, "The best option I can think of is to have you act as their 'contact' while they act as 'informants' to the Turks. That could also mean they do some policing for us in the Slums, catching someone they know we're after who committed a crime, for example. However, under those terms, you would need to thoroughly study all of both the Hounds' and the Guards' active missions, know which ones apply to which faction, and share only related data with each side. There are enough of them to have two or three in each Slum Sector town, which would greatly increase our network in the Slums. They'd be paid by the same terms as any other informant—every time they provide data towards a mission or alerting us to a new problem, they'll get a decent cash payout."

First, the younger Turk's brow furrowed in confusion, then she asked, "Wait, don't I have to just report back to you on everything I find out?"

"That's not how it works," the man on the other end of the line replied in amusement. "Unless you plan to turn spy for us on the Hounds, or the reverse, you're only supposed to share the pertinent, mission-related data with the faction it belongs to. Both sides will probably ask you to share data on the other's missions, but you have the right to tell them it's not their business, and no one will push it—not even Verdot or me. For data on a new mission for us, it goes right to Lady Shinra, and she'll allocate it to one faction or the other. Your father will tell you the same about new missions gained from informants."

"...You mean, unless I really think the other side needs to know something, I can—and should—keep them separate?" she blinked.

"That's right. Other questions?" Vincent asked.

"Do you need to know anything about the—former bandits?" Percia asked shrewdly.

"Only Shears, in the event that something happens to you and one of the other Turks needs to get data from him instead. Verdot and I both have regular informant contacts—Lenno and Eonna on my side, and Doriss and Lakis on Verdot's. Shears shouldn't be meeting any Turks besides those four and you who would be asking to collect his data, so if anyone else asks, he can—and should—demand they send someone he has approval to give it to. If something happens to you, he'll be responsible for maintaining the network and gathering data from his people until you're back and able to gather from them again. Or, having him operate the network from the start may work better for you—that'll be your choice."

"So if both sides are working on the same mission—like the AVALANCHE one—I share my data on it with both, or are you going to expect me to try to pick that apart?"

"In the rare event we're both working on the same mission, share it with both. No, you don't have to try to pick those kind apart. Even if you tried, the other side would have the same data soon after, so spare us the trouble. Anything else?"

"Will they make a decent living off being informants to the Turks?"

At her dry tone, Vincent chuckled and told her, "For reliable information, especially regular updates on multiple issues, they would be able to live quite well. If you were collecting weekly, for example, and we knew you reliably brought back from them five pieces of data for both sides—ten in total—they'd be averaging the same weekly wage as a Silver rank Turk. Each one of them."

With an impressed whistle, she said, "I'll talk with them, then, and unless I call you back before I get back to the Shinra building tomorrow, we'll call it a go. Speaking of Fuhito, though, apparently he's a brutal son of a bitch who happens to use a laser gun, probably one he made himself. Restore Materia can't heal the wounds from a laser gun, and Fuhito will do anything it takes to win, even lying, cheating, kidnapping—basically, anything he thinks he needs to so he can get the result he wants."

"...How did you find that out?"

"Shears told me. A couple years ago, he had a run-in with Fuhito, and that was what he found out in the process."

"Fine, we'll add that to their pay. Is there somewhere I can send the other informant contacts to pass it on to them so they have something to start with?"

"Tomorrow morning, we should all be at the Noodle Shop in Six to get some grub."

"Good. You'll be seeing Lenno and Eonna in the morning. In this case, when you get back, report that data to your father as well."

"Got it. Thanks, Director," Percia said with a smile.

"You're welcome, and good night," Vincent replied with faint amusement.

They both hung up, and she looked at Shears to explain the deal, then said, "The deal sounds pretty good to me. Did I miss anything you want to know before you give a final decision?"

He gave a small, dismissive wave and answered, "Yeah, it's a good deal—being an informant, especially to the Turks, SOLDIER, or the Infantry, has always paid well. What it does for you is allows you access to all the data across the board so you know what everyone's doing. That's not a small thing, and could actually help keep you alive, so the arrangement works well. We're still taking our orders from you, and if you're in danger and we know it, we're going to divert to get you out of it—everything else will wait. How do you want us to set things up?"

She told him Vincent's offers in that regard, then said, "I don't know which one would work better for you. If you're scattered across the Slums, I'll have to do a lot of leg-work to go to each of you independently, but a lot less if you gather it all and give it to me directly. There's plenty of benefits and—non-benefits—to both, probably a dozen each way of them, so your stance on it is important."

"How badly do you want to be in the Shinra building all day?" the older man asked in a rather shrewd tone.

She blinked. "It's only once a week unless you have something urgent to report, right? If that's true, I don't think I'd mind taking most of a day away from the building. It'll also help me stay familiar with the Slums—or get familiar with the Sectors I don't already know—if I go to each one to collect data."

"Then the best option is exactly that, with only urgent data coming directly through me. You'll know it's urgent by the fact that it came from me outside the cycle you'll be setting, other than the first bit while we're splitting ourselves up and arranging times and places to meet. As for places—not in the Sector the crew is watching. Say, if I'm placed in Sector Five, we'd either meet in Sector Four or Six. It'll take some coordination, and we're not doing it tonight. I'm glad you picked a different restaurant from tonight's though," he told her in faint amusement. "Now, let's get some rest."

"Sure..." Percia agreed, still rather surprised by the response. They joined the rest of Shears' men to settle and rest, though the young woman didn't get much of it, as active as her mind was that night.

FoWD

Doriss was sure she was missing something about what she was looking at. It wasn't anything as mundane as Auryn and Tseng both having vanished at the same time—it was pretty obvious Tseng's stake-out was a cover for something else, because Kariya would be worried if it hadn't been planned. No, she was completely puzzled by the records she'd managed to hijack from Doctor Crescent's office in the city, something she'd managed by finding a sewer route into the office's basement through an old drainage vent which came out in the cement floor behind a large storage shelf.

Of course, it had been accidental when she'd been trying to escape a monster which had been attacking Midgar's citizens for two weeks already. The exit had given her much-needed time and advantage to kill the bloody thing (she was sure the Turks had to take care of it because it was a Lab escapee), and when she'd gone to make her way out of the building after she'd finished with her mission, she'd realized very quickly where she'd ended up. From there, she'd also had open access to all the things she normally couldn't reach, because she was now 'behind enemy lines' and off their radar.

No Turk would have walked away without taking advantage of that, so she'd been sure to hijack copies of everything she could hijack. Computer files were on a memory stick—she knew Doctor Crescent would eventually realize it was missing, but wouldn't know who'd taken it—and paper files had gone in a clean waste basket bag so she could carry the copies back to her apartment. The Doctor's absence from her office that day had given her the quiet and the time to make copies on the woman's own photocopy machine.

Divine intervention wasn't normally something Doriss believed in, but this time—she'd be hard-pressed to say it was anything else. How many coincidences could happen before it wasn't coincidence anymore? Someone—a being with a great deal of power—wanted her to find this data. By extension, it meant she was being trusted with it, but she wasn't entirely sure whose trust it was based on. Was it Verdot's or the President's? Lady Shinra's and Vincent's? Genesis' or Kariya's? While all of those had potential, something told her the most likely option was that it was Auryn's.

Oh, yes, there was data about any and all of the above people in the collection she'd taken, and she'd have to be equally as careful with it, but the reality was—all of those combined were a mere fraction of what Auryn's file held.

She felt for the young man.

His 'blood' wasn't blood, his genetic structure was such a mess sanity was outside his control, he'd been tortured in rather permanent ways. If the Doctor's records were correct, no human could have survived so much suffering, physically—and the fact that it showed physically made her certain he'd actually lived through it all, not 'mentally' lived through it in some sort of false scenarios. Yeah, he had issues. He had damned good reason to have them, too. She suddenly wondered what Anki's solution to break him free of his past was, because she was now absolutely certain even Fuhito couldn't torture him enough (without killing him in the process) to break him away from what he'd already suffered.

It had been a couple hours since she'd gotten back, reported in, been sent home for the rest of her shift, and had a shower. Since finishing her clean-up process, dressing in her Turk uniform again in case she was called back to work, and checking quickly on Auryn—to find him not there—she'd been working her way through just the paperwork. What she'd already found was a nightmare without even starting on the computer files, and she was beginning to wonder if she should even look at those. It was her tactical mind which stipulated she had to, because the more information she had on what to expect, the better. So, she kept working her way through it.

What cinched it for her, to make her believe Auryn had lived through those horrors, was how both Hojo's and Fuhito's genetic-work fingerprints were visible in his genetic structure. It was even more interesting that, apparently, one of the 'Hojos' Auryn had met had actively tried to fix some of the damage, and had even had some success—if he hadn't done it, there was a good chance Auryn wouldn't be sane right then. At all. She had never really associated the head of the Science Department with 'benevolence', but Hojo had never had any reason to try to fix anything, so there couldn't have been any other reason he'd tried.

Maybe she was thinking of Auryn's situation the wrong way.

Leviathan's Blessing was a good starting point to use, because even Auryn had admitted it was 'superficially similar'. However, there had to be other entities out there besides Leviathan, who could notably only send someone, or a few someones, back in time once. Changing the scenario changed the outcome, but what happened if the same outcome kept happening, even if smaller events changed in between? A more powerful being than Leviathan might be able to send someone back in time many times, and every time they were sent back, the situation would be just a little different, because the previous one had ceased to exist. While she wasn't a major student of the sciences, she was aware of dimensional theory, and it was highly likely Auryn's 'scenarios' were him being shunted from dimension to dimension. All very real, all realities he had lived through.

If it was true other dimensions actually existed, it was also possible people in them had made different choices or had different lives, and Hojo was no exception to that—some version of him, somewhere, could well have been benevolent.

In the meantime, the lifetimes Auryn had lived had left behind their marks, and too few of those lifetimes had been ones where people had actually tried to fix the damage to him. Now, someone was trying, but had to be very careful not to let the data fall into the wrong hands, and now Doriss knew said data. Had proof of it, in fact. Normally, she'd have taken it to Verdot right away, but she knew her chosen boss was a harsher sort than Vincent, and she wasn't entirely certain Verdot wouldn't cause Auryn more suffering. He had a precedent for doing damage to people—Donnel was just the tip of the iceberg—and she definitely wasn't stupid. And she didn't want to see Auryn suffer uselessly.

She was so wrapped up in her reading that she didn't hear anyone come in until she heard a sharp intake of breath and the hair on the back of her neck rose. Pure instinct made her throw herself to the side, papers in hand, as a burning fist struck the place she'd been sitting. Twisting as she got her feet under her, she looked up, expecting to see someone like Ansha, a Guard through-and-through—but instead, she saw Donnel as he moved to attack her again. It was clear by the panic in his gaze that he had never expected to see her with such data—and that he was sure she wasn't supposed to have it.

A Guard's reaction, not a Hound's.

She had no time to ponder that as she gripped the papers tightly and bolted for the balcony doors, activating the more unique traits on her thigh sheaths—a grappling hook system she could use to effectively jump off the balcony and land safely on the ground a minute later. In this case, though, she only swung down to the SOLDIER apartments below hers, landing hard on Angeal's balcony as the hook wire shook violently—Donnel had attacked the wire to slow her down, or maybe even to drop her to her death. Thankfully, she'd been close enough for a safe, if hard, landing, and a very worried Angeal had already opened his balcony door.

It only took her a moment to bolt inside past him, even as Donnel landed on the balcony rail and jumped at her again—only to be seized and held tightly by Angeal. The larger, much stronger man held the smaller Turk tightly against his body as Donnel thrashed, snarled, and shouted, "Let me go! She's not supposed to have that!"

The apartment door leading to the hall opened and Genesis walked in, asking, "What's with all the noise?" as he did.

Doriss realized belatedly that she'd accidentally triggered an actual, very real panic attack in Donnel, so she jumped forward to strike the back of his neck at the base of his skull with the blunt handle of one of her daggers. The other Turk went limp in Angeal's arms, so the larger man carefully lifted him in both arms and placed him on the couch before facing her.

"What was that all about?" Angeal asked apprehensively as he eyed her and the papers she carried shrewdly. Genesis just watched quietly with a slight frown.

Feeling the strain in her shoulders and neck, Doriss tried to relax the muscles, but it didn't work, so she gave her head a small shake and replied, "Apparently, Donnel is more of a Guard than a Hound, and I found some—very sensitive data which caused him a panic attack when he saw it. As he said, 'I'm not supposed to have it'."

"Enough for him to almost kill someone he truly thinks of as a friend?" Genesis asked in a dry tone, motioning towards the balcony doors with one hand.

Looking, Doriss realized Donnel had actually tried to kill her—he'd severed the grappling hook from the cord. If she'd tried to go any further, she'd have fallen. But when something triggered Donnel, logic wasn't exactly something he could process, so she looked back at Genesis and replied, "He lived a good part of his life as a slave. If he triggers, he goes right back into the mindset of a slave who was used as much for combat as other things—he wasn't even aware it was me he was attacking by then, only that I had something he's been programmed to hide from the Hounds."

The other two men traded looks, then Angeal asked her, "And what did you find on your last mission which 'you're not supposed to have'?"

She looked between them for a minute, then focused on Genesis and said, "Most of it's about Auryn, and I'd rather not share."

"Who?" Angeal asked in confusion.

After a moment, Genesis nodded and agreed, "Fine. If you don't want to share it, there's a good chance he's in danger if it starts to become public knowledge, so it's likely best we don't know. I don't want to see him hurt. Mother lion." At the last, the red haired man's tone became teasing as he grinned.

At the words, Doriss finally felt her muscles relax, so she gave a small smile and said, "Thanks."

With a snort, the younger man asked, "You're not even going to try to deny that you're treating him like he's your cub?"

"Why should I? I know damned well I'm protective of him," she replied with a small pout.

Donnel groaned and shifted just then, so Doriss carefully set the papers on the floor under the coffee table so he wouldn't be able to see them, then sat beside the younger Turk. His eyes opened and he blinked up at her in confusion, so she asked, "How much do you actually remember of the last little while—since you got to my apartment?"

"I..." he began, then stopped with a frown and looked around, seeing himself in an apartment which was neither Doriss' nor his own. "I was going to go talk with you about something—not relevant now—and I saw you reading a file...I wondered what you were working on...And..." His eyes widened and gasped, "Auryn's medical paperwork!"

As he started to sit up, about to panic again, she caught his shoulders and said, "I'm not going to tell anyone."

Donnel froze for a long moment, then met her gaze with a puzzled frown. "You...won't tell Verdot?" Both Angeal and Genesis had to blink at that, she saw out of the corner of her eye.

"I'm not entirely sure he'd do right by Auryn, so no," she replied. "Everyone's teasing me about how I'm practically mothering him—the last thing I want is to see him hurt, all right? And Donnel, by how I got that data, I'm sure some higher force wanted me to have it—but I'm also sure that force wants Auryn protected, something I can't trust Verdot to do with his track record, even just with you."

The younger man blinked at her twice, then let his eyes drift away as he processed what she was saying—then they widened as he saw something near the balcony doors and breathed, "Oh, Shiva! Are you all right, Dor?" His terrified gaze moved back to her searchingly, and she realized he'd seen the damaged end of the grappling wire.

"I'm fine," she assured him. "I landed a bit hard, but not even enough to cause long-term pain. I'm just lucky I wasn't aiming to get to the ground, only to a couple floors lower. And with the state you were in—I can forgive that. Just don't do it again over Auryn—I'm not his enemy."

After a short silence, Donnel breathed a sigh of relief and reached up to wrap his arms around her in a tight hug. "Thank Gaia! I'm so sorry!"

Genesis and Angeal traded looks again before the black haired SOLDIER said, "We should probably find somewhere else to be while they finish sorting themselves out."

"Sure thing," Genesis agreed, and the two walked out, leaving the Turks to collect themselves and their papers and leave on their own time.