A/N: As of now, Edward will only be called that in very rare circumstances—he'll be either Eden or Ed for the rest of the story.

Newest Turk

As Ed returned his PHS to his pocket, Shalua burst out, "So what the Hell was that all about?"

"That, my dear, was Veld hiring Ed to act as my guard so I can be outside my designated residence for house arrest," Kariya answered dryly, making her gasp and stare between the two of them.

"Wait, don't Turks have to go through training and stuff before they can officially become Turks?" she asked, glaring first at Kariya then at Ed.

The teen shrugged and said, "They don't have anything to train me in, not even writing case reports. I'll have to start as a Rookie, probably, but I'm skipping the Trainee phase because of the skills I've already proven to them."

"So, what code name did he give you? I mean, since you'll have to start getting used to using it," Kariya commented, pulling his much shorter cigarette from his mouth to eye it for a moment.

"Eden," the teen smirked in pure amusement, and the two men's eyes widened.

"What's that mean?" Shalua asked in confusion.

"He named me after the original paradise," the blond explained. "In writings I knew, very ancient ones, the original home of the Ancients was referred to as 'the Garden of Eden', and was the place their journey began from. (1) Now, that could mean it's actually the same thing as 'the Promised Land', and if that's the case, it's referring directly to the Lifestream. The Garden of Eden is the souls leaving the Lifestream to come here and grow the plants, tend the animals, and take care of a world which should have been a true garden of peace and paradise, while the Promised Land is the act of the souls returning to the Lifestream, to their creator."

"...Did you get that out of the same books Shinra got their data on the Promised Land from?" Angeal asked suddenly, his gaze troubled.

"Yes. All of your scientists seem to be missing or ignoring some crucial data on basic world functionality—simple things, things any scientist worth their salt should know, like the difference between a symbiont and a parasite or a product and a bi-product, and sometimes, I even wonder if they know the difference between day and night or left and right. None of this was hidden, it was just written in slightly flowery script by a race which didn't have the words to better describe the world around them. I looked at it and knew what it meant in short order just by applying critical thinking to it, especially when taking into account how much they revered the Lifestream and the Goddess Minerva," Ed chuckled.

He then saw somewhat puzzled expressions, so decided to humor them. "They were nomads. There were only two places they built as cities, and both of those were built due to Jeh-nova coming down from space, so they would be able to keep an eye on her landing site and store an item to be used as a last resort against her. Otherwise, they all traveled throughout their lives, drawing Lifestream to areas of land to replenish it, to end a drought, to end a flood, to moderate snowfall, to grow plants. They were true stewards of the world, spreading the Garden of Eden to this living realm, and returning to a place of rest and prosperity at the end of their lives—and where do all things go upon death on the Planet? The Lifestream. As such, the Promised Land is their return to the Lifestream after a life of work to tend the world."

"...Then Shinra's only reason to seek the Promised Land...is for greed. They've convinced themselves there's a place, a tangible location they could go to called the Promised Land, where they want to build a city 'bigger and better' than Midgar, where they claim everyone would be able to live in peace and prosperity. But if the Promised Land is death, they either plan to kill us all or lead us on a wild goose chase just to get more money and leave so many more people to suffer in slums," Angeal sighed.

"Does it really surprise you, knowing the President allows Deepground to operate?" Ed asked curiously.

"...I had thought they were more honorable than that..." the man admitted wryly.

"Greed is a complete lack of honor, Angeal, by its very definition," the teen snorted. The others blinked at him in something like amazement. "It's never sated, nothing is ever enough, which is why people would convince themselves such a place exists. And, well, 'the grass is always greener on the other side of the fence.' But that doesn't mean everyone in Shinra is consumed by greed, either. I honestly believe there are people right in their midst who would love to be able to do more to help the Planet, to help people, but aren't being allowed. Those honorable, kind people are ones I'd like to be able to give resources to so they can do the things they would most like to."

After a silence, Shalua asked, "Did Veld know about all of that when he named you 'Eden'?"

"I don't think he knows the whole story, but he wasn't naming me that by accident," Ed answered. "No one gives a code name for no reason, and he'd apparently chosen it some time ago, intending to give it to me when he hired me on."

"So...he wanted you that badly, or he already knew you'd join?" Kariya blinked, snuffing the cigarette on the bottom of his shoe, tossing it onto the table, and pulling out another one to light it.

"Both, probably," the teen chuckled. "Like I said, all I'd have to do is call him to get hired, but as it turned out, he needed someone to account for you while you were out of your residence. Now, if you don't mind, I'd like to get some rest. And Kariya—while I don't exactly care about 'watching' you, stay here or I'll have to."

The others nodded as he rose and headed for a room to sleep. A few moments after he was gone, Shalua began pelting Kariya with personal and family questions, so Angeal excused himself to check on Genesis.

CA

Supper had been an interesting affair, as they were quite a mixed group and the two most unusual members of it had rejoined them—Sephiroth and Vincent. While Vincent didn't need to eat, he was still capable of doing so, though only in fairly small amounts, which at first concerned Sephiroth. Rude was still watching over Genesis and Weiss, but everyone else kept the place lively, and the innkeeper was very happy about that. If it was because of the extra income she got or the activity level, she never clarified, but she certainly encouraged merriment.

Not long after the meal, everyone had again gathered in the main room to talk, and their discussions were mainly light-hearted. After a time, they heard voices near the entrance, then a nineteen-year-old man in a black suit and with his black hair pulled back in a ponytail walked into the room, two packages under his arm. There was a dark stone on his forehead, he had a distinctly Wutain look to him, and his eyes were sharp as he gazed around the room.

"Tseng," Sephiroth greeted the man, who gave him a nod before his eyes stopped on Kariya with a slight frown.

"You actually helped the Commander of your own free will? Or did you know he was your son this whole time?" Tseng asked the man, still frowning slightly.

"No, I didn't know it was him, but those guys he was up against were bad news—and Tseng, like it or not, I'm a Turk now, and I'm not working against Shinra," Kariya replied, cigarette in his mouth as seemed to be his usual.

"...Very well," the Wutain sighed slightly, then his gazed moved to Ed—and his brow lifted slightly. "Eden, yes?" he asked the blond evenly.

"Yup," the teen agreed with a grin. "I thought Veld was sending someone nearby, and the last time I checked, you were in Midgar?"

The man chuckled and tossed him one package. "There were—complications."

"What kind?" Ed blinked as he caught the package easily and set it down on his lap, gaze on Tseng.

"Nothing too serious, but it was better for me to leave Midgar for a time, and as I'm responsible for the Deepground case—which I'm guessing everyone here now knows about—I needed to come here anyway. Veld just had me bring along your first uniform and one of Rude's spares, rather than diverting our only other active agent in the area from their current task, leaving no one to watch a target for another case," Tseng explained. "I'll have to speak with the boy you captured later, as well, so I'll be here for a bit while I investigate. Also, once you're free from guard duty, if at all possible, I'm putting you on the Deepground case, since the one thing we need to be able to do is find their base—the one thing we've so far not had the luck, or the skill, to find."

"Sure thing," Ed agreed, then looked at the package for a moment before asking, "Do you have specific report forms, or do I just write it out myself?"

"We have a general format, but otherwise write freehand," the older Turk answered, brow raised slightly again and lips twitching in faint amusement. "Nothing too complicated, starting with the date, the case code if you know it or a case keyword or a few if you don't, your code name, and the report. If you need to summarize or recommend anything, place that at the end and note beside your name that you've left a summary or recommendation or both at the end. Veld said you already know how to write a report if the verbal one you gave him was any indication, so I leave the contents in your hands. Just make sure to be thorough in your notations of what was going on at the time, because Turks rely on small clues or notes like 'someone was watching' to determine our next actions."

"Makes sense. I can write it up tonight or tomorrow and have it to you sometime tomorrow, probably," the blond answered, opening the package and pulling out the black suit jacket.

"Prompt, are you? That's a good start," Tseng noted, then glared as Ed made a face and Kariya chuckled.

"I'm not prompt, it's just that I know better than to leave a report—if I don't do it right away, I probably won't get it done at all, then I wind up stuck with weeks' worth of reports to do at once, and—just—no. I'm not going there again," the teen told him.

"From a scholar, that seems odd," Sephiroth commented dryly. "Your reports are a great deal easier to write up than ours as well, by the sounds of things."

"He's a scholar who goes stir crazy if he can't go out and fight every now and then," Vincent commented, which produced a snort from Shalua. "Reports are just boring to write, so getting them done immediately is generally the best habit to get into if you want to be effective."

With a sigh, Tseng admitted, "For the most part, I suppose that's true. They are boring to write for most."

Ed levered himself up and said, "Well, I guess I'd better get changed," then headed for the room where he'd rested earlier. To his surprise, Tseng followed him into the room so he faced the man with a raised brow as he asked, "Doesn't someone need to watch Kariya, technically?"

"We'll leave the others to do that, since I'm sure they all know not to let him leave," Tseng stated, then reached over and pulled the right side of Ed's sleeveless shirt down, which in turn revealed the scaring around his shoulder. "What is this from?"

The teen's gaze became shadowed and wary, then he pulled away, sighed, and began undressing to change, though he left the bracers he wore on. "Do you actually have any idea what kind of power Materia have—or rather, the 'commands' which make them function?" All the same, he had to commend the man for noticing the nearly completely hidden scars when no one else had (at least, no one had said anything to him or even looked at them), so thought the man was really as formidable as he'd sounded on the phone some weeks ago now. Oddly, that was sort of an assurance and helped him trust the man more.

"...I confess I know only as much as I need to know to use a few of them on my equipment, nothing more," Tseng admitted. He then stared as he saw Ed's metal leg.

For another couple minutes, Ed stayed silent as he changed into his new uniform (though he opted to keep his boots, given how well they hid his auto-mail leg), thinking about just how much he was willing to trust the man. Finally, done changing and with the tie draped around his neck, Eden turned to the older man and said, "This doesn't leave this room—it's completely off the record unless it suddenly 'comes back to bite me' as Veld said."

With a nod, the man agreed, "I will not repeat what you tell me, verbally, written, or otherwise, to anyone else unless lives depend on that knowledge."

Slowly, the blond nodded, feeling like he could trust Tseng's word, then turned away from him, shoulders hunched. "I was once a very stupid fool," the teen said quietly. He still felt a need for caution, but it was easy enough to edit the story to explain what needed to be explained. "I really thought I'd succeed where everyone before me had failed, and it led to a terrible accident, one I dragged my brother into as well. Even though Materia can't rebound, using the arrays which make them function without using the Materia can—blow up in your face, usually causing severe injury or death. Because of me trying to do something impossible...I lost my leg and I effectively had to stick my brother in an isolation tank for five years. I'd have lost my arm, too...but my brother sacrificed himself to allow me to—keep it, even after everything. I started looking for some way to fix what I'd done, and in the process, I got dragged into a war against some—psychotic guy who tried to destroy my home. That was a few months ago, and it was when my brother...died."

He turned back to face the man, seeing his wide-eyed stare, and went on, "But I don't remember what happened after a certain point in the battle against that guy. There's a blank spot in my memory between then and my waking up outside Fort Condor a couple days before Freyra found me. I don't know if I was able to fix anything, and if I did—what did I sacrifice to do so? It's that one little thing which worries me the most, because it may just be able to come back and bite me." He then paused and tapped the shoulder the scars were on. "The scars specifically came from another prosthetic—fixture being destroyed. The same scarring will be under my leg ports, too."

When the younger teen stopped talking, Tseng found he had to draw in a deep breath before he could proceed calmly, asking, "What do you mean by 'ports'?"

"My limbs were special ones made by a doctor who—is not here," Ed said. "They move like normal limbs because they're a mix of mechanics and neuro-technology which function directly through my nervous system. In other words, my leg moves because my brain tells it to, not because I drag it along. They were called auto-mail as they were largely used by injured miners and the local guard forces in the area." He was modifying the extent and reach of them somewhat, but he rather had to if he wanted to be able to keep them from knowing he came from another world. "The problem is that, while the ports themselves can grow—they were made to—the leg limb doesn't, so I need to find another doctor who may be able to figure out how to reproduce another leg for me before I outgrow this one."

"Mechanics and neuro-tech—" Tseng suddenly stopped and muttered, "A hedonistic cat, cybernetics—maybe..."

"What does a hedonistic cat or—cybernetics—have to do with my leg?" Ed asked with a frown. What was cybernetics, for that matter? He had found a lot of technological references while looking up the other things he'd needed to, but he'd never heard of cybernetics before.

Tseng stepped up to him and took his tie to tie it around his neck neatly as he said, "The head of the Urban Development Department seems to have so much skill with mechanics, engineering, and programming that he can build a robotic cat which can actually feel itself being petted and become a hedonist. I'm not entirely sure why Shalua and Genesis didn't bring Cait Sith '1' with them out here, but trust me when I say if anyone would be a good place to start, it would be with Reeve after what he's managed to do with those cats of his.

"We also have a branch of medicine and scientific technology which is still being developed but seems to have some similarity to your auto-mail—it's referred to as cybernetics and isn't publicly available yet. In some cases I've heard of, it equates replacing lost body parts with mechanical ones, but I'm not entirely sure your leg operates on the same premises or principles as cybernetics, so it may not be a great idea to try mixing them at this point. I'd also be wary of mixing them because our knowledge of cybernetics isn't very advanced yet. It's functional enough to work for Veld and an odd few others, but there are still issues with it, and one of the ones Veld mentioned to me is random bursts of pain from the connection points, like the cybernetics are being rejected."

"That definitely doesn't happen with auto-mail..." By then, the tie was tied neatly, making Ed blink as Tseng dropped his hands. Reaching up to touch the neatly knotted tie, the teen said, "Thanks."

Nodding, the man replied, "You look surprisingly good in our uniform. Maybe you'll want to change your hairstyle, though, since your current style seems odd with a suit."

"...So a ponytail?" the teen asked, reaching up to pull the tie from his hair.

He was somewhat surprised to see the man turn faintly pink at seeing him with his hair down, (2) but the man answered in a perfectly even voice, "You certainly wouldn't be the only one to wear a ponytail."

So, with a shrug, the teen gathered all his hair into a ponytail at the back of his head and tied it off, turning to let Tseng see the look with his hair tied in a high tail similar to Tseng's own rather than the braid he'd had it in before.

"Better," the man agreed, nodding as his color quickly returned to normal.

With that, they returned to the main room, and nearly everyone was shocked by how Eden the Turk looked, but found the look suited him very well all the same. Tseng then headed back down the hall with Angeal to see Rude and check on Genesis and Weiss.

CA

The next day, Genesis woke up feeling better than he had the last time he'd magically exhausted himself—only for his eyes to focus on the white haired boy, who was sitting up in the next bed, staring down at one of his hands. At first, the red haired man was about to panic, but then realized the boy had no weapons on hand and wasn't even paying attention to him. Slowly, he sat up, and the boy's eyes moved to him in surprise and carefully hidden uncertainty—if Genesis wasn't so familiar with such a stance and feeling, he'd never have seen it. It seemed Weiss was actually more worried about him than he was about the boy.

"Oh, good, you're both awake," a familiar voice said from the door, and both turned to face it—only to see Ed at the door, wearing the Turks' black suit, white shirt, black tie, and his heavy, black boots with his hair in a high ponytail. He looked faintly amused as he met Genesis' gaze. "How are you feeling, you two?"

"Pretty good, considering," Genesis answered wryly. "Why are you dressed in a Turk uniform? I thought you hadn't joined yet."

"Veld had to move fast to put a guard on Kariya to excuse him being away from home while under house arrest, which meant getting me to do it," Ed answered. "He gave me the name Eden, so it's fine if you just keep calling me 'Ed'."

The red haired man had to chuckle at the words, then ask, "Did he—Kariya—say anything about why he left his whole family behind?"

At first, the teen frowned, then said, "I think it's better if you hear that from him. I'm not going to play middleman when I'm biased by my own father's actions."

"...Oh," Genesis answered with a startled blink.

Ed then looked at Weiss and asked, "And you, Weiss? How are you doing?"

Tentatively, the younger boy replied, "I'm not...feeling so weak in the limbs anymore, but I...my body had adapted to running on high levels of Mako. I could feel the energy pumping through my body, and now it's not there...It's disorienting."

"I'm not actually surprised by that," Genesis nodded. "I didn't always have Mako in my body, and the transition from not having it to having it can be—bad. It's effectively controlled Mako poisoning, but it's also having increased senses, strength, speed, agility, and reflexes. Trying to figure out how to open a door without breaking it is a whole other learning curve. Going back the other way would require similar adaptability, but by learning to increase the force of turning a doorknob rather than learning to decrease it."

"Is it really worth it to get Mako injections, though?" Ed asked curiously.

Both actually looked a bit amused as Weiss said, "That depends on who you ask. I didn't mind the strength it gave me, or the regenerative abilities that came with it, since in Deepground, that's sort of a necessity for survival. Believe me, we get hurt a lot there, even someone as strong as me, and a lot of that is in our training missions—every time we have training missions, several members die, of the normal, weaker ones."

"Oh, that sounds horrible!" Genesis stared. "Why would you follow them if they treat you like that?"

For a minute, Weiss paused, then shrugged and replied, "I don't know anything else."

"Then let's let Sephiroth spend some time with you—he's much the same and is only recently making choices of his own," Eden suggested, and Weiss blinked at him in surprise. "Believe me, you and he could learn from each other, and you'll understand each other's difficulties. In the meantime, what can you tell us about Deepground?"

The white haired boy gave his head a shake. "I know my way around, I know where traps are set, and I can either destroy them or just have them not affect me, but I don't know the codes to pass through safely. I've never been allowed in the experimental area. Also, there were some traps and locks I couldn't bypass. I was taken through the building leading to the exit blindfolded to help capture Genesis. Obviously, that didn't go very well for Deepground—if what I saw was any indication, he could easily make it in Deepground and become a Tsviet, assuming his mind could handle our way of life. We were deep underground and never saw real sky until now, when we were let out for these missions, though we had a VR system which simulated sky. Only the Restrictors ever left, usually to kill people or to retrieve experimental subjects. (3) None of us knew the results until someone new was introduced to Deepground."

"Diagrams of the underground area will help," the new Turk said with a grin. "We'll figure out where the entrance is eventually, and how to get inside. The better-prepared we are at that time, the better. Especially if my thought is right—but that's for another discussion. Kariya, Tseng, and I will be heading to your battle site as soon as Rude gets back to watch you two, so enjoy." Genesis and Weiss just stared at him, so he gave a wave and left the room.

Notes:

(1) I figured this would be a good addition to the Cetra's scenario, but the only part which has any confirmation is 'the Promised Land' part, and even that isn't stated to be the same as how I'm presenting it. On the other hand, I couldn't resist naming Ed 'Eden' for some reason, so I needed the phrase to actually exist somewhere on Gaia.

(2) Just to reiterate, there are no pairings planned for this story at this point (that is, for the entire first part for sure, and I'm strongly leaning towards having none in the second, either, with the possible exception of having Zack and Aeris start dating, nothing explicit). Tseng's character just decided to drop hints, then promptly ignore them again because everyone knows Edward Elric on a crusade doesn't notice anything romantic. Whatever Tseng decided to do in this story is mainly only functional as a story gimmick and isn't to be taken as any sort of 'pairing'.

(3) This is happening seven years earlier than when Weiss and Nero, dressed as SOLDIERs, went to retrieve Genesis after he fought Zack for the final time in Crisis Core. I'm assuming that most of the experimental subjects are still not 'controlled enough' to be allowed to leave, so it's mainly only the Restrictors who go out, and the releases of Rosso, Azul, Nero, and Weiss are technically not the normal progression of things because they could have just run off much too easily.