"Seriously, you are a nerd to the bone, aren't you?" Cissnei remarked, "I mean, Sauron?"

I smiled in embarrassment, "I would prefer Gorthaur, actually—I am hardly foul-smelling, unless one counts that smell of antiseptic. I do have, however, some experience with canines."

"Oh, Lord of Werewolves, right?"

"Correct." I winced, "I can only hope that I do not get mauled by a wolfhound or confronted by an elven princess."

"Given the lack of Luthiens and Huans around here, I'd say you're safe." The Turk comforted with a grin, blissfully unaware of the parallels between Midgar's half-Ancient and the half-Maia princess from Tolkien's pen. Presumably, but I strongly suspected that the philologist was not lying about having met beings who were not men—although the Firstborn might have favored the term Cetra instead of Elves.

…which would make Jenova Morgoth, come to think of it.

More salient was the fact that I now had proof that I had been under surveillance during my employment, since the odds of Cissnei coming upon the Silmarillion on her own were far lower than that of it it being introduced to her by my online content. Rather depressingly, I couldn't even write fanfiction without it having a strategic purpose.

After the revelations with Veld, I spent a few days in my cell, the passing of time marked only by meals and lights turning off and on, while (I presumed) he verified my information, and I mentioned a few anecdotes Felicia had shared which I could not have known otherwise to help the process along. The rotation who delivered my meals seemed to have softened towards me, sharing bits of news and the occasional piece of office gossip—my fate seemed to have become a subject of speculation outside the Turks. I was even congratulated for managing to do what everyone else dreamed of, one of the redheads—Rod—clapping me on the back and telling me good job outliving Hojo before handing me a chocolate bar.

Today, after mealtime, the door opened again, and both Veld and I took our customary places on either side of the table.

"We will be discussing your attempts to free your brother in detail today, Doctor Yakushi." He said, opening his notebook. "Please begin at when you realized something had happened to your brother."

"My brother's last letter to me said that he was joining the Shinra Educational Uplift Program. My parents informed me that they had been told that the helicopter he was on crashed, and that he had perished in the explosion." I smiled tightly, "Somehow, I doubted that. Why else would my parents have been silenced?"

He made a note, "I will not apologize for my operatives doing their jobs. The two agents we sent to recruit Verde Storm were killed as well. Please continue, doctor."

Admit but redirect. Sensible. The choice of were killed, passive, implied that the pair had been victims as well. It was a calculated choice.

I swallowed, and ran a hand through my hair—a tell, something I should have trained out of myself, "I was already in university by then, and any sudden change in behavior could have aroused suspicion, so I only put on a vague show of mourning for my brother, answered my parents' letters with sympathy but also dismissals of their concerns of foul play—I assumed that my letters were being monitored, given that I didn't know how else my brother would have come to Shinra's attention. I then attached myself to Fuhito to provide a plausible alternative for any changes I would affect. My brother and I don't look related, but the professor might have read about my brother's family, so I needed to have the chance to convince him of my trustworthiness, even if I did not have the skill to construct an untraceable new identity, so, brown hair and another style of glasses."

Glasses aside, I had actually modeled my new appearance vaguely after Doctor Crescent's, for greater effect. My persona had also relied upon my memories of what she had told me about the Professor to craft—she was to thank for how I could manipulate the Professor so effectively from the start.

"A few months afterwards, I let Fuhito get me drunk, then used drunken rebellion against my small-town origins as an excuse to change my name, just in case I was watched and someone was suspicious of why I would do so—Fuhito's always been obsessed with Zirconiade, he was the one who told me about the Summon—he was the one who attacked us in June, was he not? He worships Professor Hojo, even asked me to get him a lock of the professor's hair when I first got the job. It is extraordinarily strange to see him leading a terrorist group—"

Fuhito was just…

"We will discuss Fuhito later, Doctor Yakushi." Veld said, "Please, back to your actions to approach professor Hojo."

Thank heavens.

I nodded briskly, "Apologies. After I changed my appearance, I worked on the personality. I began with a base of unobtrusive, but quietly competent, with a touch of ambition, which I then modified on the fly while introducing myself to the professor—he was impressed by my work ethic and lack of excess emotion, and my resume was already noteworthy, leading to him offering me an internship. I also affected a certain degree of malleable vulnerability, given that getting him to approach me would arouse less suspicion. After my employment, I worked on the details, based upon my observations of the professor's reactions to my colleagues. I tamped down my sense of humor, smoothed away any trace of clumsiness, and, of course," I gave Veld a humorless smile, "I smothered whatever sense of rightness or morality I had."

Growing up in Chigiri did not allow for weak stomachs. Being the Mizukage's daughter had merely meant exposure to more regimented violence. I didn't flinch if I did not will it, and yet it had only been years upon years of careful indifference that had allowed me to make myself feel nothing but detached fascination when I saw what the Science Department was doing.

I was speaking on the automatic now, words tumbling out of my mouth with little thought to their content—but that was fine, because I was baring my soul to beg for trust, "Youth was an asset, but it only excused inexperience, not ignorance, and I was expected to learn swiftly. The average turnover rate for my department is twenty percent, did you know that? There are three routes a scientist suspected of second thoughts can go. Dead and in a tank, relegated to some unimportant position where they can see no evil and fight no evil, or down, permanently, into Deepground, if they knew too much—even if I wanted to go to Deepground, I couldn't get trapped there, not if I wanted to get my brother out."

A deep breath. Reorient. I relocated my glasses to the top of my nose, "Professor Hojo is—was—human. I needed access to even more classified information, so I needed him to want me at his side, and trust me unconditionally until emotion overwhelmed—no, subverted—good sense."

I couldn't keep my fingers from curling, my discipline weakened by relief and exhaustion and a new sort of tension until all my control did was keep my nails from being driven into my palms, "So, I learned him. I learned what questions pleased him, and which annoyed him. I studied every even peripherally relevant subject to be able to carry on what he would consider intelligent conversation and volunteer information when he needed it, before he asked. I trained my typing speed and handwriting, practiced the technical aspects of our profession, changed my diction to suit him; I filled in his paperwork, took care of whatever he considered irritating minutiae with the same precision he demanded of himself, aligned myself with him in all matters, but never hid my intelligence—there is a balance between appearing spineless and being rebellious, but I managed to provide stimulating alternate viewpoints without ever casting aspersions on his expertise."

—that had been like walking a knife's edge, neither toadying nor defiant, ever respectful, ever courteous, ever obedient despite questioning him at times when I noted an error or a possible alternative—

"I observed his moods, learned to identify which could be defused—and how—and which could not be, which was naturally followed by designing contingencies for then. I even recreated my sense of humor based on his own. I know his coffee order by heart, can confirm its correct temperature with a touch, can make an accurate guess as to what he will want to eat for each meal—varieties of ramen, usually, but never the instant kind; steak on slower days; onion and beef stir-fry on rice on occasion; blanched vegetables on the side, never mixed into the dish; fruit only in seedless chunks that can be eaten with a fork, never Banora Whites; pastries that do not flake—"

I pushed my glasses up, "A thousand tiny things to endear myself to him, aside from the genius I first showed at the Shardstrength Project, and one big one."

"What is that?"

"Physical force. What cemented my worth in the professor's mind was the fact that I could unerringly carry out technically complex orders that required a skillset not usually found in scientists. One cannot tell a SOLDIER to retrieve the amygdala of a Nibel Dragon, let alone trust him to get it back properly preserved and undamaged—I can manage to acquire good quality samples even in adverse conditions, while a knack for delivering tranquilizers, be it by injection or ingestion or inhalation, makes containment breaches end with living specimens, and it did not hurt to be fast enough to put down Mako-crazy SOLDIERs before they damaged lab equipment either."

Professor Hojo had also brought me along as his platonic date for any event he had to attend and made me act as a social buffer. As a result, I hated those things even more than he did. I had no desire to talk about that, however.

Veld nodded slowly, "The number of containment missions we ran did drop significantly after your employment. And your friends? You did realize the foolishness of isolating yourself while centering your life on a sociopath?"

I shrugged, "I kept in contact with my old university friends—Fuhito never realized that I was sabotaging his efforts to separate me on purpose, and Professor Hojo never cared—and we still put our heads together for interdisciplinary projects or whatever unclassified problem any of us need help on, and our groupchats are still active, even if I rarely speak up."

"Do you refer to the 'Alchemical Society'?" Veld confirmed.

"Yes. Apart from that, I sent Tifa a PHS, so we could talk a bit that way."

He didn't ask me who Tifa was, or the contents of our conversations, which was another indication that my communications were not private. As to be expected, given that I was aware of far too many company secrets and what did you have secret police for if not to make sure your scientists weren't leaking them? I sent the phone to Tifa, since her house had the electricity to charge the thing, and because no one would take her possessions like they would Cloud's.

Lucky, given that Cloud had, despite my insistence when I was at Nibelheim for Shardstrength and my more carefully worded texts over monitored lines throughout the years, chosen to come to Midgar to investigate the series of misfortunes that had befallen my family and left everyone but me dead (with me having discarded my old name), and had to that purpose applied for SOLDIER, then been relegated the infantry on account of his height and age, where his skill with Materia and a midwife's training marked him for either a reevaluation once he had grown some or immediate enrollment into the combat medic program (Tifa, he had informed me, intended to follow him once she had completed her training with Master Zangan). As a result, he didn't need to be brought even more into Shinra's attention, although with his connection to me and the fact that I did have to treat him as a little brother of sorts to keep him from questioning why I had changed and making an enemy of Professor Hojo meant that he had no hope of anonymity.

Cloud!

I had made sure that he knew I had a plan, but he would not react well to being taken by the Turks, and he was without a doubt willing to make an enemy of Shinra for his friends' sake, and he counted me among them, despite everything. I could only trust that Chadley would have assured him of my continued survival.

I turned my attention back to Veld Verdot.