Reno walked down the corridor that lead to the Turk's private offices. Idly smoking a cigarette, wondering if he'd get some sleep tonight. He'd seen Aeris safely onto her train, promising to meet her bright and early at eight the next morning. Like an idiot he agreed, without even thinking to clear it with his boss. Dully staring at the ugly office art that decorated the hallway, he wondered if Tseng'd be pissed. Yes, he probably will be. Tseng wasn't short tempered, but when he did get angry you had to watch out. It's the slow fuse that leads to the biggest payload. Reno pretty much figured he'd cuss him out for five minutes and then tell him to fuck off because he had better things to do. That was Tseng's way. Sauntering up to Tseng's office, Reno prepared himself. Hopefully there ain't any big assignments tomorrow…He sighed and put on his most serious face.
Swinging the door open on complete chaos, Reno looked around Tseng's office in shock. Tseng wasn't a particularly neat individual. The rest of the Turks always teased him about his messy office, and though he pretended offense, Tseng always took it good-naturedly. He insisted that there was order in his disorder, and he could easily find anything he needed. What greeted Reno this particular night was anything but the normally disorderly order. This was a mess, a grand fucking shit pile of a mess. A hurricane could have hit this place and left it neater.
Tables and cabinets were turned over, contents spilled on the carpet. The room illuminated by one fluorescent light bulb, its twin only occasionally sputtering to life. Several large and ugly holes punched in the wall. A filing cabinet riddled with bullet holes. And a painting of the sea that Reno had always liked barely hanging lopsided on the wall, its protective glass shattered in spiraling spider webs. Everything within arms reach, rent and torn.
Reno stood for a moment, staring in awe. Bouncing up and down on the balls of his feet, he whistled. The man in the middle of all of it barely noticed. Tseng sat at his desk, the only piece of furniture left untouched, glaring darkly into space while dragging on a cigarette.
Reno cocked his head and shrugged his shoulders, coolly regarding his boss, "Love what you've done with the place."
Tseng looked up slowly, eyes glazed over in thought. His face blankly mysterious in expression, "What the fuck do you want?"
"Damn! Just checking in….No need to be so hostile. So what the hell happened?"
"Shit happened…." Tseng gazed around, the dull apathy in his eyes disappearing, "Hmm….Man, I really tore this place up. Sorry….Anger management. Had some issues to work on."
"Ah! Issues…..So the obvious choice to working through issues is to destroy your office. Gotcha." Reno said, clearing off a space and righting a chair to sit.
"Yeah, either that or I kill someone. I figured the brass would frown on murdering for fun…. Decreases their profit margin…. besides, I've been meaning to redecorate, but I digress. What brings you up here?"
"Just checking to see what's on the plate for tomorrow."
"…..Not much. Well, one thing in Nibelheim, but it's a total bullshit job. I'm sending the request back to the military. We're Turks for fuck's sake. Heidegger's assholes can go and do recon. I'm tired of them treating us like errand boys." Tseng seethed, stubbing out his cigarette in a nearby ashtray, "So, what's up with you?"
Reno looked at him blandly, "Nothing. Just wondering if I'm on clock for anything, that's all. Being a proactive member of the Shinra team…."
"Yeah, you saw that memo too. Who the hell comes up with shit like that? Corporate rat bastards….Be a team member, let us stick our thumb up your ass, bullshit." Tseng paused, He looked at Reno, dark eyes peering at him weighing his co-worker's demeanor, "How long have you been a Turk?"
Reno thought for a moment, trying to trace back his history. He'd never been good at remembering things year by year. He lived his life by the seat of his pants, no time to write shit down in a mental notebook.
"Fuck! I don't know three, four years maybe….more or less….Why do you ask?"
Tseng picked up a pencil off his desk, errantly thumping it on the mahogany surface, "Because you aren't a proactive member of the Shinra team. You never ask. Never. I just hand you what I think you can handle and you do it. So tell me what's on your mind and quit dancing around the issue already."
"I kind of made a promise to a friend for tomorrow."
"And would this friend be of the female persuasion?" Tseng laughed, shaking his head, "Goddamn! You are too predictable."
"Aw! Fuck off! It's not like that….It's Aeris…..okay, Aeris…." Reno snarled, leaning over to stub out his cigarette, "She wanted me to walk her to work tomorrow. And don't ask why…..It's a long story. So… long as we're revealing our feelings, what's the deal with this mess? You still haven't fessed up…."
Tseng thought back for a moment, to his encounter with Sephiroth. Anger began to well up again. Bastard, fucking bastard. He felt shame and embarrassment over his own base cowardice. How could he let something like that rattle him, humiliate him in front of a bunch of stupid grunts. He'd pay for it; Tseng swore he would.
"Hmpf….Speaking of our dear Aeris….This has everything to do with her….Documents were stolen from the Turk's restricted library. Documents from her file, to be exact." Tseng said placidly, belying the fury within as he flung his pencil up at the ceiling. He stopped to stare up and watch it stick into the tiles with a satisfying tack, "I'm worried they might be assigning her to another department. So I guess it's a good deal, you keeping an eye on her on your days off. So, are you two going out behind my back or is it something else?" Tseng glanced at Reno sideways, giving him a little smirk.
"Something else." Reno said, his tone unusually serious, "She had some weird ass dream. Convinced that she knows when she's gonna die and who's gonna kill her. Really freaked her out. Poor kid…..The kicker is, she thinks that General Fucking Sephiroth's the one who's gonna do it….I mean, talk about crazy ass shit….That's just cracked but I had a hard time breaking it to her that…." Reno rambled on for a moment or two longer, aware that Tseng had suddenly sat bolt upright at the mention of the General's name, "Now I know you're all freaky with him too, but you have to admit…..It's bloody unlikely…"
"UNLIKELY MY ASS!!!….. …..Who do you think stole the god damn files?!" Tseng stood abruptly, wrenching his gun from his shoulder holster and aiming at the wall, "SON OF A FUCKING BITCH!!" Pulling the trigger without interruption, he shot off the rest of his rounds into the already bullet riddled drywall. Anger spent, Tseng threw the weapon down with contempt and slumped in his seat, "I'm going to tell you some things right now Reno….and you have to swear that it won't leave this room. Do you swear?"
"Yeah…." Reno replied, feeling very unnerved and on edge.
"Because if you breathe a word, I will personally hunt you down and kill you like a dog…We on the same page?"
"Fuck, Yes…..Want me to engrave it on my god damn forehead?"
Tseng seemed indifferent to the insult; as long as Reno understood, he didn't care. "Great. But first, I want you to tell me everything Aeris said, did…what she acted like…EVERYTHING. Get me?"
Reno nodded slowly, wary of the dangerous glare in Tseng's dark brown eyes. He recounted as well as he could, everything Aeris had told him. Stopping only to answer Tseng's questions, of which he had many. Tseng was disturbed by what Reno was telling him. He was now less worried about a transfer, and more worried about what the General might want personally. Reno finished his narrative to Tseng's satisfaction, waiting patiently while his boss thought. His mind working fast, as he tried to put together scattered details. So if it's not some sad excuse for Hojo to transfer control to the Science Department…what is it? He turned the details over, because nothing seemed to add up. The only thing he could trust was that Aeris knew her stuff. He absolutely believed what she dreamt had some truth in it. Still, why would Sephiroth want to kill the last ancient? Power, it began and ended with power. Whatever individual reason Sephiroth might have didn't matter. It was what lay underneath.
"Are you done thinking yet? I'm bored….and I'd like to sleep sometime tonight. Got an early morning…."
Tseng shook his head, breaking away from his interior dialogue. His eyes met Reno's, dark and intense as he began his tale. One year ago, his very first encounter with Sephiroth and his first day as the leader of the Turks. Shinra had given him a small contingent of soldiers, and they were supposed to infiltrate Materia production facilities in Wutai.
Daojia was a tiny city in the eastern mountains of Wutai, and it had been rumored to be the country's Materia production center. It was common knowledge that Wutai had been refining and using Materia longer than any other nation. Professor Gast, the supposed inventor of Materia, had actually studied for a short time in Wutai. He'd never been privy to the exact process they used to refine it; but through simple observation of their product, he had made many correct guesses on how Materia was produced. After years of development, he had perfected his method and allowed Shinra to release and distribute it.
Though most of the world bought Shinra, Wutanese Materia was always more prized…as it was more effective, and frankly, of a higher quality than Shinra's mass-produced Materia. Better quality, higher priced, and rarely found, Wutanese Materia was in demand. It wasn't soon before they had cut in on Shinra's market. Profits were down twenty percent, and the President was on the warpath. He ordered millions in research and development programs, trying to find out what made Materia from Wutai so damn good.
Dozens of scientists and millions of Gil later, no one had any idea how it differed from Shinra made Materia. Finally, the President broke down and contacted the Shentso-pao, Wutai's governing body. He begged to know the secret, to let his scientists in and figure out what they did differently. In the interests of international relations, at least that was the line. A Shentso-pao representative had politely refused the request. Their refining techniques were considered a national treasure.
The Quo tang-zi lian, as they called it, in standard the secret stone technique of the planet, the knowledge of this technique was considered a gift from the gods. This gift had been given to a priest in the village of Daojia, hundreds of years ago in appreciation of his benevolence towards the planet. The technique was passed down throughout the generations. Only those who could trace their lineage all the way back, directly to the first priest, could learn the technique. All others were refused, especially nosey foreigners.
This enraged Shinra, he was furious that Wutai didn't seem to understand who they were dealing with. When Shinra said jump, you said how high? Not, sorry…you're dirty foreigners, and we won't share. An operation was quickly set up to steal the information they wanted and to send Wutai a message. Don't mess with Shinra.
So Tseng and a bunch of soldiers were sent to Daojia, landing on the beaches in Wutai only to find that they were to sit on their thumbs. R&D wanted to perform a little experiment before they'd be let in. A test for their new pet, the super soldier execs in the company had been crowing about for years. Sephiroth. Tseng remembered reading some shit about him in his last meeting with Rufus. He was the first soldier in Shinra's grand new army. Slightly altered genetically to be stronger, faster, smarter and in all ways better than your average grunt. A cold, emotionless killer, trained from the time he was a boy to obey. The perfect warrior. Shinra's crowning achievement.
They'd waited for years for a formal field test, what better way to showboat success than this? So they sent their pet into Daojia with orders to recover Wutai's refining secrets. He was supposed to only kill the mayor of the town as a warning. Only supposed to kill anyone else if they resisted.
By the time Tseng and his troops arrived as backup, flames could be seen flaring up from one of the larger buildings. He strode into the village, his troops following hesitantly. They came to the village square, passing the bodies of at least a dozen villagers on the way. There stood Sephiroth, white hair fluttering in the slight breeze. Tseng watched as he sliced through a villager with a single graceful stroke of his masamune. His pale face expressionless, blood spurting from his victim's throat and staining his porcelain skin. The young man turned, bright green eyes burning in their sockets. He wiped the blood off his cheek, striding towards Tseng and his men.
The entire village erupted into flames as the fire spread swiftly. A building collapsed suddenly in front of Sephiroth, stranding him on one side of the flames. Tseng was about to act, to shout to his men to find water, but then the impossible happened. The platinum haired youth stepped out of the flames, as if their heat meant nothing to him. Calmly walking forward like he just got out of the shower.
Tseng stared at him, eyes wide as saucers. Sephiroth looked directly into his eyes, piercing jade meeting dark brown. Tseng could feel the power radiating off Sephiroth, it was a sudden and unexplainable feeling. The knowledge that this man held more power than any other man in the history of the world, and with this power he could do anything he pleased. That there was nothing Shinra could offer him that he couldn't get on his own. He was only working for them as a convenience, because there was nothing else for him to do. What if one day, there was something better? God help us all….Whatever future lay ahead for Sephiroth, Tseng was sure that pain and death would follow. He could see it in the depths of those cold jade eyes.
Tseng had demanded an explanation, what had gone so wrong that it ended in this madness? Sephiroth insisted that it wasn't his fault. The villagers resisted. He tried to be reasonable, but they attacked him. So he killed them. No, he slaughtered them. Twisted bloodied bodies littered the ground like paper trash. The slowly burning streets ran red with blood. Men. Women. Children. Hell, anything breathing. All dead….Tseng had killed a lot of people in his time, in a hundred different ways. Never on this scale. He was only a man….one man, killed a town with over a hundred residents in a few hours with a sword as his only weapon and no Materia. Alone. The implication in his mind was bone chilling. It was impossible, yet here he stood looking at it. It wasn't that Tseng didn't believe him, he did…but he feared the destruction that followed the boy. More than that, the young man had completely bollixed the entire mission.
At least he couldn't be blamed for the fire. The village elders had panicked and set the town on fire to keep their secrets from the foreign devil. In the end the only thing gained from Daojia had been one Summon Materia and another large unidentified Materia that was broken. Turning a simple mission into a complete cluster fuck.
To make a bad situation worse, Daojia's destruction had been leaked to the press and threatened to become a P.R. nightmare for Shinra. To justify the viciousness of the attack on Daojia, Shinra news reported that they were hiding weapons of mass destruction. Most people bought it, rallying behind the President as he pronounced an all out war on Wutai. Not that Tseng cared that they covered it up, they'd glossed over that kind of shit before, no big. It was the way they held up Sephiroth as the hero of the day that bothered him. The man had slaughtered an entire town and was then hailed as hero....world's gone nuts....He made General shortly after the Daojia incident. Which bothered Tseng even more. He took it upon himself to find out more about the General. What was he? Why was he? Because he was more than just mildly genetically altered….That was the biggest bullshit line if he ever heard one.
Internal espionage. That's what they'd call what he did. Hell, he could get fired for it, but he didn't care. It had been his expertise at this kind of thing that had gotten him where he was today. He'd dug up documents relating to Sephiroth's creation, though they were few and far between. Gathering evidence of massive genetic manipulation, experimental mako injections, and the introduction of distinctly non-human genomes into his body. Sephiroth wasn't really human. Part of him was, but there was alien anatomy writhing within him. Jenova, that was the non-human genome, possibly from an extraterrestrial source....the files were vague and unhelpful on where it came from or what it was. Tseng had tried to track down more about it, but came up empty. He gave up on that thread and went for others.
The jackpot was finding one of Sephiroth's medical records. It was the standard psychological test given to all Shinra employees before employment. According to the psych test results, Sephiroth was unstable. Suffering from periodic blackouts and loss of memory. He also reported occasionally hearing voices. The notes on the document sent chills down the spine.
Subject exhibits extreme antisocial behavior combined with social anxiety. He is suspicious and harbors paranoid ideation. Reports that he often feels empty, leading him to exhibit reckless behavior that is characterized as suicidal. Often has unusual perceptual experiences, i.e. hearing voices, feelings of detachment from the world, etc. This has lead to an unstable view of self, leaving the subject with mixed feelings of superiority/inferiority. He is known to have fits of unreasonable temper, especially when personal issues are brought up. Patient is diagnosed as being a combination Schizotypal/ Borderline personality; though through further testing additional mental defects may be present as well. Doctor recommendation....Subject's mental health extremely unstable, even disturbed. What is most alarming is his complete lack of empathy, as he seems completely indifferent to suffering, including his own. When angered, subject becomes dangerously hostile. Employment is not recommended.
It gave Tseng no pleasure to realize that Sephiroth wasn't the perfect warrior they'd been led to believe. He was an abomination. A perverse freak that had no business roaming the world at large. Tseng had never been a spiritual man, but he did believe that there was some order to the universe. Sephiroth had no place in this order. His power was too great, and Tseng could see that it would only lead to more destruction. Millions suffering as the village of Daojia had.
Reno stared at Tseng in slack jawed astonishment. He wasn't convinced that Aeris was right, but it did give good credence to Tseng's belief that the man was dangerous.
"So....What does this all mean? For us.....Sephiroth's dangerous....great....He might hurt Aeris.....but what the hell can we do about it? If it's like you say, the guy can take out an entire village. I don't see us standing much of a chance in a fight with him, fair or unfair. So where the hell does that leave us?"
Tseng thought carefully before answering, "Maybe we don't have to fight him....."
"Huh? And how do you come by that decision?"
Tapping his fingers on his desk, an unusual idea crossed his mind, "Hey....I wonder if Rufus is still up?"
Reno gave him an odd look, annoyed that his superior jumped from thought to thought without cluing him in, "Probably not....Why and who cares? That doesn't have anything to do with the problem at hand...."
"It has everything to do with it. Rufus isn't a big fan of the General, unlike his father. I think he'd be interested to discuss our views on that job in Nibelheim, don't you?" Tseng replied quietly, a soft smile appearing on his face.
AUTHOR'S NOTE—
HEY! Just wanted to apologize to y'all for the wait!! I love writing this story, mostly because I have no idea where I'm going with it until it happens. I have to thank all of you who have reviewed! I love you all so much, okay...I know...I'm coming on a little strong, but hey...I wrote this for people to read it!! So thank you!!
I wrote this chapter for Lucrecia LeVrai, because you seemed so upset at how I characterized Tseng. I sat down and thought to myself, yeah....I did make him puss out, didn't I? So I came up with this chapter to remedy it. Hopefully it fills you with joy!! Plus thanks for puttin' me in your favorites!!
Big Ups to to Socialist Shaz, Ardwynna Morriqu, Coronis, lovexfool, Anna and Mimi Blossoms Aeris—Your reviews have been life affirming and make this story a frickin' pleasure to write!!
Also extra special thanks to the Highwaywoman—I wasn't a big Aeris fan either, but she grew on me after awhile. Though have to say, I identify with Tifa more, Aeris is really easy to write! I'm glad that my Fic can capture people who don't normally like Aeris!
A Huge Frickin' Huggy Bear style thanks to Chocobo Goddess and Lucrecia LeVrai!! An author's best friend is someone who is honest but kind. Thanks for the advice. You two have given me valuable advice on how to make this an awesome story!!
Alright, I'm done gushing! See ya next update!! Peace and love!!--Noacat