Author's Note:

Reno: Aww yeah, back to me.

Reeve: Pardon?

Reno: This POV is all me, baby.

Reeve: No it's not, actually.

Reno: ... Say what?

Reeve: Tyramir flipped a coin to decide whose POV it was. You lost.

Reno: Son of a bitch! Rufus is getting priority over me?

Reeve: No, the coin is. Lady Luck doesn't favor you this day.

Reno: But... but... the ladies always love me. Especially Lady Luck.

Reeve: Today she's pawing all over Rufus.

Reno: That whore.

Reeve: Indeed. Tyramir doesn't own the rights to Final Fantasy or any of its characters.

Chapter Twenty Nine

Tobias Shinra

Rufus looked out the window of his armoured SUV, and smiled. When he had promised Aeris an escort to go along with them to the 'problem with the Planet', she had expected a few soldiers, ten at most, to accompany them. Rufus had shown her that a Shinra never did anything small. Fifty armoured cars, along with seven Shinra tanks, brand new off the line, and five helicopters, all filled with armed guards, accompanied them. It was a small army, and if it had been possible to bring more, Rufus would have. Unfortunately, Shinra was still rebuilding, still regaining it's former glory. And worse, when he had done a personaly inventory of their weapons and count of their tanks and other vehicles, he had found that many of them had been stolen in the wake of Shinra's collapse from Soldiers deserting their posts. He had made a note to find any and all deserters and deal with them.

Beside him in the back of the SUV was Aeris, a Shinra soldier driving up front. She sat with her hands in her lap, staring out a window, looking at the fields of green outside. She seemed more interesting in watching nature than in speaking to him. He found it oddly insulting, but then, he supposed it was probably due to her Cetra heritage.

Awkwardly, he tried to start a conversation with her. "Beautiful, isn't it?"

She nearly jumped, her head turning to him, and asked, as if confused, "What is?"

"The view. The grasslands. Nature."

Her eyes narrowed, and a small frown marred her face. "Do you really think so?"

The reaction bothered him, but he nodded. "Yes. It really is beautiful out there."

"Funny you should say that. You, Rufus Shinra, are a hypocrite."

A hypocrite? A hypocrite? He had been called many things in his day. A monster. A murderer. A cold-blooded psychopath. A power-hungy, greedy bastard, born of a money-grubbing, glorified speech writer. He had always shrugged off the other insults, but he found anger rising in him at this one. What had he ever done to be a hypocrite?

Aeris continued, not a mean note in her voice, staying calm, as if explaining something to a child. "You came into Cetra heritage entirely by accident. From the reports you've already given me on your company..." she gestured to a file that sat between them, "... it seems that you just wanted to see if using Cetra DNA in the Soldier process would enhance you any more. Give you more power. You're the head of the largest power company, no, the largest corporate entity on the Planet. You rape and pillage the land as you see fit. You search for the Promised Land like a Cetra would, but you would use it for your own ends, turn it into a place where you can suck all the Mako out of the land. You pretend to be a hero, a protector of the Planet, when you tried to destroy the Weapons, even going so far as to declare war on Obsidian Weapon, who I might add was me, and yet, here you are, sitting in a car, talking to me about how lovely the countryside is."

If it had been anyone else who had just delivered that little speech, he would have struck them. His anger built up, but he didn't act on it. He said, "Well, it is." And then he laughed, throwing his head back and letting it all come out.

Aeris flinched away, as if she had indeed been struck, completely taken by surprise by his reaction. When he stopped, he smiled bemusedly at her, and said, "I apologize. I admit, I am the head of a power hungry, life destroying organization. Shinra's power is based on the suffering of people, and the Planet. But that will change. I am not my father. Or, I'm not anymore. I've changed. Not enough yet, and that scares me. Because a part of me doesn't want to change. It thinks that the man I'm becoming is weak, and a naive fool. But I think with the proper influence, I can ... overcome it."

"And you want --" Aeris began, but Rufus cut her off.

"Did you know that my father was insane?"

"Well," she said, flustered at this new, unexpected remark, "I guess... He was a very bad person. He destroyed Sector Seven just to destroy Avalanche and--"

"No, that's not what I meant. That was the mark of a keen strategist. A messy one, but one that eliminated his rivals. Not very moral, but to him, it was the perfect way to swat the fly, if you will."

"Excuse me?"

Rufus sighed. That hadn't come out right at all. Now he really did sound like his father. He continued anyway. "Let's say you have a fly in your house. And it's very annoying. It buzzes, it lands on you, it flies about, it even bites sometimes. So you try to swat it, and you can't seem to connect. Frustrated, you buy a can of bug spray to try to kill it, only to discover it's one of those Mako-mutated flies. Bug spray won't kill it. In fact, it seems to thrive on it. So, eventually, you go even further and decide to buy a bug zapper. You set it up, and you notice right away that is had results. Lady bugs fly into it and die, moths fly into it and die. Bees come close to it and die. But the important thing is, the fly decides to investigate it, flies into it, and promptly dies. Was that the right thing?"

Aeris shrugged, and responded, "I wouldn't know. I don't kill flies."

Rufus smiled ruefully. He might've known. Especially with that staff of hers that they had strapped to the roof of the SUV. Not a killing weapon, just one to defend herself with. "What I'm getting at is, my father was a brilliant strategist. Cold, yes, but brilliant. But despite all that, he was insane. For a present for my tenth birthday, he bought me a Black Stalker. A Mako-mutated puma. It was untrained, and he presented it to me in a cage. And then, when I got used to the idea of a Black Stalker in a cage not twenty feet away from me and started opening other presents, he opened the cage door." His jaw clenched, and he felt his fists tightening. He didn't know why he was bringing this up, but he knew where he was leading it to. That accursed dream.

"I don't have to listen to you. You are dead."

"Yes, I am dead, aren't I? But I know your dirty little secret, Rufus. Only something that I and one other could possibly know. And the other is now dead as well. How... convenient."

"What happened?" Aeris asked.

"The guards were on orders not to do anything unless the Black Stalker attacked them or my father. This was to be a test for me. If I survived, I would be worthy enough to become my father's heir. If not, then I would die. I'm not the only child to be borne of Tobias Shinra. I had three sisters and a brother. All of them but one older than me, all of them... dead. They didn't pass my father's tests.

"I was only a child, but I knew immediately that the Black Stalker would kill me if I didn't subdue it somehow. So, I ran and hid behind one of the guards on the far side of the room, away from my father. The guard tried to defend himself, but died. I ran to the other side of the room, and the Stalker followed. Dodging under and over furniture, I was able to evade it until I made it back to the guard's dead body. I took the man's stun baton and managed to strike the Stalker in the face with it. That left it dazed, so I could get around it and hit it again in the base of the skull. It knocked the creature out cold.

"I remember my father clapping afterwards, congratulating me and calling me a man." Rufus' voice sounded dead, and he wasn't surprised that all life had faded from it. This was the part of the story he coldly enjoyed the most. "He asked me if I would kill the Black Stalker, and I turned to him and said, 'Whyever would I do that? He's a great gift. I think I'll name him Dark Nation.' It was a joke, you see? Because only in a nation, a city, as black and dark and as disgusting as Midgar would allow something like that to happen. Even at the top, everyone hates Midgar. But my father didn't realize the joke and just patted me on the back and said he'd hire a trainer to assist me train Dark Nation, not outright do it, though. That was the day I realized that I hated my father more than anything in the world."

"I'm sorry..." Aeris said.

"Don't be. I'm not done. My father's madness went beyond that. He'd go to the Honey Bee Inn with a few employees, and have them play with Lightning Materia to make thunderbolts while he delivered speeches about prophecy, all the while wearing archaic armour from Wutai. He was insane, and while at home or outside the workplace, he abused it every chance he had. That's why he hired people like Heidegger and Hojo and Scarlet. Because they all reflected his madness."

"Well, he's not here anymore," she said, and placed a hand over his, taking it in her hand. Her touch was warm and soft, very comforting. "Sephiroth killed him."

He nodded. "I remember that night. I had just come back to Midgar from business in Junon. I rode the helicopter in, landed, and came into the building, only to find the building practically empty. So I radiod the chopper and told them to prep for immediate take off. But I stayed and investigated." He shouldn't be saying this, but he went on anyway. "I went down a few floors, looking for anyone. I finally made it to the lab, and found blood everywhere. Part of me wanted to run, but the morbid curiousity I had inherited from my father took over, and I found myself in the specimen area. I saw Sephiroth. He had discarded Masamune, and he was tearing open the Jenova chamber, so I hid behind some boxes and watched. He took Jenova's body and left. I... I followed." No! Don't tell her! "But not before picking up Masamune. I thought, 'Maybe I'll kill him. Prove once and for all to my father that I'm strong enough for him to love.' It was a stupid thought, but it stuck, and I followed Sephiroth all the way to the top floor, to my father's office. My father was sitting at his desk, screaming at Sephiroth in fear. Yelling insanity and gibbering in terror and throwing threats he could never hope to actually perform. And Sephiroth just stopped, and looked at my father and said, 'Don't follow me.' And my father, this man who had instilled in me that strength was everything, sunk into his chair and trembled in fear. I wanted that kind of power.

"Palmer came up the stairs and saw Sephiroth and hid behind the same pillar that I had been. My father screamed something about Jenova and the Promised Land, and the former General said, 'You think you know something of the Promised Land?' and delivered his speech about how he would cleanse the Planet of our kind. And then he left. My father did nothing to try to stop him. That was the kind of power I wanted, and I would have it. So I whispered to Palmer, 'Sephiroth killed my father.' He looked confused and asked me what I meant. So I just repeated myself, and then added, 'A pity he never approved more funding to the Space Program. A different man might.' And Palmer nodded. So I snuck up behind my father, who was still tremblind in fear, and I killed him with Sephiroth's sword."

Aeris didn't gasp, or make a remark like, 'How could you?' or anything he had expected. Instead, she merely nodded, and pat his hand comfortingly.

"People used to say that no one but Sephiroth could wield Masamune. Part of his legend. But the thing is... anyone can pick it up and swing it around. It's just a really long sword. Anyone at all can just hold it and stab someone in the back with it." He felt ashamed. He could almst hear his father laughing. "Am I a bad person?"

The normal Rufus Shinra wouldn't have ever asked a question like that. He wouldn't have cared. Morals were something up to the historians. But this was a changing Rufus Shinra, a man who was moving on, and possibly becoming better.

Aeris clenched Rufus' hand and answered, "Yes. But you won't always be."

They weren't the words he had sought, but he found that somewhere, they had been the words he had needed. He nodded, and said, "Thank you."

Author's Note:

That chapter had been planned for a while, but was meant to come along much later in the game. But then I realized, 'There's a whole mess of action coming up, and no room for this kind of thing. I have to do it now.' So, there it is. Don't worry, Rufus was just in a weak moment right now. We all get those from time to time, so he won't be acting like such a sissy later, heh.