Aloha hou!

Time for a relatively short update of Cities of Poison. I could have posted more, I think, but the next two chapters are majorly long, and will probably take some patience, or at least a solid chunk of time sitting in front of the computer to read. (And for me to edit. ;D )

But first, since this story is so long, how about a quick "The Story So Far" interlude? Works for me. The Story So Far:

Ten years after Meteor, Reno has been living in NeoMidgar, seemingly going batty as he stuns himself with his own nightstick. He is surprised to remember that he's done this before. Just after that, Sephiroth busts down his door, stalks him around his shabby apartment, demands to know where Cloud Strife is, and then leaves. Reno is like, "What the hell was that?"

In Junon, Reeve is approached by a businessman named Bradburn who wants him to locate the remaining Turks so that his company can hire them for a mission. Reeve is like, "And who the hell are you?"

Afraid and out of money, Reno finally manages to get himself to Costa Del Sol in his search for Rude. There he finds both Elena and Rude, and tells them that Sephiroth has returned him and chased him out of town. That night, Reno fries himself again. Elena and Rude find him, but it is Sephiroth who comes in to save Reno's life. Rude and Elena are like, "What the hell was that?"

The next night, Reeve finds all three Turks together and tells them about the project. They agree to look into it. They elect Elena as both leader and field commander, and Reeve tells them that Tseng might still be alive. The Turks are all like, "What the hell?"

The mission ends up being the destruction of a cloning facility that is supposedly underneath a deserted part of the Northern Continent. The Turks are briefed, shuttled to their destination, given bombs, and told to get to work. During their mission, the Turks find hundreds of cloned bodies, including clones of both Tseng and Rude. The Turks are all like, "Goddamn! What the hell is this!" Disgusted by the fact that ShinRa is still alive and is continuing Hojo's dirty work, the Turks carry out their mission.

As they are escaping, they discover that they had not, in fact, been travelling to the Northern Continent, but to NeoMidgar. They've already planted the bombs, though, and parts of NeoMidgar are destroyed as the cloning facility blows up beneath the city. The Turks are like, "What the hell have we done!"

The Turks are then captured by Scarlet, who has set the entire thing up by tricking both Reeve and the Turks. She wanted the cloning facility blown up and has gotten her wish, and now plans to frame the Turks for the conspiracy. She also plans to execute Reno on live television. The executioner is none other than Tseng. Not a clone, but the original Tseng, who, it seems, has been working with Scarlet these many years. Reno is like, "Tseng! What the hell!" At the last minute, he is rescued by Elena and Rude. Elena has injured Tseng, and they take him along as a prisoner.

Meanwhile, Reeve was in NeoMidgar when the bombs went off. He wakes up to find himself stuck beneath a slab of concrete, with a piece of metal pinioning him to the ground. (I guess it's like a piece of a street sign post or something. Ouch.) Reeve is like, "Damn! What the hell!" He has all these weird hallucinations and flashbacks.

Sephiroth has remembered waking up in a cloning facility, where, apparently, his body has been cloned, and his spirit or whatever anyone wants to call it has returned to said body. He has been quietly following the Turks, trying to get a feel for the world he is in and the changes around him, and trying to find clues to where Cloud Strife is these days. He witnessed the explosions, guessed that it had to do with the Turks, and decided to take a look around the ruins. In the midst of the ruins, he finds Reeve, under a slab of concrete, pinioned to the ground by said metal thing. Sephiroth frees him, tries to heal him, and then is surprised when Reeve freaks out and tries to attack him. Sephiroth is like, "Dude, what the hell!"

That's about it so far.

In this update, we come to one of the scenes that I had a great amount of fun writing: Elena and Tseng on the pavement. I had such a blast with that scene. Go figure.

Also, we get into Scarlet's head a little bit, and that's always fun for me.


ShinRa

"Gyah hahahaha!"

"Oh, shut up," Scarlet said. "Just tell me what you came to tell me."

Heidegger gave her a sour look and turned away. "Maybe I'll just let you hear it on the news then," he said.

"Heidegger!" Scarlet snapped. He turned back. She sighed, the closest to conciliatory she was willing to get. "Just tell me."

Heidegger had lost some of the joy of telling her his news, and took on a professional tone of voice. "Fine," he said. "This actually hasn't made the news yet, but it will soon. Someone saw Reeve."

Scarlet felt her lips drawing back into a smile. She almost knew what was coming, but didn't dare to believe it yet.

"It's not one hundred percent certain yet, but he was last spotted in NeoMidgar. Some kid who managed to survive the blast said he was talking with him. I'm not sure how much of it we can believe. He said Reeve was at a stupid arcade playing video games about two minutes before the final blast."

Scarlet let herself smile fully. "Sounds like Reeve," she said. "Kyah haha! Stupid, naive Reeve, acting all noble in NeoMidgar and getting himself blown up! Do you think he could have survived?"

Heidegger shrugged. "Anything's possible," he said. "The kid who says he saw him survived, so Reeve might've too."

"But then where is he?" Scarlet said, more to herself than to Heidegger. "No," she decided, with a shake of her head. "No, Reeve would be running around trying to rebuild that sewer of a city already. He's either dead or something else happened. He wouldn'the couldn't stay away this long without a word to his wonderful paradise."

"And the Turks?" Heidegger asked. His eyes betrayed slight amusement that Scarlet's prisoners had gotten away from her. He counted it as one of her failings, which she was sure he thrilled in. Also, he seemed to still be slightly hung up on the Turks. He had owned them for years, and seemed to think of them as pets. He had always been hard and aggressive with them, and occasionally cruel, but she'd be damned if he didn't have just a little bit of affection for them too.

"I don't know where they are, and I haven't heard from Tseng," Scarlet said. "I can't imagine that they killed him. Not with Elena around."

"Tseng was her weak point," Heidegger said, stroking his chin thoughtfully. "Emotions in general. I doubt she would get past it, even after all these years. It's a handicap, very hard to overcome. It's possible that Tseng killed them," he said, with the vaguest hint of regret in his voice.

"Let's hope," she said.

Heidegger nodded curtly, and turned to leave the room.

Scarlet sat back behind her desk in the new ShinRa building in Junon. Where had the Turks gone? They did know how to make an exit. Even though she had lost to them (temporarily, she reminded herself,) it almost reminded her of the old glory days of ShinRa, and she felt a touch of regret and nostalgia. She always did, when reminded of the fact that it would never be the same. They had all been so young, so aggressive, so sharp and powerful. Even Reeve, stupid, naive Reeve had served his purpose in ShinRa, and no matter how he later tried to deny it, he'd been a great asset to the corporation. She always thought it was a shame that a seemingly smart man like Reeve had gone soft, but even though Reeve was a traitor to ShinRa, with his stupid electric cat, she had to admit, he did have guts.

They had parted on really bad terms too, but...he hadn't always been so terrible to her. In the beginning, he seemed to actually like her a lot. At least a lot more than some men did.

She'd thought for a while that he did actually see the real her better than most men; men who took one look at her and decided she wasn't worth more than ten minutes in the ShinRa parking lot. In reality, she wasn't anything at all like what they thought of her. She'd never admit it though; admitting it would be like admitting that she cared what they thought. In truth, there had only ever been Reeve, Rude, Reno, and...

And of course, the latter day Crisis of the Planet himself, SOLDIER's most notorious General. She could remember how he felt, how his skin had been bizarrely soft on the very rare occasions she had touched himshe didn't think she'd ever seen him nakedas it kept repairing itself from the inside out. She shuddered and reminded herself once more that she'd had no way of knowing that the mysterious, overwhelmingly fascinating ShinRa General would go all catastrophic on the Planet.

And, of late, there had been Tseng, as well. She wasn't sure if that counted, though. Tseng wasn't quite himself these days.

Reeve, Reno, Rude, Sephiroth, Tseng... Scarlet giggled. At least she had kept it in one section of the alphabet. Most people thought she'd gone through it forwards and backwards twice.

Rufus... Everyone in the world seemed to believe that she'd slept with Rufus. She and Rufus, it seemed, were the only ones who knew differently.

Scarlet halfheartedly wished that Hojo's obsession had been with time travel instead of Cetra and cloning. She would go back in time and tell Rufus how much she admired him. How much she admired his ambition, his cunning, and his passion for the things he believed in. Then she would kiss him, very chastely on the lips, and tell him to leave when WEAPON came, just get the holy hell out of the building no matter what. She would put her hand on his face, just to touch the reality of him. The kiss was more important, she thought. Maybe it would tell him everything.

No, she would never, ever allow anyone to clone him. Reno had hit an exposed nerve by suggesting that, but she'd hidden her reaction very well from him. Sure, they could clone Rufus. They could clone a thousand of him. But she knew to the marrow of her bones that he would never truly come back. They could clone his body, but not his excellent mind, his... heart, she admitted to herself. His soul. She had heard of a dead person's essence returning to their cloned bodiesfor what reason, she'd never guessbut Rufus would never do such a thing. She knew him better than that. He was a stubborn bastard to the last.

She had promised herself after that awful day of his death that she would do whatever was in her power to bring ShinRa back, and to do it the way Rufus would want it done. The new ShinRa was still fragile, but when it grew strong, she'd take matters more out of Heidegger's hands and into her own. Heidegger wanted ShinRa back, seemingly as badly as she did. But she didn't think...no, she knew that he didn't understand Rufus the way she did.

Scarlet wiped her eyes hastily on her sleeve and proceeded with the next step of her plan: she waited.

The Turks

Elena gripped the steering wheel until her short nails dug into her palms. Angry. Yes, she was angry for having been set up and used once more by ShinRa. Frightened of what would happen when they had to confront Tseng. Terribly curious about why Tseng was working with Scarlet. Still panicking (though controlling it very well, she thought,) about having seen Sephiroth, and the circumstances that surrounded it. It certainly had been a very full few days.

But most of all she just hated herself for having let it happen. She ground her teeth, reminded herself to stop, and sighed again.

"Stop it, Elena," Reno said tiredly from the back of the van. He was leaning against one side of the back, Rude against the other, and Tseng, still for some reason unconscious, lay bound between them. Reno and Rude had taken his weapons and handcuffed him, in the likely event that he would not be entirely coherent when he awoke.

"Stop what?" she asked him irritably.

"Stop stressing. We all would have done the same thing."

She almost turned around to face him, then realized she should watch the road instead. "Reno, will you just get the hell off my back about Tseng?" she snapped.

She could feel him staring at her. "It's not about Tseng," he said. "Look, I know you're stressing because you think this is all somehow your fault..."

"It is my fault, Reno," she said, trying to control he volume of her voice. "I got elected leader and field commander, and I accepted this stupid mission without looking into it first."

"We all did," he said, in a milder tone of voice.

"No: I did. Jesus, Reno! When I took on this responsibility, I knew that the good came with the bad. I'm not going to spread the blame all around because it didn't go well. You guys let me have this responsibility, now let me keep it. Stop treating me like a stupid kid!"

Reno sighed, exasperated. "Fine," he said. "That's just fine, Elena, but I want you to think about this, too: if this mission had been the most kickass, million dollar, savior-of-the-Planet mission, would you have taken all the credit for that, too? Or would you just have to admit for once in your goddamn career that we're in this together?"

She gripped the steering wheel harder and chewed the insides of her mouth, wishing Reno would just shut the hell up, especially when he said infuriating things that made sense, and especially when he had wanted, from the beginning, to leave her out entirely. She hated how happy she was that he had said that. She heard him sit back against the van again in a gratingly self satisfied way.

A few minutes went by in total silence. Then a few more. Then Elena felt the barrel of a gun against her neck. She recognized it right away. It was something you could feel once in your life and then never forget. But she didn't swerve off the road or panic visibly. Okay, she told herself... Okay...Now what? But that was as far as she got.

"Turn down that corner and stop," Tseng said in her ear, in a raw whisper.

She nodded, turned down an alley, and stopped the car.

"Put your hands up," he said.

"Yes, sir," she answered, prying her tense fingers off the steering wheel. Wow, she thought, strangely calm. He's still so fast. And so quiet.

"Now turn around and come back here," he told her.

Elena felt cold sweat break out on her body, and the true panic began. Now she would have to face Tseng after all these years, to see him, to see what he had become. To finally hear what had kept him from coming back, and what had kept him at Scarlet's side. The thought of it was almost as terrifying as the fact that he had a gun pointed at her head.

She turned around slowly, as he had asked, and caught sight of both

Reno and Rude lying unconsciousor at least she hoped they were just unconsciouswhere they had been sitting a moment ago. She would have to deal with that after dealing with Tseng; there was no way around it. He backed up to the back of the van, pushed open the doors and climbed out, motioning for her to follow him. As she stepped out the back, she hesitantly forced her eyes to look up at his face.

It certainly was Tseng. But then again, it wasn't. It wasn't clearheaded, cool Tseng who had always given the Turks their orders. It wasn't driven, passionate Tseng who had brought the elite fighting force known as the Turks back from ruin by choosing the recruits himself. It wasn't noble Tseng, who had let the Ancient walk away that day in the Mythril mines with a warning to stay out of ShinRa's way, completely overriding his orders from the President. Or brilliant, calculating Tseng who had told Elena to pretend to let their orders slip in front of Avalanche that same day.

Then there was the matter of his eyes, which were glowing so fiercely green that she would have seen him a mile away.

But it definitely was Tseng, and he had disarmed and knocked out two Turks without even alarming the third, and freed himself from the handcuffs. His long black hair was still as black as ever, she noted, when even Reno had a bit of grey. And Reno's, what, thirty three? she asked herself frantically. That makes Tseng forty three. Which would mean...

"Who are you?" Tseng asked, making her jump slightly.

It was the question that she'd been most afraid to hear, and the one she had no way of answering gracefully. "Sir," she said quietly. "It's me. Elena." She searched his eyes and almost saw the tiniest flicker of recognition in them. His eyes darted to Reno and Rude behind her, then back to her face. "Tseng, sir, what did you...?"

"Shut up," he hissed. "Let me think."

She nodded mutely, turned her head slowly, and glanced at Rude and Reno to see if they were breathing. She let out a small sigh of relief to see that they both were. God. He hadn't made a sound.

"What do you want with me, Elena?" he asked, as if he still didn't quite recognize the name.

Oh Christ, Elena thought. If he'd asked me that years ago, would he ever have been surprised.

"For you to remember us," she found herself saying. It shocked her. She hadn't even realized she'd thought of it. "Tseng, sir," she said, and let her arms relax as she took a step closer to him.

He flicked the gun in her direction and backed up. Elena recognized the gun as Rude's.

She put her hands up again and wished that either Reno or Rude would be able to help her do what she had to do. But they could be hurt badly for all she knew.

"I don't know why you people took me, and I should kill you for that. I don't know why I haven't, and that disturbs me; but at the very least, I won't let you follow me."

Elena saw him move his hand, and realized in a second that he had also taken either Reno's or Rude's materia. He tried to cast Sleep on her, or maybe it was Stop; she couldn't tell, because she dodged quickly enough to make him mis-time his casting.

When he saw that he had missed her and she was moving quickly toward him, he fired the gun. The bullet punched a hole in the door of the van, just missing Elena as she launched herself at him.

He fired! He opened fire on me! He really did it! It was the only thing she was thinking of as she landed on top of him and they both went down to the pavement.

Tseng took a swing at her face and she leaned back. She felt his knuckles graze her face. He had pulled that punch at the last second, and she knew it. Tseng probably didn't know why he'd done so. She swung back and made solid contact with his jaw, while she tried in vain with her other hand to pin his wrist, and at least get the gun from him.

He was faster, as he had always been, and much stronger, but he was also somewhat debilitated, and that gave her something to work with. Also, he had trained her, and she knew his style. She remembered him better than he remembered himself. And he didn't remember her at all, so it was likely that he didn't realize she could predict his moves.

He grabbed both her wrists in his one hand and tried to roll her off of him, but at the same moment had also decided to raise the gun. Both of these options made him lose a bit of his concentration on either task, and she managed to free one hand and swat the gun out of his hand.

As he looked away to take note of where the gun had landed, she took the opportunity to roll off of him and grab the gun herself.

Tseng saw immediately what she was doing, and Elena scurried backwards as he ran after her; and this time it was him launching himself at her. Elena saw streaks of light dance in her eyes as her head hit the concrete, and he pinned her wrist, trying to pry the gun out of her hand. She knew it wouldn't take him very long to get it back from her.

"Tseng, sir!" she called out suddenly, in her sharpest voice.

Straddling her on his knees, he wrenched the gun away from her hand and aimed it at her face. With his other hand, he again grabbed both her wrists. "Why are you calling me 'sir?'" he asked. He didn't sound out of breath at all.

"Because you're my boss, sir," she said. "Because I'm a Turk and you're Tseng of the Turks. And in that van are Rude and Reno of the Turks." She saw that he was listening, and she'd at least bought herself some time. She knew she had to continue to hold his interest, or at least his curiosity. "I don't know how much you remember, but the last time I saw you was in the Temple of the Ancients. We went after the Keystone. Sephiroth attacked you. Cait Sith saved you. Avalanche got the Keystone and the Black Materia." She took a deep breath. This was going to be the hardest part, but there was a good chance that it would stun him out of whatever kind of confusion held him. "You disappeared after that and Avalanche went to the Forgotten Capital. Aerith was killed."

He sat back and his grip on her wrists loosened, and finally his hand fell away. She saw him mouth the word "Aerith" as he thought it over.

"Sephiroth killed her," she went on quietly. "After he summoned Meteor." He still held the gun pointed at her, but didn't seem to be paying attention to it. She took a chance and propped herself up on her elbows. "Then ShinRa fell, and the Turks disbanded. Avalanche managed to stop Meteor, but we, that is, the Turks, thought you were dead. Tseng, you never..."

"Stop it," he said harshly. "ThatBecause none of that happened. ShinRa is alive...alive in Scarlet and Heidegger." His eyes glazed over and he seemed to be staring at some tiny point in the distance. "ShinRa is alive," he repeated.

"Yes," she said, brushing her hair away from her face tiredly. "ShinRa is alive. But the president and Rufus are both dead. Sephiroth killed the president. Rufus was killed by Diamond WEAPON."

"No, ShinRa is alive in Scarlet and Heidegger," he said, still not looking at her. "You're wrong. ShinRa is alive."

Elena felt herself become truly afraid. It was as if Tseng had left,

and had been replaced by something automatic...automated. As if someone had pulled a string to make him talk. She'd had him for a second there, too, when she mentioned Aerith. But at the mention of ShinRa, it was as if Tseng had shut down. "What the hell?" she whispered to herself, as he stared.

Suddenly, Tseng slumped over and closed his eyes. And just as suddenly, he fell forward onto her, totally limp and perfectly still. She managed to shield her face so that he didn't break her nose or bust her lip.

He outweighed her considerably, and suddenly her arms felt like water balloons. When she managed to look over his shoulder, she saw that Reno was switching off his Electro-Mag rod as he climbed out of the back of the van. Elena realized that he had probably put Rude's Stop Materia in the EMr. He was gingerly rubbing the back of his head as he made his way to her.

"Don't like to waste time, do you Elena?" Reno joked. "Damn, Tseng's not back a day and already you're trying to roll around with him."

"Shut up!" she squealed, hating herself for squealing. "Get him off me!"

"Elena's changed," Rude deadpanned.

She fought the urge to shriek again, this time in outrage, and shoved Tseng with all her might. "You assholes!" she yelled, as Tseng fell away to her side. "He was trying to kill me!"

"Lighten up," Reno said. "You're both alive and Tseng's with us."

He held out his hand to help her up, and she dusted herself off wordlessly.

"Did I mention," Reno said, glancing at Tseng, "that this really sucks?"

"I think you did, once or twice," Elena said.

"Yeah, once or twice a second," Rude said, as he climbed from the back of the truck. "But damn. You're right."

"You see his eyes?" Reno said. "Holy shit."

"Yeah," Elena agreed, and decided to deal with it later. "So did you guys catch any of that?" She rubbed the back of her head. There was going to be one bitch of a lump there. Her eyes were still watering.

"Just that weird crap about ShinRa being alive," Reno said. "What the hell was that all about? It was like he shorted out."

"Yeah," Elena sighed, looking down at Tseng. She knew the Stop materia would only last so long, and then they'd have to resort to more extreme measures of restraint. She hated to do such a thing to her boss, to her superior. But they had to be careful. "I want some answers," she said.

"Yeah. Elena, you know what? We need to start at the beginning. This whole mission started with Reeve. He's got to know of something we missed. Something about Bradburn. Scarlet told me that Reeve didn't know she was in on it, and I'm inclined to believe her. But in light of the new, uh, developments, Reeve might be able to figure something out in hindsight. If we can find him, that is."

"Yeah, but we need to rest," she said.

Reno nodded. "How far did we go?" he asked, rubbing his head again. "Where's the nearest town?"

"We didn't go very far from when I last spoke to you; you weren't out for long. We're closest to Cosmo Canyon."

"Hmm," Rude said. "You think we're welcome there?"

"We don't have too much of a choice," Elena said.