A/N: Phoenix: Yes, I enjoyed the story link you sent. It was very humorous and made me laugh. A lot. :D I liked it so much, I did this:

Readers: Even though I don't normally recommend other fics in my works, I'm going to recommend this one if you really need a laugh: Stick 'em with the pointy end by TyrantChimera.

Shrine

After the meeting with Weiss and the Tsviets, Veld took Cloud, Vincent, and Tifa to their assigned rooms on the Turks' floors, telling them to please stay there until he could see them the next day with their ID. Cloud was still not happy to be joining Shinra after everything they had done, but he had to admit there was no better place to work from. In just the time he'd known the Turks' 'old hands', he'd realized the Turks he had known had been a shadow of what the group had originally been. More, a few of them had presented him weapon ideas he wanted to try. Doriss' in particular was unique, and he wanted to see if there was a way to do what she wanted done.

The following morning, he was still stuck in the room, thinking about what he wanted to do with various weapons for the Turks, wishing he could go somewhere to work. The question then was, 'where?' Suddenly, it hit him—as a Turk, he was allowed to use the main facilities in the Weapons Department. When Veld dropped off his ID and uniforms, he changed quickly and bolted from the room, even before Veld had been able to hand Tifa's uniforms to her (her room was next door to his, though Vincent's was on the other floor the Turks had). The result produced bemusement from both Veld and Tifa, but he had a destination in mind and planned to make the most of it.

So it was that, soon after the noon meal, Cloud was sitting at a workbench in the main Weapons Department development room, fiddling with parts, making sketches, and generally focused on how to make things work. He didn't notice the passage of time, or people staring at him until they got used to him, or anyone's comings and goings. The parts were just so interesting, and he had enough weapons to work on that if he got stalled on one, he could switch to another for awhile. He suddenly wished he'd been able to use this lab while working on Vincent's gun.

His thoughts were interrupted as an amused voice asked him, from very close by, "What's all this?"

He started in surprise and looked up and to the side...only to see Scarlet holding a couple of his sketches, ones he wasn't actively working on just then. While his first response would have been to glare and tell her to back off (or something ruder which shouldn't normally come out of a twelve-year-old's mouth), he was currently more interested in the Turks' weapons, so just said, "Some of the weapon redesigns I'm working on for the Turks. They told me what about their weapons they would like to see changed, and now I'm trying to make it work. Some of them are really hard, though."

She raised a brow and commented, "You do realize it's almost nine at night, right?"

"Huh?" he blinked in surprise, and the woman gave a short chuckle. "I was—"

"Caught up in your work. I know. But the President doesn't like to pay for overtime past closing hours if he doesn't have to, so you'd better go for today. Not to mention, the cafeteria will only be open until ten, when the last SOLDIERs will be back from missions today. If you want the free food, you'd better get some now," she informed him. It was only then when he realized he and Scarlet were the only two there.

Looking back at his papers, he asked, "What do I do with all this?"

"You can take your own schematics with you," she offered. "I'm not going to miss the paper you drew them on." As the blond woman handed the ones she'd been looking at back to him, she added, "The rest of the equipment has to stay here unless there were parts you brought in with you. The lockers in the back corner are for you to put them in if you don't want the things you were making to be dismantled for parts come morning, and tools can just stay on the bench. If you ever want a job in Weapons, just let me know—you're worth having on staff."

The words made Cloud gape at her in surprise, but he obediently gathered his papers, put the tools back in their row at the top of the bench, and began sorting out the pieces he'd been working with for trials he wanted to keep versus ones he didn't need. As he worked, he told her, "Thanks, but for now, I'm good where I am."

"I figured," she said with another chuckle. "Turks are really hard to entice away from their department. I'm just letting you know the offer's open if you want it. Can I assume I'll be seeing more of you now?"

"Probably," Cloud agreed, using his papers to carry the trials he was keeping. "As I get more tools and space in the Turks' office, I might not come as often, but some things—they're only here and there aren't really 'personal' versions of them, so..."

He then made his way to the lockers at the back of the room, finding some which were firmly shut and some which were open a bit. One of those, he put the trial samples into, then closed it, eyed the locking mechanism for a moment, then realized he needed to scan his ID card. Once he'd done so, it registered as properly locked, so he faced the woman again, noting how her eyes were on the schematics in his arms, not on him.

Until her dark blue eyes rose to meet his, and he suddenly wondered if she might be related to the President, too. She was only around Lazard's age, so her mid-twenties, and the President was known to sleep around. A lot.

"Why aren't you in the SOLDIER program with your eyes?" she asked suddenly.

"Because I got my enhancements from falling in a Mako Spring near my hometown, and it happened to be the Turks who found me first," Cloud answered, actually feeling amused at the inane question.

"A natural Spring?" she asked, suddenly frowning. He didn't think she was angry, but he'd also never before seen her show the kind of cautious puzzlement she was now.

"Yes. Why?" he asked, tipping his head to the side.

"Then why do your eyes look the same as SOLDIER eyes, when they were given refined Mako, not natural Mako?" she asked, still looking puzzled.

He blinked. "Isn't the whole glowing-eye thing one of the results you could get from an overdose of Mako?"

"...How long were you down with poisoning to have gotten enough of the natural stuff to cause the effect?" she asked in reply, and he suddenly felt ill.

It wasn't really a secret—Tifa had said it directly to the President—so he cautiously told her, "I was only out for two days. I shouldn't have been. By all rights, I should never have recovered with how much I was exposed to in the Spring before someone found me and dragged me out of it."

Her eyes widened, but she turned to face the door as she said, "Fair enough. We need to get going. Come on, out!" As she headed for the door, he hurried to follow her—he didn't want to lose his right to go there to work.

It didn't take long for her to shoo him out into the hall and close the door behind her, where she left him to his own devices. He didn't get why she wore a dress cut so low in the front, but it didn't stop her from being absolutely vicious, and he didn't want to push his luck with her (which would probably force him to kill her) until certain other factors were in place. With her temper, that was always a danger, and his only current protection was his status with the Turks, who she apparently didn't currently hate.

As he made his way to the cafeteria, however, he wondered if she had really just chosen to disregard something she could have used against him, or if she was just going to file it away for later. But, it hadn't sounded like she was just discarding it, or like she was going to use it, either, more like she wished she hadn't asked in the first place...

MB

After a full day of Cloud not being anywhere visible, Vincent felt annoyed. He had seen everyone else (other than Tseng, who was undercover), so only the blond was unaccounted for. Even injured Weiss had put in an appearance, and seemed to have been healing better since getting out of Deepground. He wondered if that had something to do with the full reactivation of his genetics Minerva had told them about.

To his surprise, Rosso had bluntly announced to the President that she wasn't going to take a mentee unless it was a woman, and no, there was no one in Deepground who she could Mentor—they'd all learned as much as they were capable of learning from her. When the President was about to reply in anger, Weiss had pointed out that the wider the age gap between the three youngest Tsviets and their mentees was, the less effective the Mentoring would be.

The incident had happened where and when he could see it because the President had wanted to go over the terms of his reparations payments and work with him, and the Tsviets had joined them as they had been finishing. Of course, that had left him the opportunity to ask why President Shinra wasn't formally letting women into SOLDIER when it was obvious women in Deepground could handle it just as much as men could. Bluntly saying Hojo was misogynistic, hence the lack of women in a combat role, made the blond man frown thoughtfully, so Vincent decided to let it drop. The thought had been put out there, so there was nothing more to discuss.

The next morning, Vincent arrived in the Turks' office to find Cloud at his desk, working on a few things while he and Tifa talked, and he was just in time to hear her say, "But I'm only eleven! There's no way they would listen to me!"

"Why? Because your father didn't?" Cloud asked in vague amusement, still working. When Tifa blinked in surprise, the blond boy added, "And Tifa, to be clear—Turks don't care about your age or gender. They only care whether or not you can do your job. Find a space on this floor big enough to make into a decent cafeteria, tell them exactly what you want and where you want it, and tell them to get it done so you can start working already. And then, go out into the city and find anything else you want to have, like cookbooks and possible food suppliers. Make sure you have a thorough list of everything you're going to need for the cafeteria—including cutlery and dishes."

"There aren't any spaces that big on our floors except the Library, and I can't use that space—it's full of books and paperwork already," the girl pointed out.

"There should be the space, just not where a visitor to these floors would see it," Vincent commented, and the two looked up at him.

"Huh?" Tifa blinked in surprise.

"Good morning," a new voice yawned from behind him as Vincent felt a hand shove him out of the way of the door. "And Vincent, as much as we revere you, that doesn't give you the right to block the door. What are you talking about?" The twenty-nine-year-old woman had brown eyes and her black hair cut in a bob which curled in at the ends. Her weapon was a swallowtail blade not too different from Rosso's, but with both blades of equal length and without any gun fixtures. She also never wore a tie or buttoned the top two buttons of her shirt, and her shoes were black instead of brown, but otherwise, she seemed completely at home in the uniform. If Vincent was remembering correctly, she was called Leana, one of the longest-running of the current Turks.

"I need a cafeteria to do my job for you," Tifa said. "But there's no space for one."

The woman blinked, then chuckled and answered, "You know, if we want to keep our cafeteria for us, it should damned well be where only we can get to it. Come with me, and I'll show you some space you can use."

She then lead Tifa into the Director's office—where the girl exclaimed in awe, "Oh, Shiva, that's amazing!"

Silence fell after that, broken only by another Turk, a redhead, coming into the office. The new arrival wore soft, white shoes and a katana with an otherwise perfectly worn uniform, had his long, auburn hair in a ponytail, and had light brown eyes. He also generally seemed laid back, but it had been mentioned that he had multiple personality disorder, which gave him an assassin's look and aura when the other personality took over. In the meantime, Lenno (1) was still highly intelligent and fully capable of doing his job without resorting to the 'killer' personality, but it was highly useful in a combat situation. As long as the other personality was aware of who was currently his allies so he didn't kill one accidentally.

"...Hidden space, Vincent?" Cloud asked in amusement as Lenno made his way to his desk.

"If it's anything like it was twenty-ish years ago in Junon, there's lots of hidden space on this floor," Vincent replied dryly. "And while more of it would be used now than back then, this is a larger office so there should still be plenty of unused space, too."

"That's certainly true," Lenno agreed with a chuckle, opening a folder which had been left on his desk to start reading.

Three more Turks came in while Cloud was staring at Vincent in surprise: Donnel, Eonna, and Sirra. The two women both had black hair, but Eonna was Caucasian with what looked like a bit of Costan influence while Sirra was half-Wutain. They both also refused to wear a button-down shirt (which meant no tie), had their hair in ponytails at the backs of their heads, and used guns primarily. Eonna had hazel eyes, a black tank top, and one gun holster with clothes otherwise to regulation. Sirra, on the other hand, had amber eyes, a white tank top, her suit jacket worn open, and two guns at her waist.

Finally, Cloud asked Vincent, "Does that mean I could have my workspace in there, too? For my engineering?"

"Most likely," Vincent agreed. "Did you want to see it? Verdot showed me the entrance while we were waiting on the President, but I haven't had the opportunity to see inside, myself." (2)

"Sure. I don't have much longer before going back to the Weapons Department, anyway," Cloud agreed, gathering his papers and rising.

Raising a brow, the older man asked, "Weapons?"

"I need somewhere to work," the boy answered dryly in amusement. "I have nothing for engineering here right now, so the only place for me to work on anything is there. As long as I'm working on a project, they leave me alone."

"Even Scarlet?" Vincent asked as he led the way to Veld's office.

"Yeah, even her," Cloud informed him, which honestly puzzled him. Then again, the only thing Vincent had ever known about her had come from ten years in the future, which was a long time for someone to change if they were going to.

He showed Cloud how to find and open the passage in the back corner of the room, then led him down a hall system with many rooms off it—and they were able to hear Tifa excitedly babbling about the space and what it could fit from somewhere down the hall. As Vincent made to lead him past the first few rooms, the boy asked, "Why are we skipping these ones?"

"If this office is anything like Junon's, these are the ones prisoners are kept in, or in the rare occasion of an interrogation, they're used for that," Vincent answered. "There are also likely a few rooms at the far end of the hall used similarly. Some of the rooms in between are essentially apartments, but with no outside windows. Most of the rooms are empty or for storage, and get randomly appropriated for various other uses. It's those rooms you'll want to look at, because things put into storage are easy to move if you find the room happens to be the right specs. Tifa obviously found one such room. We'll just have to search them all because I don't already know which are which."

"Okay," Cloud agreed in bemusement, and began scanning the rooms to which Vincent opened the door, which the reinstated Turk did as well.

Nearly all of them the boy immediately disregarded—one stank like something died in it (probable, so Vincent didn't blame him), one was frigid for no known reason, a number were too small or too big, one just felt wrong somehow. One was being used to store old Materia, various types of potions, and old gear and equipment, so both felt it would be best to just leave that one as it was. They also found the 'apartment' rooms and disregarded those once they'd looked around one to see what kind of space it was. There was one room Cloud paused to look around more thoroughly because it had good potential for what he wanted.

Finally, Vincent opened one door—and Cloud blinked in surprise. It was full of packed boxes (taped shut, even, like someone had been moving and stuck them in there for storage), but under the ones towards the middle of the room, there was a sturdy, wooden table with metal across its top and sides. As the boxes were all in a single layer only, Cloud could pick up and move one box on that table, revealing an engineering table. The boy blinked in surprise again, put the box back, and went to the bench against the back wall to lift a box from there, and revealed an engineer's long workbench.

"Vincent..." Cloud began as he slowly set the box back down. Vincent just eyed him, realizing the theme to the room, but still knowing Cloud was going to state the obvious. Sure enough, the boy finished, "I think I found the old Turks' engineer's room."

"And is it suitable?" he asked flatly. "Or did you want the related goods moved to the other room you looked at?"

Rather than answer him, the boy cut open one of the boxes—and pulled out a familiar ring of metal. Drawing a sharp breath, Vincent found himself beside Cloud and had the ring—a chakram with a decorative wave design on the flat of the blade—clutched tightly in one hand (thankfully the metal one, as the cutting edge was sharp, even after so long). It had been Lady Shinra's before the accident with the Behemoths in 1970, her primary weapon, and was still in pristine shape. Leaning over the box, Vincent could see the cane Lady Shinra had used as well, with the gryphon's head, and her Bandersnatch fur wrap. Under those were other things as well.

"This one has dual short swords in it, and the one next to it has a chain sickle," Cloud's voice pulled him out of his shock, making him look at the sickle in question as Cloud set it gently back in the box. "And there are other personal things in here, like photos and things." The sickle had once belonged to Nicco Dunn (3), one of the first of the Turks when they'd just been formed. If dual short swords were in the other, it was likely they had once belonged to Moira Panos (3), another founder. Both had died in the Behemoth incident.

"...Cloud..." he began, trying to formulate words.

"What is this room for, Vincent?" Cloud asked as he looked up to meet the older man's glowing red eyes with glowing blue.

Vincent had to swallow hard before he could get his voice to work. "These are the belongings of dead Turks who either had no living family to take them or whose families didn't want these. Moira and Nicco were the ones whose things were in the other two boxes you opened, but this one..." Vincent paused to look back at the chakram he held, then finished, "These belonged to Lady Shinra (4). Veld...probably has them so they were spared destruction at her husband's hands."

For a long moment, Cloud was quiet, but then he surprised Vincent by saying, "There was a room we passed which would be an ideal shrine to these past Turks. Let's move these things to it—there was nothing in it already. I'll be able to use this room, I think, but I won't know for sure until we've moved these boxes out and made sure none are engineering tools. Then I'll just need to make a list of what I still need for the space to be functional, and in the meantime, we can set up the shrine room."

For a long time, Vincent was quiet, but then he offered a nod and set the chakram back in the box, then lifted the whole box. Cloud picked up the box with Nicco's stuff in it and led the way to the room he meant—it was one of the larger rooms, so it would give them the space to have all of the past Turks in it, and maybe even to add more to it. For some time, they worked on moving the boxes, joined in a slow trickle by the other Turks as they found out what was going on. Some of those other Turks even moved tables in so a few others could start arranging the 'shrines' to each Turk on them. In the end, only three of the boxes in the original room had been engineering equipment, and all the rest had migrated to the new Turks' shrine.

By then, Cloud was eager to get to the Weapons Department, so he left Vincent to help set up the shrines. After all, Vincent knew who a fair number of them had been and was able to identify the photos which were of the Turk to whom each shrine belonged. Veld also joined them to identify the ones no one else knew, tears running silently down his cheeks as they worked. Some of the Turks added to the Shrine count with personal items once belonging to now-dead Turks.

Even Tifa and Leana had joined them to help, Leana smiling fondly at the shrine belonging to a Turk once called Kami (3), who had been amongst the early code name users. She had been a Wutain woman whose greatest weapon had been magic, so most of what was laid out for her was Materia. Rare Materia. She hadn't been the only one who'd had rare Materia laid out at her shrine, either; there were five others, three men and two women, three of whom Vincent had known personally.

No one got any work done that day until after lunch, needless to say, and by the time they were done, all forty (including Lady Shinra) deceased past Turks had a shrine in that room. Forty Turks who had lived, and died, between nineteen sixty-six and nineteen ninety-eight.

MB

With both Tifa and Cloud having found suitable rooms to have made functional for use, they turned in lists of equipment they needed and how it was to be laid out if applicable. Ansha and Donnel were the Turks who were most inclined to mechanics-type engineering rather than programming, which was what Derin and Eonna specialized in. Ansha could do both, but liked mechanics better, so she and Donnel were the ones who would take the materials as they got them and start building the cafeteria and helping with Cloud's engineering room. Sometimes, they got the other Turks to help with heavy lifting or to hold things for them while they worked, but otherwise did it all themselves.

Cloud also found he liked both Donnel's and Ansha's company, and they were quickly becoming actual friends to him, which took him a bit by surprise given how much of a brooder he was. Those two just didn't seem to care what his personality was like, and almost found it amusing rather than offensive. The lady Turk was quiet, but very much a practical sort who didn't hold much of anything against anyone, and her hair was also almost as wild as his, which he appreciated. Donnel, on the other hand, was more serious and outspoken while disregarding anything that didn't harm anyone else.

In the meantime, Cloud spent most of his time in the Weapons Department, working on schematics of his own, creating draft blueprints, and testing things for the Turks' weapons. At first, he was left alone, but then Scarlet interrupted him to give him a schematic she wanted him to give his thoughts on. After he did, which produced a thoughtful look from the woman, she left him be again, only to repeat the process once per day on average for the next week. Since she was doing it to him, he even got up once and handed her a schematic to look over, which first produced amusement from her and a thoughtful response he could take back to his workbench.

Everyone in the Department had been in a state of shock for over an hour after that had happened, which had been fun, but he'd also managed to finish Doriss' weapon (5), so he was pleased with the result.

Notes:

(1) Lenno is another OC Turk, though I was pretty descriptive here, so I don't really need to say more. Dimensions readers should be passingly familiar with him.

(2) Midgar was in the early stages of the building process in the mid- to late- seventies, and the Upper Plate didn't exist until around 1980—the same year Sephiroth was born and Hojo shot Vincent. As such, he hadn't ever been a Turk working out of Midgar's Shinra Headquarters and doesn't actually know anything about this space.

(3) These Turks, as past (and dead) Turks, aren't all that important to remember unless you want to. Some of them are from the time before they started using code names; only Kami is post-code name.

(4) Lady Shinra is a complete blank in the Compilation of FFVII, other than the facts that she had Rufus late in life, and that the two were close until she died when Rufus was still around ten or eleven years old. This leaves a huge opening for who and what she was, so from my perspective, she was the actual founder and leader of the Turks in 1966 by Shinra's years. This background just fills in why she was actually so important to how things got to the point they're currently at in Shinra Company and the Turks. Also, if anyone doesn't know, the cane she had is a status symbol and weapon, not something she used to help her walk.

(5) My brain stalled on what are effectively already super-powered weapons (think a variant on the grappling swords used by the military in Attack on Titan, but with daggers) could be modified to include, but...Probably something to make her ability to move more effective, since that's what her weapon is about.