Good day, readers. I've been sick. My nose hasn't been able to decide which nostril to be stuffed in, so it went for the gold and decided to do both. My eyes water just remembering it. And the cough! Woo. Triaminic was about as much help as rubbing myself in vegetable oil, drinking turpentine, or maybe eating a spiderweb – whichever home remedy you prefer. And no way was I taking Tussin DM. That stuff is the scourge of Humanity. When we get to the Apocalypse, the Four Horsemen are just going to uncap a bottle of Tussin and pour it into the oceans. Boom, we all die.

Chapter XXI.


Several hours had passed since the thing that the police were calling "gang violence." Anyone who saw the official report on television saw some numbers, property damage, and gang violence. That was nowhere near as exciting as a shadowy organization trying to cap Reno for making an influential speech, so there was no panic and the strange red-headed foreigner – not to mention Princess Kisaragi's forthcoming marriage – stayed in the spotlight.

At the moment, Reno, Yuffie, Rude, Makoto, Rei, Karsk, and Grandpa Souta were all gathered on the second floor of the Shinsengumi headquarters, having a friendly chat with Deman Jobs.

First things first, Reno had said.

"I really am sorry," Jobs said over his shoulder.

"Really," Reno laughed. "You are?"

"Indubitably, almost inexpressibly. I hereby do apologize for the infliction of any and all wounds upon your person and the persons of your fellows. I also apologize for any negative comments I may have made about you or negative thoughts I entertained. I will also endeavor to avoid these unpleasantries in the future, so that we can reach a mutually beneficial arrangement for all involved."

"Good," the redhead said, and hauled Jobs back into the second story from where he'd been dangling the ex-Turk out the window, head-first.

Jobs, hands cuffed behind his back, hit the floor with a loud thump and grimaced. "I'd be a little gentler if I were you, Mr. Reno. Undue damage to me could make me forget things you need to know."

Rude snorted. "Funny. Usually it works out the opposite way."

"Yes, well. It may not have been quite as advanced as yours, but I went through essentially the same training regimen as you did, received the same conditioning. I'm sure you remember the Needle."

Raising an eyebrow, Yuffie was about to ask what the Needle was when she saw that the blood had drained out of Reno's face rather dramatically at the very mention of it.

"Yeah, I remember," Reno finally said. "I oughta lop off one of your ears for reminding me."

"Uncuff me and make me a good enough offer," Jobs continued, "and I'll tell you anything you might need to know. I was due for over a hundred grand at the conclusion of this job, but obviously my employer won't be particularly interested in paying me now."

"You'd skip out on him, just like that?" Makoto asked, distrust showing in his eyes.

"When I say ex-Turk for hire, I mean it very literally. I take money for services to be rendered, and in this case I've failed to render said services, meaning my employer, whoever he or she might be, will not be happy. Better to collect what I can from all of you, tell you what you need to know to give you the best chance of rooting out this person, and be on my way."

Grandpa Souta frowned. "You don't even know who you're working for? It seems like an odd arrangement."

Jobs shrugged as best as the handcuffs would permit him. "As long as he or she was willing to pay, I wasn't interested in their identity. I was peeved when they discovered mine, after all the steps I took to ensure my relative anonymity while on this job."

Blowing out a long sigh, Reno moved around to Jobs' back to undo the cuffs. "How much cash you want?"

"I've already got a hundred and twenty-five thousand up front from my former employer – the whole job was negotiated for two hundred and fifty grand, total. Give me seventy-five thousand to make two-hundred-kay total and I'll call it a deal."

"Deal. I can only write you a check."

"I have accounts."

Reno motioned at Rude, and the man withdrew a checkbook from one of his coat pockets. "Let me guess. Rufus is paying."

"Unless you've got seventy-five thousand to part with, partner."

"Pass."

As Reno began fishing in his own pocket for a pen, Makoto stepped forward and laid a restraining hand on his shoulder. "I don't like this. Sure, he may claim to be the very model of a modern major-mercenary, but money doesn't buy the truth."

"No, just my version of it," Jobs cut in, stretching slightly. "I'm not only a mercenary, I'm also an information broker on the side. I have contacts of various sorts – the men sent into steal the Leviathan materia were part of a squad I used to work with on certain jobs that required a little more muscle than I alone could provide."

"This information of yours could be inaccurate, maybe even fatally so," Rei objected. "Even if you tell us what you think is the truth, you might send us down the wrong path."

"There are two things you do with information acquired during the course of an operation: you continue with your original plan while keeping it in mind or you adapt your plan to it. Just because I tell you something doesn't mean you have to take it as though it's written in stone and prophesied by the Fates."

The sudden, harsh sound of Reno ripping a check out of the book startled everyone, and the redhead pinned it to Jobs' forehead with a finger. "For seventy-five grand, buddy, it damn well better be."


Before them stood a tall, ramshackle apartment building in downtown Wutai. They'd traveled here via Jobs' direction, and now they stood in front of it, half-afraid that if they went in it would collapse around their ears.

As Rude now had a motorcycle, Reno had drove Tseng's convertible, with Yuffie in the front and Jobs seated in the back. Makoto had taken Rei on his own motorcycle, and Karsk had given Grandpa Souta a ride. When asked about Reno's bike, the old mechanic had smiled mysteriously and said "Later."

Reno certainly didn't trust Jobs as far as he could throw him – pitching people over ledges and into solid things was Rude's department. However, he did know that Rufus' check wouldn't bounce, and even if he was a scumbag, Jobs had still been a Turk, once. Money talked to people like him.

"Earlier, I mentioned my apparently illegal activities regarding favors the Turks did for friends of Shin-Ra," Jobs said as he began to lead them into the building. "When it comes to operations like this, I usually indulge in a bit of it with my employer after everything is wrapped up to his satisfaction. Usually the additional sum I receive isn't much, but as I said, something is better than nothing."

"So were collecting info on your employer to blackmail him with after you finished working for him," Makoto said distastefully.

"Blackmail is an ugly word. It doesn't roll off of the tongue at all. I prefer 'extortion.'"

Reno snorted at that and pushed open the front doors.

The lobby was grungy and dimly lit. An overweight, half-asleep Wutainese bouncer stood by the door in the unlikely event of trouble, and behind the front desk was a petite, gum-chewing local girl who looked a bit too trashy to qualify as pretty.

"Mr. Ro!" she squealed when she saw Jobs walk in. "So good to see you again!" Fake lashes fluttered like butterfly wings laden in tar, and Reno half-expected them to actually generate wind currents. "And are these people guests?"

"Yes," Jobs replied, looking every bit as blithe as the last time he'd crushed an insect in his apartment bathroom – about an hour before he'd left to survey the Shinsengumi headquarters, actually. "My room key, please, Ms. Chen."

The girl giggled, going up and down the scale like a wobbly instrument, and handed Jobs a key with fake bashfulness, making sure to grip it so that he had to brush his fingers against hers to relieve her of the item. "Have a good day!"

Without saying anything, everyone followed Jobs to the staircase. Only after the receptionist was out of earshot did Rei say, flatly, "Harlot."

"I was thinking more along the lines of 'slut,' but that works too," Yuffie agreed, eyes speaking eloquently of her distaste. "I mean, how old are you, Jobs?"

"Old enough that the clumsy advances of a foolish schoolgirl are of no interest to me."

Grandpa Souta whistled. "And I thought I was positively ancient."

After several flights of stairs Jobs branched out into a hallway, moved down it for about ten paces, and then stopped in front of an assuming-looking door. "This is it – number seven-oh-nine. Stand back." With seemingly exaggerated caution, Jobs unlocked the door and turned then handle, then pulled open the door, stepping away from the doorway itself at the same time. There was the quiet sound of air being displaced, and dust and plaster blossomed from the wall opposite the doorway as a bullet landed in it.

Leaning around the door to peer inside the apartment, Reno saw that the doorjamb had a string attached to it, which in turn stretched to a mechanism affixed to a silenced pistol, balanced on a stack of books on a chair and oriented towards the entrance. "Some security system. You'd figure a bucket over the door would do."

Jobs smiled thinly. "Unless it was filled with acid, no."

The group moved inside, Karsk bringing up the rear. The Sub-General carefully closed the door behind him, keeping an eye on Jobs the entire time, while everyone else surveyed the apartment. It was relatively clean, given the accommodations, speaking of Jobs' ordered nature.

On a table in the anteroom, there was a large stack of papers and tape recordings. Jobs moved to them, retrieving a small tape player from a shelf as he did so, selected a tape, and popped it in.

"I presume I'm speaking to the proprietor of Incorporated Designs."

It was a mechanical, obviously synthesized voice, with no life or inflection in it. The speaker could be male or female; it was impossible to tell.

"That would depend upon who's calling, and for what purpose," Jobs' voice answered.

"I have need of an individual to put a face to my particular political party in Wutai, and to do some odd jobs for me. Most of them involve crowd control."

Pause. "I'm not some campaign figurehead for hire. My work is serious business."

"Good, because mine is as well. This political party is not a conventional one, per se – it involves less being elected into power and more removing those currently elected from it."

"Anarchists?"

"In a sense. We lean rather far to the left on the grand scale – we desire change quickly, and our tactics do not exclude unpleasantness to achieve it. We can use a man of your skills, if your claims about them are true."

"And you represent your entire party? I'm not just talking to one person who has ideas that differ from his superiors', correct?"

"I represent the vested authority of our collective will."

"Are you the party you're talking about?"

"I do not act alone."

"Good enough for me, then. I'll meet you halfway: a hundred and twenty-five thousand for this job. I'm not going to be some public figure, but I will get things done for you."

"Fair enough. Since you aren't as curious as the last three I've contacted, I'll make you a bonus – you'll get your requested sum up front, in cash, and an extra hundred and twenty-five thousand upon the completion of your job."

A longer pause. "Sounds like a plan. Give me contact information and we'll have a little get-together."

There was a muted sound, obviously a laugh that the vocal synthesizer translated into a low hum. "I don't do face-to-face meetings. Neither do any of my associates. Be in Chai Jin square, in Wutai, two days from now, at midnight. You'll receive a dead drop with your instructions."

The tape ended with a sharp click, indicating the line had been cut on the other end. "That's how he or she contracted me," Jobs said, unnecessarily. "I received this call at an acquired business of mine about a week before you, Kisaragi, and your partner showed up, Mr. Reno. Things had already been fomenting before my arrival – I just helped speed up the process a bit."

On the other side of the table, Rei sat herself down and began fumbling for a cigarette. With a flourish, Makoto produced one of out thin air and handed it to her. "And you have no idea who this person is that hired you?"

Moving around the table to proffer his lighter to Rei, Jobs replied, "No idea whatsoever. All contact has been via phone or radio, and they have always employed this voice-scrambling device. They also give me no vocal clues that suggest as to their origin – no language except tradespeak, no specialized jargon or vernacular. I wasn't able to trace their calls or location, either; they were using a scrambler."

Grandpa Souta also took the opportunity to light a cigarette, almost absentmindedly opening a window before taking the first puff. "In other words, Mr. Jobs, you were as in the dark about your employer as he or she was about you."

"Not quite. By the time they contacted me last, they knew my name – not something I give out to anyone unless it's necessary, or I'm about to kill them, meaning it doesn't matter what they know." At this, Rei choked slightly and started coughing, white clouds of smoke running pell-mell from her ruby lips.

"You what?"

Jobs shrugged. "Nothing personal, Ms. Rei."

"You'll excuse me if I take it personally."

"That's your discretion." The ex-Turk returned his attention to Reno. "These papers are all the information I was able to compile about my employer's spending, mostly gleaned from having the various gangs he supplied report to me precisely what they'd gotten from him – under the pretext of informing me of the forces at my command, of course."

"And?" Reo asked.

Jobs' expression became slightly more severe, which translated into puzzlement. "Here's the thing – my employer is quite rich, enough so that I have no trouble believing that he or she belongs to a radical political party. All the weapons and materiel delivered to the gangs were from black-market sources – old Shin-Ra stockpiles that were raided in the aftermath of Meteor that never quite made it into the hands of the authorities. That sort of thing. They were also all purchased from foreign groups; if you've seen bikers wielding broadswords or katana, those were their own. This also explains why there are so many foreign-made motorcycles present within otherwise native biker gangs – my employer supplied these, too, giving some gangs the equipment necessary to fully outfit all their members."

Coolly blowing out a puff of smoke, Grandpa Souta asked, "Are these bikes any good?"

"Compared to custom models like those you produce, of course not. But they're serviceable, and that's all these gangs need."

"What sort of weapons was your employer able to supply the gangs with?" Karsk inquired. "The same sort of thing that we saw employed today, that being light and heavy infantry weaponry, or was there transfer of anti-vehicle and demolition weapons as well?"

"Some of the more prominent gangs, such as the Shattered Hand and Ten Feet of Steel, are packing heavy artillery, as it were – but nothing that can be deployed anywhere on a whim. Those weapons are more useful for defending against an enemy siege."

"At the meeting yesterday," Rude spoke up, "you said that 'we' had an 'ulterior interest' in Yuffie. What is it?"

Jobs' face became drawn. "That, I don't know. I was instructed – well, let me give you the recording." He rummaged through the stack of tapes for a moment, and then selected one, popping it in the player.

Silence, and then: "Effecting your release from the police station was difficult, Mr. Jobs. If you get caught again, consider our contract severed."

"I understand."

"Good. In any event, go to the rendezvous with the bike gang representatives at The Jade Dragon, tonight, as planned. Make sure to act as though you are privy to some scheme of mine – mention that 'we' do not wish Yuffie Kisaragi to be harmed or unduly affected by anything we attempt tomorrow."

"Roger."

The tape stopped, and Yuffie huffed and stamped her foot. "You'd figure Reno bein' killed, not to mention you trying to shoot me through a couch, would 'unduly affect' me."

Shrugging unabashedly, the ex-Turk replied, "Things changed." He put in another tape.

"Your plan to eliminate the Turk, Reno, is an effective one." It was the employer again. "If you successfully pull it off, eliminate Kisaragi too. My original plan involving her would strike a severe blow to Wutainese morale, but having her gunned down in an attempt on her foreign paramour's life will be even more humiliating."

Jobs stopped the tape manually, this time. "As you can see, my employer is hell-bent on destabilizing Wutai's government at any cost. The attempted theft of the Leviathan materia, the fomenting of rebellion, these plans of his or hers for Yuffie... He or she is also very, very clever." At this, he turned to Karsk. "I take it that you've recently received a weapons shipment from the World Regenesis Organization, Sub-General?"

Karsk took an involuntary step backwards. "Yes, but… Security was supposed to be tighter than this. I'll have to have a talk with Mern."

"Don't bother talking to your security expert – I know this because I got into the WRO's embassy here in Wutai on false pretenses and used my rudimentary technical knowledge to get into their network. It's employing a new, experimental Shin-Ra technology – a wireless global network, replacing the land-line- and radio-dependent one we currently use. Once I was in, it was a simple matter to see if they were backing my employer."

"You think Reeve would be behind something as despicable as this?" Yuffie protested.

"I have to consider all angles when investigating a mysterious employer," Jobs countered. "At any rate, Mr. Tuesti is even cleaner than the public image he's presenting – one that can stand up to white-glove inspection, might I add. He did, however, pay out a relatively small amount for this arms shipment, apparently offered by an ex-Shin-Ra commander and his squad, stationed in a backwater post, who just wanted to get their consciences clean and return to their families." Plucking a sheet of paper off of the table, Jobs held it out to Karsk, who took it and ran his eyes down it. "Familiar?"

Rude stepped in behind Karsk and looked over his shoulder for a moment. "It's exactly what arrived at Karsk's compound earlier today."

The Sub-General angrily handed the paper back to Jobs. "Your employer is using the WRO to arm my men, but for what purpose?"

"It will certainly be easier for people to accept your battalion as a scapegoat for the destruction of the government if you received a shipment of weapons from an outside source – especially one as powerful and foreign as the WRO."

"Reeve," Reno growled. "Stupidass believed what has to be the lamest sob story I ever heard, and didn't double-check his clients' backgrounds because of it."

Jobs smiled thinly. "The good-hearted are the easiest to deceive."

Levering himself off of the windowsill he'd been leaning against, Makoto announced, "We're stuck. Jobs doesn't know everything he needs to – not enough to help us figure out who we're trying to fight. But since he failed at trying to kill Reno, that means that whoever's behind all this will probably try their original plan for Yuffie again. We need to just head home for the night and wait for tomorrow's Hancho game."

Grandpa Souta frowned at him. "You think that will be the catalyst, Makoto?"

"They haven't touched Yuffie so far – that leads me to conclude that whatever they're going to do, they'll do it after she's married, or at least after we all know who she's going to end up marrying." He looked sheepishly at her and added, "In theory, of course."

"A good plan," Karsk agreed. "Expending all our energy looking for an invisible foe will do us no good. Better to wait until the enemy shows himself and then strike." His mouth compressed itself into a firm line, and he said, "I will ensure that this party regrets having sent me those weapons."

Clapping his hands together, Reno said, "We're agreed, then. Just one thing." Turning to Jobs, he asked, "So. You gonna help?"

Twin columns of smoke burst from both Rei's and Grandpa Souta's nostrils in their surprise, and the rest of the group looked similarly shocked – except, of course, for Jobs himself. He nodded and replied, "Of course. I can't have a former employer who's undoubtedly angry at me and disappointed in my performance knowing my identity. It behooves me to see him eliminated."

"You're a real altruist, Jobs," the redhead drawled. "Just to make one thing clear, though. You blackmail any of us after this is done, we're going with the plan Makoto and I originally had to interrogate you. I'd need to go down to the Scarlet Monastery and get the recipe for their bull testicles, but you catch my drift."

"Inescapably."

"Great. Welcome aboard."