Final Fantasy VII and all related names and characters are property of Square.

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Chapter Two

Yuffie had hardly had a chance to examine her surroundings when she heard the explorers on the floor beneath her. Looking over the edge of a convenient gaping hole in the floor, she saw them coming up the corridor, talking excitedly. She strained her ears to hear what they were saying. All she could hear were fragments of conversation: "...amazing that the building's lasted for two hundred years... valuable artifacts, like the old materia... tuna last night..."

She frowned. Two hundred years? I know weird things happen when Mako's involved, but this is just too -- Her attention was recaptured by a fragment of conversation coming from the end of the procession passing under the hole: "very excited about seeing the president's office... what? No, I don't know what he's hoping to find. Maybe treasure of some sort? They say there was a hidden -- Watch what you're doing with those pickaxes, you idiot!"

Yuffie waited no longer. She set off at top speed to reach the top floor ahead of the slowly moving procession. As she was two levels above them already, this was not hard. All the way there, she speculated about what kind of treasure could possibly be up there. Money? Jewels? Materia, even? Or maybe he was talking about a treasure of knowledge... Much better be materia. She reached the door at last, breathless and anticipatory, and barged in, regardless of the eerie atmosphere which the archaeologists felt so clearly.

"Right then! Let's see about this... Holy crap!"

There was Rufus Shinra, erstwhile president of Shinra Inc., sitting at a partially-melted desk feverishly filling out forms. He did not react at all either to her entrance or to her exclamation, but continued with his paperwork as if there was no tomorrow. Yuffie goggled for almost a full minute until she was alerted by noises from below that the expedition was nearing their goal. Forgetting all about the mythical treasure, she dived behind a pile of debris just before the door opened for a second time.

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The expedition had had incredible luck in being able to reach the sixty-seventh floor, but once there, they discovered an obstruction which prevented any but those who could twist themselves into odd shapes from continuing upwards, and which certainly precluded any bags of equipment from being carried in. Therefore the team was obliged to stop there until they could clear the stairwell. They were not discomfited at all, as they were able to spend the time in unearthing and examining Hojo's containment cells and equipment.

Professor McAdams and a few others, being fairly fit, decided to go on ahead and take a few photos of the top floors before they called it a day. The expedition had been kept as secret as possible, but news had a nasty way of leaking out all over the place; the leaders were very concerned about looters and treasure hunters, and wanted to document everything as quickly as possible. Once news got out that Midgar was not unreachable, poisonous, or cursed, nobody would be able to stop others entering the city.

As they climbed upwards, they saw more evidence of the disastrous events that had marked the fall of Shinra. On the stairs leading up to the ruined seventieth floor, there was an old but unmistakable trail of blood; they saw an odd bone here and there, dissociated from its companions. They stopped there and began taking pictures and writing notes. The Professor, leaving these more mundane duties to the others, continued up to the top floor.

As he climbed the steps, he could have sworn that he heard a scuffling noise, but he put it down to rats and pushed open the door. He was, of course, confronted with the same sight that had earlier stunned Yuffie. Not surprisingly, it had much the same effect on the Professor. He let the door slam loudly, and the figure at the desk finally looked up.

There was a long silence, during which the Professor stared at Rufus and Rufus gazed back at the Professor as if he had discovered something mildly interesting on the wall behind him.

Yuffie, watching from behind her pile of rubble, felt uncomfortably as if she were going to sneeze.

At length, the Professor broke the silence. "E-excuse me, but-"

"If this is about the meteor, go talk to Reeve about it. I'm very busy, as you can see," -- he gestured vaguely to the piles of paperwork -- "and I need to finish this by tonight." With that, he went back to filling out form A-124.

"Er, I don't think you understand. You see, I'm here on an expedition that--"

"I've already told you, I don't have time to see you now. I have all this work to do..." He trailed off, and the formerly expressionless face clouded. "...paperwork... There never seems to be any less of it. How long have I been doing paperwork?"

"Do you mean you've been here for a long time?" prompted the Professor.

"No, I..." Just as it seemed that he would say something about why he was there, his face resumed its trancelike expression. "Please leave now." He moved on to form A-125.

"Wait, I'd like to ask you some questions and--"

"Oh, and call the secretary in on your way out, will you?"

McAdams had not bargained for ghosts, and was not quite sure what to do. He didn't want to leave the room or call out for fear the "ghost" would vanish, but he had left his walkie-talkie back where the rest of the group was camped. Finally he decided to surreptitiously snap a few pictures and leave. When he was safely some way down the corridor, Yuffie climbed out of her hiding place and went to stand in front of the desk.

"Hey!" she said loudly. Rufus showed no sign of recognition.

"Wake up, you idiot!" Annoyed, she swept all the papers off the desk with one motion and slammed her hands down. "Can you hear me? Earth to Mister frickin' President!"

Seemingly confused by the loss of his paperwork, he stared back up at her. "Who are you?" Then belatedly noticed his actual surroundings. "What's happened?"

Yuffie rolled her eyes in frustration. She would gladly have left him here to rot, or better yet, pushed him out of the temptingly broken window, but he might be able to tell her what was going on... "Come on, we've got to get out of here," she said, and grabbed him by the arm and pulled him, unresisting, out of the room.

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Meanwhile, Professor McAdams had arrived back at the place where the rest of the team was looking around, having demolished the blockage enough so that equipment could be carried through.

"Quick, bring the camera! I've found a ghost!" he cried, sending the rest of the expedition into a frenzy of excitement. Cameras were brought, various instruments were found, and they set off to investigate.

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Yuffie raced down the corridor in the opposite direction from that in which the Professor had come, pulling Rufus, who was still slightly dazed, behind her. At the end of the hall was a small emergency elevator, which must have been the only one in the building still working, its separate generator (so that the President could escape in case of an attack that cut off the power) feeding on the last dregs of some private reserve of Mako. Beside it was some kind of special security device, which looked as if it required an identity card to allow access to the elevator.

"Can you open this?" she asked. Rufus pulled a card out of his pocket and swiped it in the machine. The light blinked green, and with an awful grating sound, the long-unused door opened, sticking several times. Yuffie got in, and was about to push the button for the ground floor when she noticed that he was still standing outside, looking back along the corridor.

"Get in the elevator, blockhead! Are you deaf or something?" Showing no reaction to her insult, he turned and entered the elevator.

"Geez..." grumbled Yuffie, and pushed the button. The doors closed, more quietly this time, and the car began to descend. As it continued downward, Yuffie noticed that Rufus was, unconsciously it seemed, gripping the handbar so tightly that it, being wooden and quite old, had cracked. What if the elevator is broken? she wondered. I am not going to think about that. NOT going to think about it. To take her mind off it, she rubbed off a section of the grimy glass to afford a view of the outside. It looks just like it did two hundred years ago. How depressing. At least the sky isn't so full of icky smog -- and it's certainly a lot quieter.

After an interminable wait, during which she heard various ominous creaking and snapping noises, the elevator came to a stop. The doors opened partially, blocked by some obstruction on the outside. They squeezed out and found themselves in a narrow hall leading down to a door. On the other side of the door was a small room apparently for use in emergencies, as it contained several weapons which unfortunately were mosly useless, as they were now under two feet of water. Yuffie did, however, collect a fair-sized stash of materia from a rusty file cabinet.

Having waded to the other side and swiped Rufus' card several more times to open the security doors, they came out into an alleyway, from where they were able to make their way down from what was left of the plate. "I hope I never see this place again," muttered Yuffie as she climbed over the hundredth broken wall. "Greatest City in the World my foot, it's the Greatest Pain in the -- Hey, there's the road!"

She fairly skipped down the path leading out of the city. At the end, she turned to look at the remains of Midgar. Well, I'm glad I didn't come back with them after we beat Sephiroth. This is the most damn depressing sight I've ever seen. I wonder what happened to all Reeve's plans for cleaning up the place and rebuilding?

Rufus caught up with her and stopped, but did not look back. She had almost forgotten he was there, and now felt faintly annoyed that she would have to ask him for information, despite the fact that he had enabled them to escape unnoticed. At least he hadn't said anything while they were escaping...

"So, do you mind telling me exactly what you were doing there acting like a zombie from the accounting department or something?" She tapped her foot impatiently. "Come on, I haven't got all day here. And while you're at it, you can also explain why we're both here escaping from perfectly harmless archaeologists even though we're supposedly dead. And why it seems to be two hundred years in the frickin' future. And why --" She stopped short, as the object of her interrogation had suddenly, unaccountably and inconveniently fainted.

Yuffie restrained an overwhelming desire to kick him and, since there seemed to be few other options, sat down and had a nap herself.

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author's notes: This chapter is a bit longer, so took me a bit longer to write. I'm still having quite a bit of fun with writing this, and now that I've finished my pseudo-ARF, I can get back to it. I know it's an unusual choice of characters; actually this story was first conceived as starring Aeris and Sephiroth, but halfway through planning it, I decided that that would really accomplish nothing, since so many other authors have done it much better (and worse) than I ever could. Therefore, I substituted the two characters I thought would be the most fun and challenging to write. (In which decision I was helped by a fic which I plugged in the last chapter.) This way, I get both originality and better exercise for my shaky writing skills.

As always, reviews are greatly appreciated. And if anyone else has written a fic featuring these characters, I'd love to know.