The Heroic Misadventures of the Shinra Executive Board Members

Chapter 3: Scarlet's Search and Heidegger's Heroics

A new email message had popped up on Heidegger's screen sometime in the past few hours when Heidegger had been away from his desk, and he glared at it for long moments. It was something concerning Reeve and Palmer apparently, and the title of the email labeled it as urgent. The man continued to glare at the message, wondering why, if it was so important, Palmer and Reeve wouldn't just stop in to talk to him personally.

He picked up his phone and dialed, calling the leader of the Turks in to see him. Tseng arrived quickly and silently, of course, and stood at attention, waiting for his orders with an expressionless face. "What did you need, sir?"

Heidegger frowned at the man in front of him thoughtfully. "Are Reno and Rude here, or are they out on a mission right now?"

"Reno is in the hospital again, if you will recall. Rude is currently in Junon."

A nod, and then, "Then I suppose you'll have to do it. I need you to go down to the city and run a bit of an errand."

An errand? That tended to be in-speak for an assassination or theft. Really, anything that should not be legal was oftentimes called an "errand" inside of Shinra, Inc.'s peacekeeping department. "Yes, sir. What is it?"

"I need a large pizza from Little Vinnie's Pizza Parlor, with sausage, pepperoni, and ham. And feel free to pick something up for yourself. But hurry, I'm starving. GYAHAHAA!"

The slightest facial twitch at the corner of Tseng's left eye was the only sign of his annoyance. Years of working under Heidegger taught him to expect horrors like this. "Yes. Sir." The response was strained and thin. He turned on a heel and left Heidegger's office.

Heidegger nodded approvingly after the Turk and then turned back to the matter at hand. Oh, yes. This email about Palmer and Reeve... Let's see...

He pressed the delete button with another "GYAHAHAA" and started up a game of solitaire.


It had been hours since Scarlet had sent Reeve out to find Palmer and she was becoming impatient, and she now could not get a hold of the engineer either. Why was she surrounded by incompetents? Stalking into the hallway, she sauntered to Heidegger's office, predatory. "Reeve and Palmer. Find them."

Now, the words weren't exactly an order as Scarlet did not outrank Heidegger, but was more of a peer. Nonetheless, when she was peeved, she was a scary sight to behold, and Heidegger had a hard time convincing himself not to be afraid of the woman before him. "GYA?" he asked stupidly.

"Reeve and Palmer are missing. You are the head of peacekeeping. If something happened to them, it is your fault. So you will find them. Understood?"

Heidegger nodded, picked up his phone again and called the general of SOLDIER's office line, figuring that that's what underlings were for. No one picked up; it was seven in the evening after all, and all the sensible employees had already gone home. As Heidegger realized this, he also realized that the guards that were still on duty were probably not expendable enough to send out on a search-and-rescue mission, as that would leave the building unguarded. Well, he would call the Turks.

He dialed Tseng's cell phone number, and when the Wutaiain picked up, he shouted—he was one of those people that believed that whoever was on the other end of the phone was having problems hearing him—into the phone, "Tseng, what are you doing? I need you."
Tseng, mildly annoyed and waiting in line at Little Vinnie's Pizza Parlor hung up on his boss. He would be up with the pizza soon enough and the tiresome man could very well wait until Tseng returned; after all, no amount of Heidegger's screaming at Tseng would make the cooks go any faster, and the Turk wasn't in the mood to be yelled at. He felt the facial twitch starting up again.

Heidegger stared dumbly at the phone for a few moments, before shrugging. "We must have gotten disconnected. GYAHAHAA."

Scarlet rubbed her temples. "This isn't funny, Ralf." She wanted to scream; no, that was not quite accurate. She wanted to shoot someone, and she had a perfect candidate in mind.

Slowly it dawned on Heidegger that Scarlet was not about to allow him to avoid this responsibility and if no underlings were available to take care of this, that left only Heidegger himself to do it. He pushed himself up from his desk and maneuvered his large body to the door, grabbing his coat. "Well, fine. I'll do it, Rose. But only because you're so pretty. GYAHAHAA."

With a sigh and a rolling of her eyes, Scarlet watched him waddle his way down the hall and into the elevator. Did she really trust him to manage this task by himself? No, she didn't. She walked after him, hurried, but not undignified. "Hold the elevator, Ralf. I'm coming too."

The receptionist in the lobby was surprised and perhaps a bit horrified to see Heidegger exit the elevator and come barreling towards her, but hoped that perhaps he finally read her emails and that he would be rescuing the two missing executives. Heidegger did indeed stop at the front desk, and he asked her which way Palmer or Reeve had gone.

The receptionist blinked. She had sent him the address that the kidnappers had provided twice already by email and twice by fax. Her lips pursed into a frown, but then she suddenly realized that just because there was an address that the kidnappers had given in their ransom note, it did not mean that the hostages were actually being held at that particular address. Surely Heidegger had realized that the address given was just for a meeting place to hand over the money, and she kicked herself for not realizing this before now, and also for doubting the man. Of course he wouldn't be a department head if he were stupid and incompetent.

She began to give him directions, the same ones that she had given to Palmer and Reeve. "Head down into Sector Seven, then turn left at the second stoplight. There'll be a stop sign very soon, and you should turn right th"
"GYAHAHAA, alright! Thank you!" And Heidegger stormed off, the receptionist staring after him in shock. She had more directions to impart, and also wanted to tell him that she only knows that Reeve followed those directions, that Palmer most likely ignored them completely. But the man was gone.

Scarlet, however, sidled up to the front desk, smiling a smile that made the receptionist nervous. "Draw me a little map, darling, and tell me what else you know. We both know that fool man will need my help to find any destination. KYAHAHAA."

The receptionist blinked again and nodded, pulling out a copy of the latest ransom note, too. "I don't know if you saw these, Miss Scarlet, but we did receive a ransom note both for Palmer and Reeve. I forwarded them both to Heidegger, though, so he should already have the address given here." She pushed the ransom note forward towards Scarlet, then busied herself writing down the directions – she didn't draw a map as she wasn't familiar with Sector Seven very well, and had intended the directions for Sector Two instead. She explained all this to Scarlet, repeated what Reeve had speculated as well. Scarlet took all of this in, gave a curt nod which the receptionist assumed was a nonverbal thank you, and then the executive turned and slunk out the front door after Heidegger.

Even in her stilettos, she caught up to the head of the peacekeeping department with little problem. He had worn himself out and was pausing for breath on a street corner, whereas in Scarlet's slower pace and higher fitness level besides, she managed to endure where her cohort could not.

"KYAHAHAA," she laughed, "I have an address where we can find them—they've been held for ransom at this place. Or at least, there will be someone waiting for us there." Heidegger stared at her, clearly not grasping all of this. Perhaps it seemed to easy to him, or perhaps he just plain didn't believe her. She shook her head, rubbing her temples again, wondering how anyone could stand working with Heidegger for any length of time. "In any event, we have the address. Let's just take a damn cab."


Back at the thug's base, Palmer was rocking himself back and forth, doing his best to hide his fear and humiliation. He had been captured by thugs! Not only was that embarrassing in and of itself, but it also waylaid him from his lard-gathering quest. Also, it had literally been hours since he ate, and he was hungry. Being held for ransom was quite possibly the worst torture that anyone could inflict. And he had his hands tied behind his back, too, which was quite uncomfortable! How come Reeve was allowed to use his hands?

Reeve's excuse was that he was currently involved in a very unbalanced game of poker with their two captors. He had, upon waking up, decided that this place beat the office anyway and wanted to make the most of his situation, so he slipped into his native hick accent and asked the thugs if they'd be interested in a game of cards.

And so they unbound his hands (after all, Reeve had an engineer's build so was deemed to be essentially harmless, and besides, the thugs liked cards) and let him play. And he was winning. Not every hand, of course, but he took most of the big pots. He knew how to play and had uncanny luck. Normally this would have annoyed the thugs enough that they would have quit hours ago, but in this case, they calmed themselves with the fact that they could eventually just steal back all the gil that he won from them anyway. So they continued to play and continued to lose.

Palmer whimpered a bit, hoping for attention from his coworker, hoping for sympathy or even an invitation to the game, but everyone ignored him: they were intent on their game.

So intent were they, in fact, that the two captors were caught completely off-guard when Scarlet and Heidegger burst through the door! Although, really, they had no one to blame but themselves as they had used their actual address on the ransom note. But thugs were rarely known for their smarts, and so this did not detract from their bad-ass image at all.

Heidegger's eyes landed first on the poker game, the two thugs staring up at him, not realizing that they were holding their hands at such an angle that Reeve could see the cards. Reeve was taking full advantage of this, and immediately folded. He did eventually realize though that perhaps this meant rescue, so he shot a hopeful and helpless look to Heidegger and Scarlet an unspoken plea for help.

Heidegger, however, was oblivious and merely laughed. "GYAHAHAA. You've just been playing poker this whole time? Deal me in, I want to play too!" This left Scarlet, Reeve, Palmer and the thugs dumbfounded and confused, but the one thug, the leader-thug, who was dealing the cards did deal Heidegger a hand even though he was wondering what the hell was going on. Reeve seemed to be developing an angry twitch, rather like the one Tseng had. Heidegger thought that was odd.

Scarlet recovered her senses and ignored the poker players completely, sauntering over to Palmer and untying him. She had every intention of leaving Heidegger and Reeve here for their idiocy, but Palmer she needed for her space cannons, so she had to rescue him.

Freed, Palmer was overjoyed, and with a tear forming in his eye, he gushed, "Oh, thank you Rose!" and he darted for the door. Well, towards the door, anyway. He stopped to hide behind a pillar, planning to eavesdrop from the safety of the pillar on what would happen next.

The thugs blinked at Scarlet, then after a moment's hesitation, grabbed their guns and leaped up, not about to let some broad free their prisoners and lose them all the money that they could gain from Shinra. But Scarlet was prepared and pulled a tiny gun from between her breasts, in one fluid movement drawing, cocking, and firing. She laughed as he hit the floor. And laughed harder when Reeve threw up when blood splattered all over the cards. Now this little adventure was becoming fun.

The fallen thug's companion stared dumbly, both shocked and awed that this woman had kept a gun squirreled away in her cleavage. His hesitation was all she needed though, as she sobered up from laughing and launched herself into the other thug, shoulder meeting his chest as she decked him, knocking him to the floor. She brought her stiletto heel down onto his windpipe, applying just enough pressure to scare him. "Are there any more of you hiding?"

The thug, however, now had a very nice view of her panties – black! and developed a nosebleed which further upset Scarlet, so she lifted her leg and brought the point of her heel down hard on the thug's windpipe. "Guess not. Let's go."

Reeve was staring at the carnage, pale and shaken and even more terrified of Scarlet than he ever had been before. Heidegger laughed a bit, although he was a bit disappointed that he didn't really get the change to play poker. Palmer came out of hiding and blubbered something about getting lard, and this brought everyone's attention to him. Then Heidegger and Reeve looked meekly to Scarlet, awaiting her decision, apparently having decided that her word was law and definitely having decided they did not want to be on her bad side.

Scarlet could have screamed. "Fine. We'll get your stupid lard. The taxi's still waiting for us outside, we'll go to one of those wholesale warehouse places where you can buy in bulk and you can get your goddammed lard and you can approve my glorious cannons, KYAHAHAA."

Palmer nodded agreeably. He had no idea what she was talking about with the cannons, of course, but if it meant getting lard, he was all for it. "And.. could we stop for something to eat?" That comment awarded him with many flat stares, and he figured that was a no. He sighed heavily. "Well, let's get going, then."


Back in the Shinra building, Tseng found Heidegger's office empty and his coat gone. It figured. Annoyed, and able to feel the vein throbbing in his forehead, he set the greasy pizza box down on Heidegger's papers, contented in the thought that the grease would seep through the bottom of the box and ruin whatever Heidegger was working on – if he was even actually working on anything.


Together the four Shinra executive board members had managed to buy a tub of lard, making the head of the peacekeeping department carry it back to headquarters (it was heavy enough that he stopped laughing, which was definitely an added bonus). They also had needed to buy some pills for the head of the urban development department, as he never seemed to recover from Scarlet's little spree. But the returned to the Shinra building successful and full of pride. Well, perhaps more full of annoyance. But Palmer was proud and he projected that feeling onto the others.

Just as they reached the doors, a delivery truck pulled away, and Scarlet pointed out angrily that that delivery truck was the food delivery truck which meant that now the Shinra kitchens were surely restocked on lard, and that Palmer's whole quest was in vain. Palmer, however, felt this was even better for him, as now there was more lard to go around and even extra lard for backup in case something horrible like a lard shortage were to occur again.

Finally, they all got back inside, delivered the extra lard to the larders, and Palmer, before Scarlet could corner him to talk about her new project, dashed to the cafeteria that was open after-hours to order a lard and ham sandwich. Scarlet, ready to shoot the fat man, stormed off after him, determined to make him listen and sign the appropriate dotted lines.

This left a mildly sick but recovering Reeve and a disgruntled Heidegger. Reeve turned to the other man, shrugging a bit. "You up for a game of cards?"

Heidegger ignored him and returned to his office, sitting at his desk, blinking at the pizza box, then throwing away the grease-stained papers under the box. He didn't really know what the papers were, but he figure they were unimportant. And anyway, they were ruined now. He did write a brief note to have his coworkers killed by the Turks, but it also fell victim to his unfortunate system of filing, and so it was never carried out. But on the bright side, a cold meat-lover's pizza was better than being hungry. Admittedly, it wasn't that much better, but at least it was food, and it was greasy, and it had sausage.

So really, as our story comes to a close, no one was living happily ever after, although they were all living. Our hero found himself the happiest one of the bunch. While he had nearly gotten himself killed, he had already forgotten the day's ordeal eating a sandwich lavishly spread with lard.

The End.

((Whew, long last chapter. Turned more into a Scarlet story by the end! I hope you enjoyed reading it! I rather enjoyed writing it, so I'm toying with the idea to do more random stories about the Shinra folks. Oh, and disclaimer: Everything here is the intellectual property of Square-Enix, and not of my creation. The things that do not belong to Square-Enix are poor parodies of other companis. My apologies to Giant Eagle and Starbucks.))