Break the Mold
Shelke was sitting at one of the workstations in the Weapons Department with Elicia sitting on the desk in front of her, several Materia scattered around the table, and Yufi pacing either behind her or in a circle around the table. She was thankful the Weapons staff were used to Yufi's energy and ignored her now, and that the whole department was so used to Reeve taking both girls when he visited them that they didn't question the two appropriating a workstation. As for Elicia, her chest cavity was open and three Materia glowed faintly in the cavity.
"Almost done?" Yufi asked, switching to a circle for pacing for a bit.
"Well, she has Manipulate, Shield, and Seal Material so far. Since she can't fight and doesn't want to—" (Elicia inserted a "Yup!" to the statement.) "—what else should we give her?" Shelke asked thoughtfully.
"Actually, I was thinking—" Yufi began.
"Oh Shiva! The horror!" Shelke cut her off with a horrified expression, which caused both Elicia and Yufi to giggle.
"Shut up!" the Wutain girl snickered, utterly defeating the statement in the process. "Anyway—Ed actually doesn't catch me most of the time when I hijack his Materia, so when he's out, I've been searching through them. He's got a lot of really strange ones I've never seen or heard of before, but there's a few that are really, really useful. We should probably switch most of what she's got with those, and add more slots for the new ones. I think you'd only need two more."
"But Yufi, she can only handle so many Materia at once, just like we can, and 'special' Materia are always demanding for carrying and usage," Shelke pointed out dryly.
"Not these ones," Yufi smirked. "In fact, they don't cause deficiencies at all." With that, she pulled out a Summon Materia, a Magic Materia, an Independent Materia, a Command Materia, and a Support Materia, offering them to Shelke.
The girl stared at them for a minute before cautiously taking them, knowing only the Support and Independent Materia should have caused no deficiencies...But sure enough, when she assessed the Summon, Magic, and Command Materia, not only could she only gape at them, but they also caused no deficiencies. Her stunned gaze moved back to a smirking Yufi and she asked in a winded tone, "What are these? How could something like this even exist?"
"What do they have on them?" Elicia asked, one ear twitching curiously.
"The Support is a Mega-All, the Independent is a combination of all the Plus Materia, and the Summon, Magic, and Command all have every known spell—casting?—of each type on them," Yufi offered.
"Oh, those last three are the Master Materias," Elicia filled in. "They're very rare, but they're known. I don't know about the Independents, though. But wouldn't that mean I'd have to fight?"
"That's stupid," Yufi replied to the small, furry robot. "You can still choose what you want to use, but this way, your choices range from Phoenix to Life Two. You'll still be able to use Manipulate, Shield, and the Seal spells, but you can also use anything else you think you need or want to. This lets you choose, and won't weigh you down. And since you're Ed's anyway, those have all not been stolen at all."
"...Stolen..." Shelke sighed, shaking her head. "Fine, are you game, Elicia?"
"...Okay!" she agreed, and Yufi grinned as Shelke gave a small smile. It only took a few moments for Mega-All, Master Magic, and Master Command to be placed (to give her access to what she'd already had), then Shelke began modifying her for two more slots.
It was when she was about half done that eight men and women in the Deepground uniform marched into the room weapons drawn and trained on the engineers working there, causing Yufi to hiss under her breath. That told Shelke these people were up to no good, so she quickly closed Elicia's chest cavity, grabbed the tools and Materia she still needed to insert, and seized the little robot.
Then, she rose and screeched at the top of her lungs, "Bad guys! Help!" Yufi looked at her in annoyance as every head turned to look at her in shock, even the Deepground people. Hey, it had always worked before.
"Shelke, are you—" Reeve began in alarm as he and Scarlet came to the door of her office—only for both to stop and stare at the eight members of Deepground.
"Oh, fuck!" Scarlet snarled. "What do you bastards want?"
One of them, a woman, faced her and said, "Well, since we couldn't burst in on you and trap you in your office, let me be blunt. Either you work for us—both of you—on weapons and gear we want, or you die."
Both Scarlet and Reeve blinked, then looked at each other, then looked at the Deepground members again. It was Scarlet who asked blandly, "Oh, is that all?"
"Is that agreement?" the Deepground woman asked with a faint smirk.
Scarlet's response—was to draw a small handgun from the front of her dress and shoot three of the Deepground people in the head before they had time to react. As the three fell to the ground (it would be temporary with only one bullet, Shelke knew), she replied in a tone as cold as ice, "Get the Hellfire out of my Department, assholes! Everyone, weapons up! Looks like we've got some live ones here!" With the words, she shoved Reeve aside towards a nearby workstation, even as she shot another of the members of Deepground, though it wasn't a temporary 'killing' shot that time.
Chaos broke out at the words as the department staff began grabbing weapons, fully prepared for use or not, and diving for any cover they could as they shot at the members of Deepground. Of course, Deepground shot back, but a few turned into monsters—which were largely impervious to bullets or magic. In the chaos of the battle, no one saw what happened to Scarlet or Reeve, but Yufi quickly dragged Shelke out of the way of a bullet and shoved her behind the table, then pushed her in the direction of one of the reinforced weapons testing rooms.
Elicia 'eeped' and cast Shield on everyone in the room who wasn't with Deepground, and Shelke gave her a small grin and nod, but kept going in the direction Yufi pushed her in. Suddenly, the Wutain stopped and told her harshly, "Get into one of those rooms and finish with Elicia! Hurry!" She then jumped—and as Shelke watched in something like horror, met one of the Deepground metamorphose monsters in battle.
"Shelke, she told you to keep moving," Elicia told her quietly. "So you'd better do what she said."
Shaking off her shock, the red haired girl turned back towards the room and slid through the door, setting aside the battle noise outside. The lights in the room were off, but the door was open, so she used the light from it to go back to work on Elicia's slots.
While she was working, something crossed the light, making her look up in alarm—only to see Reeve and Scarlet slip into the room. They blinked at her, then sat against the wall so they both were out of the way of her light and were able to rest. Both looked mussed, and Scarlet's hair had come undone and fell freely, but they otherwise didn't seem to be hurt.
"Well, I have to commend your courage, at the very least," Reeve commented to the woman beside him, and Shelke listened to them while she worked.
"Courage," Scarlet repeated, sounding exhausted. "I'd be dead in the water without my Magic Poet, you realize that, right? I'd be a lot of hot air and not much else. Though, it helps this is a weapons department."
"And yet, those guys out there are so oddly durable..." Reeve sighed faintly. "How can we bypass that?"
"Nothing comes to mind..." Scarlet also sighed.
"Could we close the door and just stay here?" the man asked.
It was Shelke who immediately asked, "For how long?" Still, she kept working.
"What?" Reeve blinked.
"Reeve, this is a sealed room," Scarlet replied dryly. "It's been upgraded since the last time I made the building rock, too, meaning it's impossible to get out of it, as much as it is to get in. We have only the air which is in the room at the moment the door's shut, and we have no food and water. Worst case scenario, this room guarantees our deaths. It's only good as a temporary shelter at best."
"...Oh," the man sighed.
"And, I'm not just going to leave Yufi out there to fight by herself," Shelke added. "But she told me to get here and finish with Elicia, so that's what I'm doing."
"Good luck with that, then, kiddo," Scarlet agreed.
"Well, at least we can rest for a bit before rejoining that mess..." Reeve muttered, and silence fell, even as Shelke kept working...
FoWD
Hojo was watching as one of the new Turks—Ranic, he thought his name was, but he'd labeled him as Subject D—ran through some tests of his assassination needle for his records. The needle was a very interesting weapon, because while it had no slots for Materia, it seemed to operate on the premise of a permanent Added Effect and Poison. It was also shockingly sharp and highly dangerous, but he wanted to see the limits of the strength of the poison. As far as he could tell, it exceeded the limits of Bio 3 by a fair margin—until Ranic was told to kill a healthy rabbit, rather than a deformed, dying one. Then, it wasn't even reaching the damage abilities of the first level Bio.
In the meantime, in another nearby room, Lucrecia was working with Stroud to overcome his mental trauma (what was that, anyway?), so he was just leaving them to it. He really didn't grasp how killing people could hurt some people so much. While he didn't generally go out of his way to do so, it also didn't particularly affect him if someone died at his hands; as far as he knew, it never had. It was more just a 'pity it didn't work out' moment for him. But, she had insisted mental trauma was a thing, and that she was going to help people with it, so he had finally, many years ago already, just sighed and given her permission to do so.
The Turks' survival rate had gone up since then, so maybe she'd had a point...?
Either way, that was her territory, and had gotten some good results, so he wasn't really worried about letting her have space for her work, and some assistants when she needed them. At least he could take credit for approving her work and making it a standard part of Shinra's practices, because they spent less money on rehabilitation of people like SOLDIERs and Turks than they did to train new ones.
Suddenly, his PHS rang, so he called a halt to Subject D's practice and answered it to ask, "Is something wrong?" Subject D moved over to him to listen intently to his side of the discussion—not surprising or unexpected for a Turk, and actually, one of their traits he appreciated.
The caller told him, "Those Deepground people have come here, eight of them, heading for your area—I mean, not your office, but where you usually work. It's only a matter of time before they'll find which room you're in. And they've already killed three of the scientists and doctors, just because they didn't move quite fast enough."
"Deepground, you say? Here on this floor?" he asked, pressing his lips into a fine line. He noted with some amusement that Subject D's eyes hardened and his grip on his needle tightened. He already planned to fight—to kill.
"Yes! And—one of them for sure looks strange, like kind of pastel tentacles took over their back or something?" the caller replied.
For a moment, he paused as he tried to think of what that may be, then he began mentally cursing as he said, "Activate the emergency alarm, code red level. We're under attack, and the perpetrator is not entirely human, even by Deepground's standards. The department heads will take care of the rest. And if they happen to pass by the caged beasts, open the cages on them."
"Yes, Sir!" the caller agreed, then hung up. A moment later, an alarm began blaring all over the department, and Hojo faced a grim-looking Subject D.
"So, not human?" the Turk asked. He questioned nothing else, just that one point.
"Jenova. They've been—strongly—infused with Jenova's cells," Hojo replied. "Do you know what that means, Turk?"
"Generally, very hard to damage, more rapid repair than even SOLDIERs show from Mako, actions based on Jenova's will, not the subject's own—so utterly destructive—and strange deformities," the Turk answered promptly. "Complete destruction in this case would be required to sever Jenova's link to them, which is the goal. There's a suspicion in the Turks that you also have some of her cells in you, Professor."
"Some, yes," Hojo admitted candidly. It seemed the Turks were well up to date on what had been going on, and he had a feeling Subject E was the reason for that. It saved him time, though, so he was thankful. "I injected one sample back before Subjects S, G, and A were created, but found my own thoughts being overridden by hers, so fought for my own control and performed no further injections. The benefits outweighed the negatives, and once I had my own control back, there was no issue."
Subject D eyed him for a long moment, then nodded and said, "Our data also shows there's a good chance you won't be possessed by her this time. One less person to guard against if Deepground's made their move is a blessing just now. What do you want to do from here? Either way, I'll be aiming to kill anyone in a Deepground uniform."
"Have you got a method of destroying the Jenova-possessed bodies?" Hojo asked, brow quirked at the younger man, whose brow furrowed in thought for a moment.
As he was opening his mouth, the Turk said, "Ah, yes. I actually have an Ultima from Sonna when she was given it, but she's not a combatant, so she passed it on. I don't like it when it—explodes—so I learned to pinpoint its effect. I believe that works something similar to Commander Rhapsodos' use of Fire Three to cremate a target."
"Good enough," Hojo agreed, heading for the door. "Be on alert." The younger man fell into step behind him as he opened the door to the hall and checked both ways before stepping out. His first goal was to find Lucrecia, since she was one of the ones who could activate some emergency defenses in the labs. Rather, at the corner of the hall crossing his, she walked into him with the blond she was rehabilitating following her, blades out.
"What's going on, Professor?" the woman asked sharply over the sound of the alarm.
"It seems Deepground is on the offensive," he replied.
She hissed a few curses, then said, "Stroud, we need to get to the other side of the floor so I can access my terminal point. Think you can manage?" And it seemed she knew as much as the Turks if that was her immediate response to the sudden attack.
"I think so..." Stroud offered slowly, but drew in a deep breath and tightened his grip on his blades.
"May I suggest you take the indirect route through the sixty-seven labs?" Hojo offered. "There are two access points between the two floors, and the lift is an easy access point. Since they seem to be here on this floor, you should make better time down below."
"I'll do that, then," Lucrecia nodded. "Let's go, Stroud." The blond nodded and followed her to the lift, which was the opposite direction of the stairs and the main floor entry door.
Hojo, on the other hand, said to Subject D, "We have to risk being caught, but hopefully their progress has been slowed by the beasts being released. Come."
They made their way down halls taking them in the direction of the stairs, but not directly to them, as Hojo's access point was to the far side of the floor, between the entry and lift accesses. He avoided the main route as much as it was possible to, but they couldn't be that lucky—he already knew their current luck was already better than they'd hoped. And that meant passing a corner which had somehow always been a touchy place.
And that was when they found one of the Deepground members, even as he saw them and shouted, "You! Die!" Subject D shoved him over to hit the wall as a bullet shot at him, but then the Turk dodged that particular bullet and dove at the man. He didn't hesitate to duck low to avoid the gun, then come up almost flush with the other man's body, slamming his needle up through the bottom of the man's chin near the base of his neck. That shoved it right up into his brain, and injected a fast-acting poison right into that same organ—the man's death came so fast he only really had time for one agonized scream.
As the Deepground member fell, Subject D breathed a sigh of relief and faced Hojo to say, "Let's keep going, Sir."
A look at the man showed no traces of Jenova, so Hojo nodded and agreed, "Let's go. This one isn't infected, so you don't need to cremate him. By the way...is your poisoned needle actually intent-based?"
They made their way towards his terminal as Subject D commented thoughtfully, "I don't know, but it might well be."
FoWD
Verdot walked into President Shinra's office as he heard the man demand, "What do you think you're doing? This is my company, and my reputation—"
"And you're a weakling who can't even lift a hand to his own wife, let alone one of us," a cold voice replied, and Verdot's eyes quickly found the source...To the only other person in the room, one of the Restrictors.
"I've been trying to have her eliminated for—" Marius began.
"Instead of simply suffocating her in her bed, where you had easy access to her, with your own hands, you had others try to do the task, no matter how many times they failed," the Restrictor replied harshly.
"And we have company," a voice rather close to Verdot put in, and he turned his head just enough to see the speaker. It was the other Restrictor, who had been against the wall not far from the stairs. Looking forward again, he saw the President and the first Restrictor looking at him, the President's eyes wide in panic.
"Verdot! These men seem to have forgotten their place!" the President said.
His shoulders tensed as he asked, "And you expect me to fight two of the most powerful of your super-soldiers alone? After making it abundantly clear that we're the 'weaker' combatants?"
Both Restrictors snorted and the one closest to him asked, "Is that to say you think you could win against one of us, you just don't like the current odds?"
Verdot looked over at him again and pointed out, "I've been a Turk since I was sixteen—that means I've been living as one for about twenty-eight years. I'm certain I could take one of you down in a fair fight—as in, the environment's free game, but there are no extra reinforcements."
The Restrictor tensed as a noticeable scowl formed on his face—but then an explosion sounded from below, and both Restrictors smirked. The one near the President commented, "Well, it looks like the Lady of the company is now taken care of."
"Then what's all the fuss about?" the President huffed, turning to go back to his seat.
Verdot just blinked a few times, processing what the explosion meant. For a moment, he was about to panic, but then remembered Carbuncle, and realized it was unlikely she was dead. All he could do right then was focus on the thought that she was fine, and keep calm so he could deal with this situation. There was really nothing else he could do, anyway, since trying to leave to check on her would reveal his existing loyalty to her. On the assumption that she was indeed still alive (or even if she was dead), that wouldn't be good, so he had to stay put. Besides, he didn't think the Restrictors would let him leave.
A hand roughly grabbed the President and shoved him back into place, and the Restrictor said, "It's about the fact that we own this company, not you, and you're just a figurehead. So, until we have agreement from you to do things our way and put through the rules and restrictions we want, you're staying right where you are. And if you keep refusing, we'll bring your son in here and let him watch you die for refusing to follow our terms, then impose them on him, instead."
"That won't work on Rufus—he's his mother's son, and won't bow to you. And unlike either of his parents, he'll fight you on equal terms to retain his autonomy," Verdot threw in. "The only power you'll ever have over Shinra is if you can con the President into abiding your terms. And frankly, if you aren't aware of how much of a control freak he is, you've dropped the ball along the way—a rather important one, at that."
"How rude!" the President glared at him.
"But absolute truth," Verdot replied in vague amusement, producing a huff from the man, but no denial or further rebuff.
The two Restrictors traded looks, then the one near Verdot jumped at him to attack him, and Verdot dodged neatly, though it pushed him further into the room and closer to the President. Rather than wait for another attack, he simply walked over to the other man and faced the Restrictor who was keeping the man in place. He knew what was going on; either they'd keep trying to pressure the President into giving up his power to Deepground, or they'd just kill both Verdot and the President. His only real assurance was that Rufus could absolutely hold his own in a fight at any level of difficulty, and that Lady Shinra probably wasn't dead.
Then, the door to the lift in the President's office opened and a Restrictor stepped out, followed by a member of Deepground who was a woman. For some reason, she wasn't wearing her helmet, and the Deepground people, like the Infantry, were usually obsessive about wearing them. Also, the man looked like he'd been in a fight, and even the woman looked a bit mussed, making him wonder what he'd missed.
"Veld? What are you doing here when it's not your shift?" the President asked in confusion, as though he was still completely in control of the situation.
"I'm just cleaning up some trash, since it seems the other Restrictors have collectively lost their minds," Veld answered blandly.
"Then, that evens up the terms! Verdot, Veld, take care of these two!" the President almost crowed in glee.
At the command, something in Verdot snapped and he suddenly drew his gun, lifted it to the back of the President's neck, and shot. The others all gaped at him as the fat, blond man fell slowly to the floor, dead before he'd even reached it.
"...Should I ask?" Veld asked in a winded tone.
"I'd have never betrayed Lady Shinra if he hadn't betrayed my trust, as well as hers, in the first place," Verdot told him.
Both Restrictors snarled and made to jump at either him or Veld. Since it was retaliation he had expected, regardless, Verdot just braced himself for the coming fight. There would be time to think on—everything—later.
