Rush to Judgement
"You didn't find me yet," Pearl announced. Anna instantly nodded and wandered off. She was willing to face down PR without even the benefit of an explanation. Sometimes Pearl had great friends.
Pearl was still on borrowed time, though, and she didn't plan to waste it. She left the SOLDIER floor immediately in case someone else found her, and headed directly to the SOLDIER-infantry liaison office. She had been quietly planning and considering this deal for weeks, but hadn't made any overt moves, because she was certain that closing the deal would trip a wire and bring unwelcome attention down on her. But now that the Don had called time on it anyway, she had to make her moves before they were shut down. Maybe she should have killed him when she had the chance.
The deal itself was not difficult to bring together. As she already knew, the Shinra regular army hated transporting SOLDIER, as their casualty rate inevitably climbed. They were all too happy to subcontract those runs, with only a few conditions, such as obliging her to take an army representative on every run (inconvenient, but not unreasonable) as well as dire promises of swift, brutal retribution should any of these priority runs go astray ( not an empty threat. Nothing she hadn't dealt with before, though.) SOLDIER itself was even easier. They were stunned just to have someone offering to help them of their own volition.
As she wasn't going to be able to hide her involvement with these departments, both of whom knew very well who she was, she used the only one of her companies that actually had her real name on the books, Shining Eyes Solutions. The infantry and SOLDIER each transported more troops than she had the capacity to move, but if she could establish a strong foothold for the moment, that could be enough. Maybe. Hopefully. There was no time for anything more. She returned to the SOLDIER floor in time to hear again from Anna that PR wanted to speak to her, neither of them giving any indication that the conversation had happened before. And so she found her way back to Paul the PR agent's office.
She stopped outside to catch her breath. She'd made a habit lately of trying to face down very dangerous people, but this man was something else entirely. She'd need to be ready.
"You again, huh?" she said, opening the door and sitting down in her customary chair. Paul raised his eyebrows, then shrugged.
"I'm afraid so. I wanted to respect your wishes, but it seems fate had other plans."
"Why you personally?"
He flashed a bright smile. "Sometimes there are advantages to being equally mistrusted by all sides. Do you know why I'm here?"
"I'm not sure," she said, having a fair idea but not willing to be the first to outline what she knew.
His smile seemed to guess at her thoughts. "It seems you've been building yourself a nice little empire since we last spoke. What's the end goal?"
"I'm not much of a planner." Pearl held her face blank. Paul outright laughed at the thought.
"I can see that. But you've been steadily gaining control over SOLDIER transports, using… decidedly covert methods. What are we to take from that? Are you working for somebody? Why?"
"Business opportunity. I was in a unique position to see a chance, and I took it."
"A chance for what? Money? Control? You can see why we have concerns, given that one SOLDIER has taken it on herself to control a sizeable proportion of where SOLDIER go and why. To a casual glance, that might look a lot like an attempt at sedition."
"I have no control over what goes where, I fulfil the contracts as given to me." A weak deflection and they both knew it.
"True true, but still someone viewing things carelessly might see something else. Your runs are extremely heavily armed, for their purposes."
"I am well aware of what Shinra will do to me if I lose any more of their SOLDIER."
"You've already lost some? Why did you continue the attempt? The profit margins must be narrow after you equip and hire all those guards." He was completely correct, of course. Some of them were running at a loss and had to be propped up.
"Is there an actual problem with what I'm doing?"
"Other than the fact that some very expensive assets got killed on your watch, you mean?"
"Accidents happen. No one with Shinra has raised the issue until now, which leads me to believe that they understand that. After some early teething problems, I have suffered no losses since."
"Some might say one is too many."
"Some might, but I think my runs might very well have lower casualties than the standard. For Shinra Supply, SOLDIER runs are one of a thousand other things they need to get done. For us, they're life or death, so we take great care, and now the bandits avoid us."
Paul's gaze sharpened. "You have stats that can prove this?"
" Of Shinra runs, no, they're very hard to come by. I have, however, detailed records of all my own runs, so if you have the need to conduct a detailed investigation into SOLDIER runs before I took them over and compare them with mine, I'll cooperate of course." Now, let's see if you want someone looking closely at the SOLDIER casualty rates since the war.
Paul shrugged. "Not my department, I'm afraid, I'd have to take that upstairs and see what they think. I'll let you know if I find anything." Hah…nice dodge.
"Fair enough. Is there anything else?"
"Hold on there, we're not done. My superiors don't trust altruism, they assume there's something beneath it. Your runs are not particularly profitable, they're not earning you goodwill, and you are taking considerable risks to preserve them. Vegetable wholesalers don't usually murder people."
"They drew on me!"
"No doubt, but why would you take that risk in walking alone into that house, with the Don's rep? You could slaughter his crew if he did something stupid, but there'd be a real risk of scandal if you were caught standing over bodies again, which could get you into serious trouble with my department. You're not very demonstrative, but you seem to value your life, so why would you decide to deal with a street gang and the likes of Adamant Holdings, risking your life if a scandal gets out or if we decide you're being subversive, for a time killing venture? It's not making you money, it's not making you famous, it's not making you friends… you're getting a little bit of soft power, but nothing worth risking your life and reputation for. So you can't blame us for thinking something's up."
He drew back in his chair. "You need to give me a why, Pearl. Something I can take upstairs. If I don't get one I can believe in, some people you don't want to meet might decide that what you're doing is some kind of front for a power grab, or running guns for AVALANCHE or something. Nobody wants that to happen. So give me a why."
She took a few seconds to settle herself. Here it was, win or lose, life or death. Freedom or a new career as a labrat. One more breath, then she started to speak.
" Not long after I first joined SOLDIER, I got into a conversation with a driver. No big agenda to it, I knew a bit about pickups and wanted to learn something. He was instantly hostile, which tends to happen a lot with SOLDIER, so I didn't think much about it. But he did mention that the casualty rates on SOLDIER missions were high.
"Over the next while, we started losing SOLDIER. Isolated incidents, mostly, small side missions. Genesis took some, there was a guy named Ush I never knew well, then Seb and Sai were taken by AVALANCHE, a few more here and there, I'm sure I don't need to talk about Sephiroth and Zack. All side missions that weren't meant to cause trouble, that nobody needed to die on. If only they were taken more seriously. So… I had the money-"
"How was that?"
"I have no idea, some lawyer showed up with a cheque someday. No idea why or how, I was suspicious at first but nobody tried to call in a favour or blackmail me, so it was either do something or just watch it earn interest for the rest of my life. Anyway, I had the money, I had the time, I had physical abilities that made me hard to assassinate, and I had a little bit of knowledge about transporting stuff. Worst case, it would fail, and I'd be down some money that I didn't need anyway. And I could keep some SOLDIER safe."
"You took some serious risks, for a whim."
"Yeah, I got caught up in it. I had a narrow escape in the Nibelheim mountains myself, when a dragon I was meant to hunt unexpectedly brought some friends."
She watched him closely as she said that, waiting for a question or a flicker of expression. She didn't know if Paul was involved in the SOLDIER kidnappers, or just under orders, but his face betrayed absolutely nothing. Of course.
"I nearly died that day, and it convinced me more than ever that a little extra support for SOLDIER on missions could save many of their lives. So when I got back to Midgar, I expanded on things a tad. I kept it low key, because if terrorists found out suddenly everything I owned would be bombed and the fanclubs would start following me and stuff, but I'm not planning a revolution here. I'm just trying to keep my friends safe. While I was at it, I figured out that I could make some money by keeping half the slums from dying of scurvy. And if Shinra has a problem with either of those things then I would really like to know why."
Paul was watching her very closely now, his face still betraying nothing beyond the usual slight smile.
"I hadn't thought SOLDIER meant so much to you." He said, focused.
"The unit doesn't. But I don't have much else left. My hometown is dead. The people I served with in the army are mostly dead. Now that I have these eyes, I don't have much beyond it –you heard about what happened in Junon, with the medic?" Paul nodded once, losing his smile briefly. Of course he had. She hoped PR wouldn't start taking an interest in Mbantuwe suddenly, but she had to make this as convincing as she could. And she'd learned from dealing with the fanclubs that a breakup would often be accepted as justification for almost anything. She kept talking before he could think too much.
"So, SOLDIER is pretty much all I have left. I don't want to watch it die. That's all. No hidden plots, no power grab. Are we understood?"
There was a long silence. She was not sure if Paul believed her, but that wasn't really the question here. The moment stretched, an then she saw him smile and stand.
"Is that the story you're sticking with?"
"It's the truth," she lied.
" I see. Well, that certainly qualifies as the 'why' I was looking for. There's a lot going on behind that blank exterior, isn't there? I can take your views upstairs, but I can't guarantee the results, or course. That said-" here his smile grew "-you've certainly learned some skills from your new venture. You've made great strides, but I think it would be best for everyone if you were to stop expanding into new areas of SOLDIER transport for now. You don't want to make people nervous, and you already control a sizeable amount of it –enough, I think, for your purposes, don't you?"
She had few options but to agree. She could manage without total control over the Midgar offices, and defying PR so openly would be dangerous even for her. He extended a hand.
"All the best, Pearl. Take care… we will be watching."
Outside his office, she kept up her blank face, but leaned against a wall for a few minutes until her heart rate went down. She wasn't certain he'd believed her, but that might not in itself be fatal. Shinra couldn't admit to being responsible for the kidnapping, so they'd need a different reason to shut her down, at least in public. The other option was to have her quietly disappeared, but SOLDIER were difficult to disappear quietly if they knew something was up. What her life hung on was whether too many questions would be asked if she was disposed of too overtly. And she didn't know who or how those calcuations were made.
Anyway, at least she seemed to have survived for now. She'd have to stop expanding into new departments, beyond the four she'd already secured, but that was manageable. She'd need to settle them in, keep her head down and stay under the radar for at least a little while.
Then would come the hard part.
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