Travel Plans
Pearl hadn't taken the time to visit the slums before. She had nothing particularly against the place, but SOLDIER seldom had need to go there. They didn't have much cause to leave the SOLDIER floor at all, aside from missions and satisfying random urges for home baking or miniature golf. The Honey Bee Inn in Lower Sector 6 was a known destination for lonelier-than-usual SOLDIER, but less than many assumed, as for those without personal helicopters it involved a two hour trainride, and another three quarters walk along an absurdly badly maintained, monster infested road, with Don Corneo likely to file complaints if they killed too many. It happened often enough that it shouldn't raise too many eyebrows for Pearl to take a friend there before she was shipped elsewhere, aside from the usual rumour crazed fans.
There was no way to hide the journey that she had confidence in. According to the deal PR had with the Midgar media, nothing could be officially reported as long as they wore sunglasses, but braver publications got around that by reporting 'unsubstantiated rumours' and similar. And anyone that really wanted to know would be able to find out. Exactly what the journey was for, on the other hand, was a little easier to confuse. There was a long tradition of hiding less socially acceptable inclinations in the HBI, but also a long history of shady business deals and private meetings. To make sure the rumours were impenetrable, Pearl asked Anna to help, and she turned her considerable talents to the task with such unbridled joy that Pearl nearly reconsidered. Before she lost track, the rumours ranged from auditioning as the Don's newest bride to selling Dennis to the Inn to moonlighting as a mercenary to fund her drug habit. Hopefully any serious eavesdroppers would be lazy to sift through them all for the true reason.
She didn't have any illusions, though. Neither of them were spies, they had no real idea if anything they were doing would be any use. At worst, the effort she was making to blur the trail would just end up drawing someone's eye. But this journey was long overdue as it was.
They didn't really bother trying to hide beyond the sunglasses, leaving together one evening for the trains. It was a typically long, dull train ride, and they arrived at sector seven without incident until a monster jumped out and tried to eat them just short of sector 6. Den caught the thing in midair by its segmented forelimbs, leaning in to inspect nine rows of curved teeth as it stabbed forlornly at his heart with its spiked tail.
"Haven't seen one of these in a while," he said, turning it over, "they don't usually come in ones. Must be a hive nearby."
"Should I be worried?" Pearl asked, watching the debris for more. She had a pretty good knowledge of the monster handbooks but couldn't place this one. "Do they have queens or something?"
"Don't think so. These are Whole Eaters, we used to throw stones at them when we were kids. They subscribe to the 'lay eggs and fuck off' school of parenting."
"Underappreciated, that." Pearl said, still watching. "Dangerous?"
"Not really if you know what you're doing, they're mostly scavengers, but they sometimes go for pets or… kids." He set it down and backed up a step, eyes distant. The Whole Eater jabbed towards him again. He stepped on the barbed tail, pinning it against the ground. "Never really got this close before…Blunt force works better than gunshots, or so I heard, you crush the carapace and the pack turns on the weak one." He stared into its four malevolent eyes for a moment longer, then tossed it away over the piles of debris. "Sorry…memories."
"This your town?"
"No. Listen, if there's any stupid checkpoints ahead, you'll have to do the talking. They might recognise my accent."
"What do I say?"
Den shrugged. "Never done this before." Ghost of a smile. "If we get shot, it didn't go well."
As it happened, there was no checkpoint. They resisted the urge to play on the swings and walked into Wall Market, facing no more than jeers from people too inebriated or stupid to put together that two calm, confident outsiders in the slums wearing sunglasses and swords were best not messed with. She noted Den eyeing the guns passersby were wearing oddly. She couldn't identify the emotion, it wasn't feeling threatened or wanting one for himself, but a strange wistfulness. The moment passed as they were ushered into the foyer of the Honey Bee Inn, where they were separated politely into different waiting rooms and handed a thirty page form of extremely detailed medical history that didn't ask for a name. Then a slightly smaller form about the purpose of the visit, most of which she could leave blank. Just when she was getting annoyed, she was directed on into a warm room complete with bed, bath, refreshments, and another form about billing options, which she referred on to Den.
Heading here, she'd wondered about what her senses would pick up under the perfumes, but evidently the place had served SOLDIERs before. She spent several minutes just relaxing after the walk, sipping drinks, eating grapes, and so on, and eventually hit the sauna in a special bathrobe with a HoneyBee logo on the crest. There were a number of odd clips and buckles on the inside dedicated to showing exactly as much skin as you wanted, and she spent more time playing with it to find the exact halfway point before heading out to the conference room.
Den was already there, staring at the scar torn remnants of his hands. The top of the other scar on his chest from his impalement was just covered by his own robe. Evidently, he'd been concerned about Shinra listening devices in his own clothes too.
She settled opposite him, and said "So, why are we here?"
He blinked at her. "You don't know?"
"I think I do… My PR guy says this is the place to be for a private conversation, and you guys seem to have something in mind that I need to know. So talk."
"PR, huh?" He shot her a speculative glance.
"If he wanted me dead, I'd be dead. Talk. This is private, right?"
"Far as I know, but then, I'm not a spy. Last time I had this conversation, I was on a hillside in Wutai in winter, speaking Gi, and I was nervous then."
"Where did you learn that, anyway?"
"One of my neighbours as a kid was a survivor of the Canyon Massacre. Long story. Uhh, first, sorry for coming here, PR won't like it much."
"…True." Something to be cautious of, but living life entirely by PR rules was difficult even for someone as average as she was. "I reckon I can deal with it this once, though."
If we can trust the HBI to be discreet.
He must have read the thought in her face. "Unless the bluecoats take a hand, the HBI is good at confidentiality. But I don't know enough to make guarantees."
His hands flickered for a moment in military handsigns. Fast, to make it hard to follow for mortal eyes.
Allies counterattack if intelligence escapes. So, the HBI would face consequences if this conversation got out. Leaving this conversation as secure as it could be, unless a big name took enough interest to apply enough pressure to the HBI.
No Guarantees. But the best they could do. She caught his eye again.
"Talk."
Den took a breath, shook himself, tried again. "Have you ever looked at the casualty rates for SOLDIER?"
"Of course. Wasn't something I studied much, though."
"It's hard to find on paper, but back during the war, I started noticing that people I knew were disappearing. Anybody can screw up and get ground down, SOLDIER or not, especially on solo missions, but SOLDIER don't tend to disappear quietly. An ambush by Wutai forces would leave tracks, wrecked machines, sword cuts on cliff faces, bullet scars, that kind of thing. Unless they got a perfect clean kill, but that's pretty hard to do on one of us, it can't be done consistently, not without losing some of your people. There should have been missing Wutai detachments to correspond with the disappearances. But there wasn't. I started comparing notes with the triplets when we were sharing that foxhole that winter, and then we realised that these disappearances were on a wider scale than we thought. Even ninjas shouldn't have been able to pull this off on this scale. If they could, they would have been pressing us much harder in field operations.
"After that winter, command gave me a softer posting attached to a supply unit. Escorting transports of food and ammunition behind the lines, it was against policy to use SOLDIER for that, but Colonel Larson felt I deserved a break and she fudged the papers for me. Part of that duty was escorting wounded soldiers back to medical treatment at Shinra facilities. Now and then, a SOLDIER 3rd or 2nd would be among them. I took an interest in them, naturally, and sometimes I got a look at their wounds. A lot of them were pretty bad, but during that winter we were mostly cut off from command and couldn't ship out our wounded, except for whatever the medics could improvise. So I'd seen SOLDIERs take heavy shelling and had a fair idea as to what they could recover from. A lot of those wounds were enough to kill ordinary humans, but SOLDIERs should have been able to take them. They' d need recovery time, yes, but shouldn't have been at risk of death. Some of them did return to service after a while… but not as many as there should have been, by my reckoning."
By now he was on his feet, pacing, moving his hands. This had been pent up for a long time. On reflex, she stood up as well.
"Of course, I could have been wrong. I wasn't a doctor. But it was happening too often. Sometimes entire convoys would disappear. Which was a ninja trademark, but they'd need a mole very high up in high command to have the information to pull that off consistently, and should have been able to do things like it in other branches of the army. They were all events with plausible explanations, but they were happening too often and on too wide a scale." He sighed. "Eventually, I reached out to Wutai to try to compare notes, but…" he flexed his hands "that meet turned out to be a real ambush. So I've nothing concrete, just an odd pattern. I thought you should know, but It's not something I could talk about on the SOLDIER floor."
"Can I say something?" Pearl asked, when he didn't keep talking. He waved in acknowledgement.
"A lot of those sound like they could be desertions. We don't leave bodies, so it's easy enough for us to disappear. Three divisions razed Modeoheim to the bedrock and we still don't know if Genesis is alive or not."
"Some, maybe. But no one in Wutai would shelter one of us, we don't exactly blend in. If they did, they'd be fielded against Shinra forces first in payment. Some of them would have resurfaced, as mercs, auxiliaries, something. All of them couldn't disappear without trace."
She stood still for a moment, digesting this. She could see why he hadn't been inclined to talk about it on the SOLDIER floor.
"So… this big kidnapping ring…why? And why haven't you done anything about it?"
"I have no idea who would benefit from it, why , how, or anything else. What could I do? SOLDIERs aren't popular, nobody's going to die in our defence. I haven't been looking into it, because that might draw attention, but I've been keeping my eyes open, and while it has slowed down since the end of the war, I don't think it stopped. Especially on solo missions to isolated areas, attrition is a little higher than it should be. So when I heard you were going to be shipped out on your own, I thought I should at least let you know to be cautious. Who told you you were going to be moved, by the way?"
"My PR guy…" Pearl said, slowly.
He scrubbed at his jaw. " I… see. Listen, I don't expect you to believe me, I know this sounds insane, but I thought I should let you know what you're dealing with since you would be moved out on your own. Just… please do me a favour and keep this between us? If it gets out and I'm right…"
"I understand. I will." Pearl said, meaning it. She would keep silent. She still wasn't sure what to make of this, though. Shinra were above all else pragmatists, and she couldn't see how it would benefit them to disappear large numbers of their best troops in the middle of a war for…what reason, exactly? And if they were capable of that, how had Genesis lasted so long without being crushed? But Den obviously considered this important enough to put himself at risk to tell her, even with the obvious PR heat going to the HBI alone together would bring down on them both (admittedly, probably mostly on her.) At least she was leaving town soon enough to avoid the worst of the ribbing. But she'd had her own reasons for agreeing. There was some more discussion, and after she judged enough time had passed, she raised it.
"I did have a reason for asking this, by the way."
He looked up, burying his emotions back in whatever deep well he'd been keeping them in up to now. "Go on."
" Umm, I thought, before I left, I should ask… would you mind doing some accounting for me?"
His face froze, and for an instant she thought she was going to be attacked for not taking his information seriously. The fierceness of the hug caught her by surprise. He'd crossed the intervening distance fast, even for a SOLDIER.
"I have been waiting," he murmured into her hair, "my entire life, for someone to ask me that. What do you need?"
"I've been getting mysterious payments. I want to know who and why. My last accountant got scared and resigned, I'm hoping you can do better."
"I will try." He said, teeth shining. "Details?"
She ran through them briefly, finishing with "Is this really so important to you?"
The smile was answer enough.
"Y'know, you could use higher expectations."
He sobered. "We get back to HQ alive after our little talk, I'll think about it."
They got back safe. But the summons from the PR department was waiting for her.
000000
"You know," Paul said, after getting her coffee, "If you wanted a private conversation, you could have just asked me to arrange one."
"I prefer to have options." Pearl said, evenly. She had her poker face on, but Paul was one of the few people she wasn't sure it worked on.
"Fair enough," he said, returning to his chair, "but it does make your departure a bit… indiscreet. You could be drawing eyes from the wrong people now. The Inn is an independent operator, but I hope you realise they won't hide the transcript from the Turks if they come knocking."
The laugh rose before she could stop it. Some things they'd said might concern the Turks, but Den could barely bring himself to talk about it, never mind do anything to threaten Shinra's interests.
"Don't they have anything better to do?"
"I wouldn't underestimate them-"
"I don't! That's why I think they have more to worry about than what I do with my free time!"
He laughed as well. "Maybe so. But still, be careful about what kind of attention you draw."
"Oh, please, remember when Genesis namedropped his hairdresser in an interview and the Red Leathers burned it down? I'm not your biggest problem."
"Also true. But if you let me know in advance, I can help with things like that, with an eye towards possible consequences."
"I… will keep that in mind."
"Great!" Paul said, super cheerily, "Now, to business. You're shipping out in fourteen days, so if you have anything you need to do in Midgar before then, you'd better get to it. I just wondered if you had any questions, because frankly I'm surprised you haven't asked any yet, not least, 'where am I going'?"
"I figured you'd get to that. I'm not really tied down anywhere." Better organise something for Bubbles, though. Or can I take him with me?
"Junon garrison, Eastern Branch. They're a tough crew, but with your military record you should integrate before long, although the first few weeks could be tough. You'll be attached to the main garrison, but will be excused regular duties unless you decide otherwise. It's a little smaller than you may be used to, but I have faith in you. The delay up to now had to do with me finding space on a big convoy. Any other questions?"
"Is the brutality complaint really that big a deal? I killed someone that shot a colleague and was a member of a known terrorist cell, I wasn't exactly washing my face in the blood of my enemies or anything."
He paused for a moment, then smiled. "Good eye. No, it's not something you need to worry about, really. But 'first woman in SOLDIER' isn't that big a deal anymore, we now have eighteen women and the number is growing. A large part of that is thanks to you, but you are fading into the background a bit.
"Many of them have more vibrant personalities -that's not a criticism, it's a fact- so if we want to keep your name known, I thought I'd take the opportunity to put you somewhere you wouldn't be quite so overshadowed. There's only four SOLDIER permanently stationed in Junon right now, and none in the garrison you'll be sent to, you'll have a chance to display more of your character."
"Do I need a high profile?"
"Not high, per se, but visibility is an advantage. If you integrate with the garrison and have their backing, that will help to give you back some of the political power you have ceded to Ursula, which means that if you want something from the company, or want them to stop doing something that impacts you, you will have more bargaining power and public profile to highlight company practices that you disapprove of. I'd save that for emergencies, but it's good to have the option.
"Also, I thought you'd appreciate the change of scene, I understand the SOLDIER floor can be somewhat insulating from the wider world."
"I see," she said, wondering how much of this conversation was true. There was no way she'd be able to tell. Was he actually boosting her profile, or just isolating her somewhere she could be more easily disappeared? Or was that Den's revelation making her paranoid? "Thanks for the information."
He stood and shook her hand. "Take care of yourself, Pearl. It's a big wide open world out there."
She saluted and left. Well, he might find her personality bland, but at least she had a new life goal out of all this. Surviving until retirement. Hurray.
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