Starting Solutions

Lucrecia had arrived at Lady Shinra's office looking mildly annoyed, but had switched to apprehensive since hearing what the woman wanted. After checking to make sure Ed was okay with the arrangement, she called Hojo to explain the situation to him, just to be sure he was on board. As it turned out, he was, largely just to spite the President for taking away all his viable projects and research without giving him anything in return. The facilities had already been largely arranged for Ed's testing, as well, since Hojo had been planning to ask him to visit for those tests shortly, regardless, and he only had to do a bit of tweaking for a few of the later tests in the series.

As Ed and Lucrecia rode the elevator to floor fifty-seven, Elicia on Ed's shoulder still, the woman asked, "Are you really sure about this, Ed?"

"Yes, and no," he sighed. "If I take him at his word, he didn't really have any intrusive tests to do, so it should be okay. Assuming he knows the difference, and I'm not completely sure he does, which is why I wanted you there, too. But the Jenova Crystals need to be destroyed, so I'd risk it just for that."

With a faint sigh as the elevator doors opened, she said, "Let's go, then."

She led the way onto the floor, used her card to enter the Labs, and showed him to the room near the holding cells which Hojo had told her was prepared for the testing. Incidentally, the Jenova Crystals had been stored in the back cabinet of that same room, as one of the devices kept there was for reading, assessing, and stressing objects clearly filled with large quantities of energy. Testing had only barely begun on the 'stones' when they had been 'taken away' from Hojo, so all but one had been removed from the device. Now, they were all back in place, being tested.

Hojo, who stood in the middle of the room as some of his assistants worked on various devices, said, "Good, you brought him. The first few tests are scans—he can lay down on the bench there for those," the man motioned at a bench in the middle left area of the room as he mentioned said bench. "They should take less than an hour to complete." Ed noted how four assistants were taking notes on the machines the Jenova Crystals were in, but a few others were working on another machine in the back corner of the room opposite the storage cabinet.

"Does it matter if I shift around or do anything like practice some of my magic while you run the tests?" Ed asked, tone cautious. Though, at least he knew Hojo was likely to tell him the truth. Or, the truth as the man saw it.

"In the first test, yes. It's the longest, and you'd be best to just close your eyes and rest during it. The other two aren't so finicky, so you can do whatever you like for those, as long as you stay on the bench and within range of the sensors," the man replied. "I trust that will be sufficient?"

"Yeah, that's fine, thanks," Ed agreed, still tense. "What about Elicia? Should she stay out of range of the scanners?" he then thought to ask, pointing at the little robot on his shoulder.

Hojo peered at her for a minute before saying, "She's welcome to explore the room, as long as she doesn't touch any buttons or levers and doesn't leave it. As long as she's outside the range of the sensors, that's fine—the scanners don't take well to trying to read two different objects at once."

At the words, Ed lifted Elicia from his shoulder and set her on her feet on the floor, so she took Hojo at his word and began exploring the room. With no other questions, Ed made his way to the bench and laid down, for the first time feeling puzzled by what kinds of scans weren't going to be painful for a change. Normally, they were, but were rarely using machines which weren't touching him. Maybe they were things like scans for his brainwaves, which were ones rarely used on him because normally, people were trying to figure out his physical body, not his mind or mental state?

As Hojo pulled a device a lot like a small crane over top of him, letting it hover about a foot above his head and chest, the Professor said, "I'll let you know when each test is finished."

The device turned on, and Ed began to feel off-balance. It wasn't really that he felt ill or dizzy, though if he'd been standing or trying to move, he probably would have felt a lot worse, so he was thankful he wasn't. Unlike usual, it seemed the precaution to stay still was more valid than just something as simple as 'caution so there are no accidents'. Since he had the time, he closed his eyes and began working out the strings of arrays he'd need to use to target the Jenova Crystals and shatter them without it being seen. If no one saw the arrays, they couldn't pin the blame on anything but the Crystals being brittle, after all.

As he thought about how best to work it, he found that he could target arrays to apply the Change spell to, which would mean he could make their appearance match their surroundings. In Hojo's sterile, gray metal Labs, that became shockingly easy. Even though he often referred to them as 'strings' of arrays, they were actually more like several interlocking main arrays mixed together in one place, intended to cause several results where they activated. It had actually taken him a bit of active testing to validate something Genesis had instinctively always known—unlike free-hand alchemy arrays, Materia-based arrays with sub-arrays worked by activating at a distance from the caster.

At first, he'd thought that made them like alkahestry, but that also was a fallacy, because alkahestry could only be cast at a distance with the use of physical anchors, like Mei's kunais. The arrays Minerva had either created directly or had approved didn't need anchors. The sub-arrays included functions for a range they could be cast at, and while the maximum range differed by one's magical ability (Mages had greater distances naturally, but practice could increase anyone's range), the encoding in the arrays caused space between the caster and the target to become zero. By that function, regardless of the distance, the casting was happening 'at the caster', and by extension, the spell took form at the target. Other than a very few high-level spells, they didn't travel, and were hard to intercept, block, or dodge for that reason.

In working out all his new arrays, Ed had realized people like Genesis were wasting energy just to make something look more showy and dramatic by forcing it to travel a distance when spells weren't designed to do so. There were even times where that was useful, especially as a distraction, and Genesis had actually perfected a method of using himself as the target and using his own body to 'carry' a spell to someone or something else. For Ed's purposes, though, he'd found making the spells further undetectable was far more beneficial with greater frequency than making them flashy was. Using Change to make their normally glowing forms blend in with the surroundings was one of his ways of doing that.

At about that time, Hojo said, "We're switching to the second test now. Feel free to move if you like." Taking note of that, Ed quickly went back to his own thoughts.

Using Cleanse for the required time, then, was the only question. Could he add a function, either in an existing sub-array or as a separate one, to make it automatically hold for the time it would take to break down the Jenova Crystals? It was also going to use a substantial amount of his energy to destroy all four at once, and pretty much all his mental capacity to activate the four independent spells at the same time. Making it so he only had to focus for the activation then let it run its course would be highly beneficial. And one of the sub-arrays did control spell duration...

A moment later, he knew what to adjust and how, adding a modified Silence to the arrays with Change. Shifting, he crossed his legs, tucked his far hand under his head, and let the one nearest the machines the Jenova Crystals were in drop in a relaxed manner over the side of the bench. In that 'relaxed' form, it was easy to hide the array activation and start the Cleanse of the Crystals, and as he'd expected, keeping the spell active longer kept the energy flow and the arrays active longer, as well, so keeping his hand over the side so the arrays didn't show was useful. To be safe, he'd given a count of 'thirty seconds' or 'the target ceasing to exist' as ending terms; if the thirty seconds wasn't good enough, he could always repeat it.

However, at twenty-one seconds, there was a sudden cracking and crystalline shattering sound, followed by curses and alarmed shouts. A sudden demand for silence from Hojo produced exactly that silence as Ed opened his eyes and turned to look, seeing the dead, darkened fragments of the Jenova Crystals scattered around the machine they'd been in before.

"Stop making a fuss. While I finish this test, see if anything can be salvaged besides the records," Hojo demanded, voice hard and eyes on the scanner still running the current test on Ed. "I'll have a look in five minutes or so, between the second and third tests."

For some reason, Ed felt like laughing.

He didn't, but it didn't change his sudden desire to do so, and for the life of him, he couldn't figure out why he wanted to laugh just then. There were so many reasons it could be, from the absurdity of Hojo bringing him in there to destroy his research to the slight smile on the man's face, which he was having a hard time forcing into an angry frown. It could have been how a bunch of 'mad scientists' freaked out so easily, or even just the fact that the Jenova Crystals had been putting more pressure on his mind than he'd realized. Whatever the case, it was rare for him to want to laugh around Hojo.

Soon after, the second scan was done and he was told to wait while Hojo and Lucrecia sorted out the mess the Crystals had made. That took another fifteen minutes or so, then the last scan was run. After that, they moved on to several other tests, only one of which was marginally painful, a bit like getting an unexpected static shock from a friend. None were intrusive besides a needle of blood being taken (which was more like standard procedure, rather than intrusive).

What became the issue was when Hojo wanted to repeat most of those tests while Ed was in his hybrid form. He only agreed when the other assistants were sent from the room (all of them were finished whatever they had been there for, anyway), leaving only Elicia and Lucrecia, who both had already seen it, and Hojo. Those tests ran faster without interruption, and it was still half an hour to noon when they finished and Ed could return to his human form after showing how his wing muscles were developing.

Needless to say, returning to Kariya's apartment was a huge relief.

FoWD

After Ed and Lucrecia left, Lady Shinra sighed faintly and faced Zack. "So, Second Fair, you know Aeris?"

"Zack, please, and yes," he agreed. "And as long as nothing bad happens to them—her and Nina—now, I'm good with that. Nothing will happen to them, will it?"

"No, not on my side," she assured him.

"And not on Zack's, either!" Carbuncle threw in, making Lady Shinra chuckle as Zack and Kariya both stared at it.

"How do you know that?" Kariya asked warily.

"Because he never hurts her," Carbuncle replied plainly. "Never deliberately, at least, and he usually keeps anything indirect from happening, too. He legitimately likes her too much to want to see her hurt."

"...Has that got anything to do with the 'other versions of me' Aeris said Minerva knows about?" Zack asked cautiously.

"Yup!" Carbuncle agreed. "Now, you should probably decide what to do about the rest of the Jenova Crystals."

Lady Shinra found that amusing, and said, "I've already decided what the best option is." The others looked at her, so she explained, "The only thing I'm not completely sure about is which Mage to send with you to destroy them, because all of our Mages are quite well-known and would be noticed if they disappeared for an extended time. I'll have to ask Ed later if Verde is just skilled enough with magic to be able to fill the role of a Mage for the purposes of destroying the Jenova Crystals, and if he is, I'd send him with you, Zack, to meet up with Aeris so you can start tracking them down. If not, I'll have to ask Verdot if he would allow Lakis to disappear for so long, despite the fact that he's already down a Turk."

"You're not going to wait on that? At all?" Zack asked in surprise.

"Were you expecting me to when lives are on the line?" she asked in a dry tone.

"...No offense meant, but you didn't send us to find the bomb when that hole got blown in Midgar, you sent us to detach the Plates. That was just reducing the likely damage ratio, not keeping people from dying in the first place," he commented, pain and anger crossing his face as saying the words brought back his losses—Luxiere and Kunzel, and dozens of others.

"That was my fault, though," Kariya sighed, expression pained, even as a pained expression crossed Lady Shinra's face.

"Kariya—" she began in alarm.

"It doesn't matter how you want to cut that cake, Lady Shinra," he cut her off bluntly. "You told me to get rid of that plasma bomb almost as soon as I joined because it was a danger to the civilian population of any city or village I happened to be in at the time. And I was stupid enough to take a mission when my mind wasn't fully there, dropping that bomb right into Fuhito's hands. You wouldn't even have known about that bomb to have saved the rest of the city if Ed hadn't told you bluntly that I still had one on me, so that—all of it—is my fault, and you were just reacting as well as you could when you had no timeframes to work with, nothing to go on, and a city to save. Because if you hadn't detached the Sectors, which you only managed with a few minutes to spare, the whole Upper Plate of Midgar would have fallen due to that one bomb. And I'm never going to make that mistake again. Those deaths—every one of them—is on me."

Zack could only stare in shocked horror at Kariya as Lady Shinra gazed sadly at the man. She knew it had hurt him—Hellfire, it had hurt them all!—to know those two Sectors had suffered so badly, but she hadn't realized he was literally shouldering all the blame to such an extent. Somehow, he held himself together well, but Elicia had sent back confused reports of odd behavior from Kariya which was affecting Ed in small ways, and she'd just unintentionally found out why.

"No offense, but..." Zack began softly, making the other two look at him in mild surprise. After a moment to gather his thoughts, the sixteen-year-old went on, "You're only responsible for half of that, since it was Fuhito who decided to blow a hole in Midgar, something our data on him basically says he'd have done anyway, through any means he could have gotten his hands on. It wasn't exclusive to your bomb in particular, that just made something he'd have done anyway easier. You did a couple stupid things, but the reality is—Fuhito's the one responsible for those deaths, not you."

"I don't know that you're fit to judge—" Kariya began.

"Don't tell me if I'm fit or not when I watched a dozen of my friends die as they fell with the fucking Sectors when the whole thing went down!" Zack suddenly yelled in fury as he rose, making all three freeze in surprise. Zack turned away from them to draw in several deep breaths, one hand clutching the top back of the chair hard enough to crack the wood and tear the fabric. Lady Shinra and Kariya both felt they should wait silently for him to calm down, so just watched him warily until his breathing eased and he released the back of the chair.

Without facing them, Zack explained more quietly, "It wasn't bad enough that I lost literally my best friend, Kunzel, in the search and rescue after the bombing, but my team was Angeal's—the one that was still in the tunnel between Sectors Five and Six when the bomb went off. Half my team was gone with the Sector pieces torn off, and one of my other close friends, Luxiere, he...We almost went down with the Plate, but I caught some piece of rebar and reached for him, caught him...But when he realized my grip was slipping because it was too much weight under the circumstances...He forced me to let him go, fell to his death so Angeal might have enough time to reach me before I fell, too."

Finally, he turned to face them, both of whom had tears in their eyes, and said to Kariya directly, "Don't tell me I don't have the right to judge the situation after that. You weren't the one who decided to set off the bomb in Midgar, and knowing the whole Upper Plate would have fallen if we hadn't been detaching the Sectors—that's actually a huge point. I saw what happened when just parts of two Sectors fell, and it's easy to transpose that onto the rest of the city. I'm not happy you were so careless, Kariya, and your part in this sure didn't help, but...Like I said, if all your reports on Fuhito are true, he'd have found a way to do that anyway. It's not like his plans or goals actually changed just because he got his hands on your plasma bomb. So even though you have 'some' fault for being so careless, which you've said is a mistake you don't plan to make again, the real blame is on Fuhito."

"...Wow, even for you, that was deep..." Carbuncle muttered in awe, and in the silence, everyone heard it. Before anyone could react, it had hopped over to land on Zack's head to pat it gently as it got comfy there. "You're an impressive kid this time, really. Even compared to normal."

Zack gave a wet chuckle and wiped his eyes as Kariya put his head in his hands and Lady Shinra smiled faintly. "I think I agree," she said, then looked at her Turk, who was obviously still upset. "Listen, Kariya, did you know your guilt is actually negatively affecting your charge?"

That caused the man to lift his head, gaze alarmed, as he said, "But I've been keeping it hidden from him—"

"You seriously think you can keep something like that hidden from someone who's living with you?" Carbuncle asked in amazement. "Even your old memories should show that doesn't work, so why are you doing something you already know can't be done? And especially, that sort of thing doesn't work on Ed, and he'd probably have figured out soon that something was really wrong with you, just because it's intrinsically affecting him since he lives with you and you're one of the few people he still trusts not to harm him in the first place."

After another long silence, Zack asked, "Should I be worried about that statement from this—whatever it is?" At the last, he pointed up at Carbuncle.

"That's Carbuncle, a Summon and my now regular guard," Lady Shinra answered. "Apparently, it can stay for undefined and extensive lengths of time, unlike most Summons." Her gaze moved to Kariya again as she said, "And Kariya, you can't keep holding all that blame. You've already taken steps to be sure such a thing can't happen a second time, so it's time to let it go. As Zack said, the whole blame was never yours, only a part of it, because you weren't the one planning to kill so many people. Even Edward mentioned that you tended to keep it in case you ran into trouble in places like the Northern Crater, and avoided using it around people. What blame is actually yours does you no good to keep as guilt, so use it to make sure no one else will make the same mistakes."

"...I'll think about it," Kariya 'agreed', and Lady Shinra knew it was as much as she was going to get just then.

With a faint sigh and a nod at the man, she turned back to Zack to say, "To get back to the issue with the Jenova Crystals, since you already know about Aeris and are willing to protect her, you're one of the few who I would trust to travel with her. With the right incentive and-or orders, every Turk will ignore her presence as well, and they'll just treat her like a useful civilian who needs to be kept safe and healthy to do her part. The Guards will actually be friendly with her, which is why I hope Verde will do. It shouldn't take long to arrange, because unlike with what happened in Midgar, this is something we have time to seek out and remove with very few deaths, if any, in the meantime. I don't want to wait for more deaths to happen, but we have a way to target them, and mass numbers of people won't die sometime today if we don't find them this instant."

"Okay, I get that, but what about Nina? She's going to go with Aeris, and with only two fighters and a healer, will that be good enough to keep a child safe?" the Second asked shrewdly.

"Besides the Bandersnatch which is always with her, she also has healing ability," Lady Shinra replied in a dry tone which made Zack blink. "Hers doesn't work as reliably as Aeris' at this point, but she has it and can use it. If what Ifalna told me is true, her Limit Break, which she nearly always activates at will, turns damage into healing for several minutes of battle. It's like she always has a desperate need to keep others from suffering, which I'd normally say was odd for a child her age, but...She has a history not much better than Edward's, and I'm sure that's influencing her Limit Break in both form and frequency of use. It also means she'll be all right to travel with you. After all, she and Aeris traveled, just the two of them and their Bandersnatch, from Costa del Sol to Cosmo Canyon without being harmed. At all."

"...I guess that also explains Alexander's durability against a pack of Cerberuses that tried to attack her," Zack commented with a sudden chuckle. At their puzzled looks, he clarified, "Her Bandersnatch's name is Alexander. And there's a chance Deneh and Nanaki would come along with us once they knew what we were planning to do."

"That there is," Lady Shinra agreed in mild amusement. "So, I'll be in touch with you likely tomorrow about heading out on this mission with either Verde or Lakis, and you should be leaving either that day or the next. Unless something very unexpected happens, your departure shouldn't be later than that."

"Thanks," Zack agreed. "But could I ask something about the tournament?"

"You can," she agreed, wondering what he would have to ask.

"I wasn't here until it was over, but I watched the recording...and I keep wanting to ask, 'what's the point?' Lady Shinra, why did he do that instead of just announcing that there was a new elite branch of SOLDIER people could expect to see around?" the younger man asked.

She had to sigh at the words. "He did it to show off and to 'prove' his mind-controlled puppets in Deepground are stronger than SOLDIER and the Turks, not realizing that we were either losing on purpose or poorly pairing people so they would lose. We've been bluntly told we're stronger, but now isn't the time to show that to my husband, since he plans, at the first available opportunity, to use them to instate martial law. And, as always happens when he does something foolish, we'll have to clean up his mess when the time comes, so we need to keep our skills in reserve until then. That also means you keep this information to yourself, all right, Zack?"

"Sure thing," he agreed, shocked by what she had told him. "I'll be waiting for a message from you about that mission, then." She nodded, and he quickly left, Carbuncle jumping from his head and flying back to perch on top of the woman's chair.

"...So what do we do until Ed's done and I need to be back at my apartment?" Kariya asked.

For a minute, the woman was silent, but then she lifted her cane and asked with a small smile, "Help me with some practice sparring, as much as my mobility allows?"

The orange haired Turk paused in surprise, then smiled and agreed, "Sure."