No upgrades; to change one's orders; a mop is no joke; an email to action;
what fourth airship?; bargaining chips.
The door of the pilot's lounge swung shut behind the hotshot, leaving Cid staring. How in the hell did he know whether Darill had wrong coordinates? Haze was a punk-nose brat, but not a prankster. The kid had been wild-eyed and sweating, on the verge of freaking out. Clearly, he believed his own claims.
Cid dropped the dart he'd been holding onto a table as the other pilots chattered excitedly around him. Flipping open his PHS, he dialed his friend. He was already hearing the damn annoying dit d-dit d-dit d-dit static before remembering Darill couldn't take calls while aboard the Falcon. The wavelengths of information used by cell towers and PHSes wrought havoc on the oldest airship's measurements and equipment, making them get false readings and jump about. Engineering updated it as they could, but they didn't have the time, gil or parts to fully bring the ship up to the new standards. Nearly everything they got went to the war and new equipment. That was the Shinra ethos - ignore what was already done and move ahead at any cost. It was a philosophy that, until recently, had always suited him fine.
Darill had left a while ago. By now, she was probably too far out for the local radio towers to reach her. If she was heading for Wutai, then she'd take the northern route to avoid having to get over the Nibel mountain range, which meant she'd be out of reach of Junon's towers too. Rutting fantastic.
Tapping his PHS against his chin, he figured he'd have to take the Highwind and catch up to her. He pressed the command that would scramble his crew and sent a quick text to Marcus asking for Darill's correct destination coordinates.
"Right, I'm going after her," he announced to the room in general, speaking loudly to be heard over the noise the other pilots were making. Folks tried talking to him as he passed but he didn't pay them much mind. If he was going to catch up to her, he didn't have time for yacking. As the door to the place closed behind him, he heard someone yell "Good luck!"
Out in the unyielding heat and halfway to the Highwind, he ran into Setzer, more than likely on his way to the cantina to cool off.
"And where are you off to in such heat?" the other captain asked, emphasizing his point by wiping some sweat off his forehead.
"Your partner's got herself into trouble," he said gruffly, not bothering to slow his long-legged strides.
Alarm and curiosity flashed across Setzer's face as he fell into quick step beside him. "She hasn't called," he said, checking his PHS.
"Haze burst into the cantina like a zemzelett with a head-hunter after it. Said she was headed straight for a Wutai gun encampment."
Setzer's easy manner dropped, lips tightening, brows coming together. He punched a number and put the phone to his ear.
"Don't bother, ya know she'll have it turned off."
"You never know until you try." Setzer waited, listening a moment, then sighed, shoulders dropping, and slipped the device back into his coat pocket. "Out of luck. So, where are we going?"
"To catch up to her!" he barked. "Highwind's the fastest ship we got."
"Ah." Setzer raised an eyebrow, tilting his head to look at him sideways. "Fast enough to lead you straight into a court-martial?"
He stopped dead, turning on his friend. "What?"
Setzer kept walking for a beat, then turned and stood with his arms crossed. Concern and faintly superior exasperation twisted his mouth. "Are you or are you not taking the President to Junon this evening?"
"Fuck." He ran a hand through his hair. "But we got to do something and the Blackjack ain't fast enough." The two older airships were a match for speed, but the Falcon had a several hour head start.
They stood for a moment, racking their brains for a plan while heat haze sizzled around them. A bead of sweat dripped off his jaw.
"How about this," Setzer started slowly, beginning to walk, "we change the itinerary. I'll take the President, you go after Darill."
Cid's first instinct was to say yes and damn the consequences. Darill's safety was worth any price. But there was this voice in the back of his head - pragmatic, focused. He'd heard it for as long as he could remember. It said that he didn't know Darill actually was in any danger. It reminded him of the rumors about Brarrow, the little town where the rocket lab was, that there were big changes coming and he had a shot at being part of them. Listening to that little voice had cost him a lot of friends, a few sweethearts, and a lot of peace, but it'd got him further in life than anything else.
He grit his teeth. Consequences. "We'll need Palmer's signature to make any changes to the President's schedule and you know that lardass won't sign." Palmer was a roach-dribbling kissass and the Highwind was the flagship. Getting him to assign the Blackjack to the President instead would be impossible.
"Of course not." Setzer flicked his hand, dismissing the notion. "That's why we sneak into his office, use his stationery and seal, and simply forge his signature on your new orders to retrieve the Falcon and mine to escort the President." His voice got louder as they approached the Highwind, the airship's rotors already turning.
"Ya can do that?" Cid shouted over the noise.
"We can. We're doing this together. This way if I get caught, I can blame you." Setzer gave him a mocking smile.
Cid grinned back. "Bastard."
The Blackjack's captain waved off the insult as they strode up the Highwind's ramp. On the bridge, Cid grabbed up the airship's intercom. "All right, y'all, we're heading for Midgar and then Wutai. Double time, folks!"
"Sir." His first lieutenant, Reyes, approached. "Not everyone's on board yet."
"Anybody vital missin'?"
"Only Marcel and Wendell, sir."
An engineer and an air technician. "Have Nida cover for Marcel. And Levy's a mechanic - they're on board, right?"
"Yessir."
"Good, they can do for Wendell." Levy at least would have some idea of what they were supposed to do and enough common sense to not muck things up.
"We're on a rescue mission, folks, so we need to fuckin' move it!" he shouted to the bridge in general.
People rushed to their stations and in a few short minutes, the Highwind took to the sky. The first flight to Midgar was short, the city only being a few miles away, but in that time Cid spotted a few issues with Setzer's plan. He motioned his friend over and pointed them out in low tones.
"What if Palmer's in there?"
Setzer replied flippantly. "Oh, don't worry, he never is."
His brow creased and he stared hard at his friend. "Yer damn certain of that?"
"With full confidence. There's a movie premiere tonight, some war film Palmer helped finance. According to rumor, he may have diverted those funds from our budget." There was a sneer in the pilot's voice. "The point is, he'll be out of the office all day getting ready."
"Grubby-fingered buzzard." They put in all the work while he screwed them over and then played around. "It's a lucky break for us though."
Setzer rolled his eyes. "Not really. He uses every excuse he can to get out of any real work. There are days he's called in ill simply because, and I quote, 'his morning coffee was brewed incorrectly and he would be unable to focus'."
He gave his friend a quizzical look. "You sure know a lot about his schedule."
A sly smile crept across the man's face. "I am no virgin to changing orders. Haven't you noticed Darill and I always have the same days off?"
Cid wanted to laugh. So that's how they fucking did it! He'd wondered a hundred times why the two airship pilots' schedules lucked into matching up so often. "If you're so used to doing this, then why the hell do you need me there?"
His friend gave him a pitying look. "Because," he stated slowly, emphasizing his words, "Darill usually assists me. One of us needs to stand guard and stall anyone who may try to enter the office."
At this point they reached Midgar, and after Cid navigated them around all the construction cranes set up by Urban Development (place was like a fucking forest with them popping up everywhere), they came in low to line up with the central building. Already helicopters were moving out of their way, clearing a pad so they could let a ramp down.
Cid brought the airship to a rest and spoke to his crew. "Right, y'all stay put, we'll be moving off in a sec."
The two captains hurried across the airpad to the elevator, waving their keycards through the scanner and hitting the button for the executive office floor. Cid knew from past visits that the elevator ride was smooth, so the jangling in his limbs had to be pure nervous tension. He flexed his hands, working the knots out. "While you're standin' guard, what do I need to know to change the damn order?"
"Nothing." Setzer was busy examining his reflection in the dark glass wall, fixing the lines of his windswept coat and hair. "You are the one standing watch."
He tensed, voice rising. "Like hell I am."
Giving a final tug to his cuffs, his friend smiled. "In fact, you are. I've done this before, you have not. Door's opening. Act normal."
Setzer strolled off the elevator with all the grace and ease of someone who naturally belonged on a floor housing the offices of the most powerful people on the planet. Cid stomped along behind him. Down the lushly carpeted hall, past marble columns and doors with real gold placards stating their inhabitants' names until they came to the one labeled as Palmer's.
With no preamble, Setzer opened the door, walked right in, and sat down at the desk. Cid wasn't even surprised by his brazen display of confidence when breaking into their department head's office.
"Stop standing in the doorway."
"Yeah, but..." Setzer could fit in anywhere, equally at home up here with the gilded stationery and office bars as he was in on the airfield or in a sleazy pub. Cid looked and talked like the rough sod he was. He didn't like all this underhanded stuff, not least because he wasn't any fucking good at it. He sorta wished he'd kept his damn captain's coat instead of throwing it away. It would've lent him a little touch of class.
"Fiddle with your PHS. Look as though you're waiting to meet Palmer, but he's late, as usual." He was nodded out of the office, Setzer's hands already holding paperwork pulled from a drawer.
"Fine, whatever, just hurry up." He closed the door and leaned against it, pretending to look at his phone. Fuck the whole shitty system for being so corrupt and fucked-up. If it worked properly, they'd've checked the coordinates before handing them out, not force people to jump through hoops fixing them. And department gil wouldn't be spent on blithering brainless tinsel movies.
There was a squeaking noise coming down the corridor. Cid's head snapped toward it. A janitor came round the corner, pushing a cart. Three of the wheels were nearly noiseless on the thick carpet, but the fourth was loose, whining in its socket. Cid sighed through his nose, trying to get rid of the spike of nervous tension, and nodded. The guy smiled and greeted him, "Captain Highwind", before rolling on past. Cid stared after him. So even janitors knew who he was?
It was odd seeing one at this hour, it wasn't that late. Must have wanted an early start. Or maybe some glitter-hound pretending to be an important paper-pusher had made a mess of their office. All of Shinra's upper brass were miserable slackers and the executives weren't much better. He mentally caught himself. He'd never liked the higher levels, but he wasn't usually this much of a goddamn sourpuss about it. That damn kid's belly-achin' was rubbing off on him.
He went back to staring at the phone's blank screen until the door behind him abruptly opened and he nearly fell backward into the room.
"Well, we're almost finished. Apparently, since we're dealing with the President's schedule, we need Heidegger's signature as well." Setzer was already moving back down the hall and Cid had to lengthen his stride to catch up.
Setzer stopped in front of another closed door, giving it a solid knock. Getting no answer, he went inside. Cid leaned with a thump against this door as well. Nothing could ever be fucking easy, could it. In his mind, he could hear his ma telling him that anything worth doing was goin' to be damn difficult.
A man in a neat suit walked past him with a curious glance. He gave him a grumpy nod. Thankfully the guy didn't stop. Good, he didn't have a fucking clue what he'd say if the man had asked why he was here. Well, except for "It's none of your damn business."
Air-conditioning rattled and fluorescent lights hummed. The whole place felt stale and artificial. Even the potted plants in the hall corners were fake. The janitor returned from down the hall without his cart, then came by again a minute later with a bucket of soapy water. Damn it, what was taking Setzer so long?
Right when he was about to check, Heidegger came down the hall from the elevators. "Motherfucker," Cid groaned, and kicked at the door with his heel, warning Setzer. The burly man wearing more medals than he'd earned bristled when he saw Cid standing at his door.
"What is a pilot doing here?"
Muscles jumped in Cid's jaw. Who the hell did this asshole think he was, saying 'pilot' the same way someone might say 'street beggar'? Didn't he see Cid's captain uniform and patches?
"Well?"
Cid blurted the first thing that came to mind. "Got orders to wait here."
"Whose orders?"
"Palmer's."
"That idiot. I don't need a pilot. Go do something useful."
Cid stalled. "Yeah, but my orders-"
"Don't matter." The large man roughly pushed him out of the way to get at the door, slamming Cid's shoulder into the jamb.
Cid saw red. Like hell he was going to let some sandbox general push him around.
Heidegger froze in the doorway. Setzer looked up from the desk, the metal edges of a seal-stamp still gleaming in his hand. The general roared, "Who the hell are you?!"
And like hell was he going to let Setzer get in trouble. Heidegger was still yelling as Cid grabbed the closest thing he could, this being a mop that the janitor, who'd come over to see the commotion, was holding. Cid swung as hard as he could, hitting Heidegger at the base of the skull with the solid pole. There was a loud crack and the man pitched forward into the office. He didn't get up.
The three men stood in silence for a moment before Setzer knelt next to the prone figure, carefully sliding his hand between Heidegger's coat collar and bristly beard. He waited for a moment, then pulled his hand away.
"Well, he's alive." He looked up to Cid. "What evil imp prompted you to go and do that? I could have talked our way out."
Cid, mop held loose in his hand, mumbled, "I ain't good with disrespect."
"Yes, I know. And now we have a bigger problem." They both slid their gazes to the janitor. The witness. The guy, however, didn't seem that upset. Shocked, yes, but upset, no.
He gave a stiff shrug when he noticed their measuring gazes. "I always wanted to do that. Man deserved it."
"Not a fan?" Setzer asked.
The janitor's smile was bitter. "Both my boys were killed in Wutai because of this man's bad orders."
Setzer nodded soberly, then looked up at Cid. "You'd better get out of here."
"But… I can't just ruttin' leave you with this."
His friend stood. "Someone still needs to warn Darill. Go."
"And thanks for this," the janitor gestured to the prone figure. "I'm a bigger fan of yours than I was before."
He stared between both men for a moment then turned and ran. He ran right to his spot behind the wheel of the Highwind, clutching at it like a lifeline. He was so fucking screwed. They all were. He considered telling his crew what was going on but decided against it. If they thought this was all aboveboard, the Company couldn't punish them for following his orders. He hoped, anyway, though that little voice in the back of his head knew better.
"Get us the fuck out of here," he roared, trying to cover his nerves.
Mechanically, he got his PHS out. Marcus had come through with the coordinates. His message also mentioned that they were trying, but so far failing, at getting in contact with the Falcon and wishing him luck in catching it. Cid tossed the device to one of the deck officers.
"Second set there is our coordinates."
No more than an hour out, every crew members' PHS chirped with a department-wide email. His palms were sweaty on the helm. This was it, a message branding he and Setzer as traitors, telling them to turn round and surrender. For the Falcon's sake, he couldn't. He knew that his crew's careers - if they followed him, and most would - would be over. Rotting hell, this day was turning out worse than trying to pilot a ship through a Nibel mountain pass, in a thunderstorm, after having eaten some bad Gongagan chili.
A gasp, then another. The murmuring started and the glances. Fuck it all, he'd have to say something. His first lieutenant turned to him.
"Sir," Reyes stated, "we'll follow you."
All the panic in his mind came to an abrupt stall. He'd figured they'd mostly go with him, but… that easily? "What?"
"We'll follow you. You've looked out for us, you handpicked a lot of us for this crew. All throughout this company, people have bought their way into positions, and we all know Palmer's the worst about it. You never let anyone get onto our crew or our ship that way." Reyes, not a big speechifier, looked increasingly embarrassed, but at the same time, increasingly determined to finish what he'd started. "You, Darill and Setzer - you've always done right by your crews. If the three of you are going for a strike, we're in."
There were murmurs of agreement around the deck.
"Reyes is right, we're not going to keep listening to Palmer!"
"He doesn't care about the department."
"We're not gonna lose the three of you."
The grumbles and nods were morphing into anxious energy, a sense of purpose that swept across the bridge. Some of the crew were already typing into their phones.
"Y'all could lose your jobs," he protested, mind still trying to catch up to what was unfolding. Strike? What strike?
"It's a risk we're willing to take," Reyes said, and nods and shouts of agreement accompanied him.
Reyes saw his captain was still not fully processing and offered him his PHS. "You really should read the email, sir."
It wasn't from the Turks or the Safety Department, like he'd feared, but from Setzer.
Subject: Call to Action From: Setzer Gabbiani
Into every person's life, there comes a time when they must reassess what they are striving for. I have reached that point today. I think many of you must also be close to that point. What, exactly, is our labor, our toil, achieving? I'll tell you this: our labor should not be enabling our department head to finance movies where he can take starlets on dates, while we fly into danger. Our labor should not be lining the pockets of one man while we struggle with outdated equipment and inadequate supplies. Our researchers are forced to beg for resources for their experiments. Our engineers are forced to reuse old parts again and again, keeping us aloft in increasingly worn-out machines. Our office staff are forced into a bottomless quagmire of paperwork as ever more work is shoveled onto our department, but no extra time or money or attempt to reduce the bureaucracy is offered. Our efforts should not enable one man to own beach houses in Costa del Sol and a penthouse in Midgar while we dwell in ramshackle apartments.
Today, I may lose the love of my life. You may lose friends, comrades, lovers. Captain Darill of the Falcon was given incorrect coordinates for a warzone mission, and we have been unable to reach her to deliver the correct coordinates. The difficulties of communicating with the Falcon have been known for years, and yet no money has ever been put aside to fix it. In the past, other crews and other craft have been lost to similarly callous negligence. Captain Cid and I undertook independent action to reach her, and in doing so, have placed ourselves at odds with Director Heidegger. At this juncture, I was forced to regard the hands that we had been dealt, and could only conclude that we are playing against a rigged deck.
I propose a gamble, friends: That we seize the levers of the machine, that we refuse to allow it to operate until we are heard and the cards reshuffled.
Cid grinned. That crazy son of a bitch. There were plenty of linked replies, more popping up every second. Some calling for a strike, others saying this was crazy, others asking for clarification. All in all, it was a bunch of chaos in text format. Then someone opened up the comlinks. PHSes started ringing and radios started crackling.
Administrative Research and Safety didn't stay unaware for long. They started with demands for Setzer and Cid to turn themselves in. Cid, feeling more secure in his path now that there was a fight to handle, answered their threats with insults. As the situation spiraled out of the Turks' control, deals, arguments, and bargains flew across the air. The momentum of simmering resentment at long last boiled over. Air and Space took flight.
If the chaos the department constantly labored in had taught them anything, it was how to move quickly and improvise. Their web of communication and contacts was alive with activity. Pilots - anyone who could fly at all, really - took off with almost all of Shinra's aircraft. Mechanics, researchers, and engineers absconded with all the tools, equipment and documents they could carry. Office workers vanished to reappear at pickup points established with the renegade pilots. Probably no other department could pull off such a quick and thorough mass exodus.
Still no reply from Darill. The knot that had formed in Setzer's gut hours ago kept tightening, making him ill. Between the fiasco in Midgar and instigating the strike he hadn't had time to linger on it, but as he flew for Brarrow, long hours in the open sky, the fear was creeping in. No one had been able to make contact with any of the Falcon's crew, the whole ship going dark while breaching the enemy territory of the island's interior.
The normal rush of flying into the unknown was absent. The Highwind had best live up to its promise of being the fastest.
The radio crackled. The Turks, at least, had stopped contacting him, though their silence was almost more unnerving than their threats. There were still plenty of people trying to reach he and his crew though, spitting venom, asking for advice, offering some of their own. Their voices were blurred and swallowed by the static of his anxiety. The air of the Blackjack's bridge crackled with tension. Everyone whose job didn't absolutely necessitate their presence elsewhere on the ship had crowded into the low-slung forward chamber to make themselves heard. Crew members argued over what concessions they should try exacting from the Company. Others were having second thoughts and insisted that they should go back to Shinra begging for forgiveness.
The janitor whose mop Cid had used to unthinkingly set off this mess sat with his back braced against a wall and looked up at him. Setzer couldn't have left the poor fellow in the lurch, of course.
The janitor gestured to the crew. "Are you going to say something to them?"
Setzer's throat was dry. He swallowed before he spoke. "It's too late to go back. At this point, we'll simply let the chips fall where they may."
A trill suddenly came from his coat pocket - the ringtone he'd set for Darill!
"My love! Are you alright?"
"I'm fine." Hearing her voice soothed his nerves immensely. He could hear a ripple of shushes spreading around him, the crew ceasing their bickering, allowing him to speak to the endangered ship's captain in peace.
"Though I'm curious. Since when does Cid Haze have an airship?"
The question left him flat-footed. Haze had an airship? He had been expecting Darill's inquiries to be something more along the lines of 'why all the fuss?'.
"Since never, as far as I know. But, more importantly, you have the wrong coordinates. I have the right ones here if you'd like them."
"I would, though I believe Haze plans to guide me."
"He really has an airship?" Now that he thought about it, he hadn't heard anything over the radio from the foul-mouthed young pilot. Considering how insubordinate he was, one would have expected him to be all over the airways.
"He does. It's... rather impressive."
"Tell him to come to Brarrow, I want to see this."
"Why are you in Brarrow?"
"Ah." Setzer considered his next words. "A lot has happened since you took off this morning. Cid and I may soon be court-martialed, Heidegger may be dead, and our whole department is on strike."
There was a long pause.
"And you're in Brarrow."
"About to be. We're claiming it as our base."
"Setzer, I am expecting a full report when I get there."
"Ah, my dear. I'm on strike, I don't have to give any reports… but I will tell you the whole sordid tale when you arrive."
She laughed, a sound he'd been worrying he'd never hear again. "Alright, sounds good. Coordinates now, please." Once he gave them, she disconnected.
There was one worry alleviated. Wondering about the 'rather impressive' mystery airship, he called the Highwind's captain and informed Cid he no longer had to head for Wutai, that Setzer had made contact with the Falcon. He opted, however, not to mention the fourth airship. They would be seeing it soon enough.
It had been three days since the department declared a strike, two since the Shera had preceded the Falcon to Brarrow. Darill was aggravated to find that, despite the tenseness of the situation, it was the second of those two events that preyed most heavily on her thoughts. Young hothead Cid Haze and his marvelous, unlikely ship had stopped at the sleepy town only long enough to be brought up to date on the general strike. A briefing that went in a singular, infuriating direction - from them to him. He ignored their questions about his airship and his plans, leaving with simply a promise that he'd have answers for them once Palmer was kicked out and Darill installed as Department Head.
She shook her head, an irritated smile twitching across her lips. She wasn't the only one miffed and mystified by the fourth airship, flown only by an engineer, a mechanic, and a pilot, the barest bones of a crew. All of the rogue employees sheltering in Brarrow were gossiping about it. It made a good distraction from the uncertainty they were all feeling. It was definitely a better thought exercise than the fears that had kept her awake the last few nights: SOLDIER deploying into the town; saboteurs planting bombs aboard the settled ships; being paraded through Midgar in a showy court-martial.
Those were only some of the threats that had been leveled against them across the radio waves. She and a handful of others - Setzer, Cid, Dr. Belfarre, and the Bunansas among them - had taken charge of the hundreds of renegade employees. Easy enough to do, with everyone unsettled and looking for direction. They had pilots running patrols of the surrounding prairie to ensure anyone approaching would be spotted in enough time for the department to take to the sky. Shinra only had a few helicopters left at its disposal. Not enough to bring in infantry, but enough for a handful of SOLDIERs, and just one of them could cause immense damage. Hopefully, it wouldn't come to that. Nearly the whole department was here. Surely, that alone was enough of a signal to Shinra that something had to change.
"Captain?" Marcus approached her on the Falcon's deck, her airship having become the unofficial headquarters for the strike.
"What's going on, Marcus?"
"There's a chopper approaching. Qator is on it."
Her eyes narrowed at the name. Qator was against the strike. If he was coming here now, it probably wasn't to join them.
"He's here to negotiate?"
"That's what he claims."
If this had been about something simple, higher wages for example, he might have had a chance. But it was a lot more than that. The company had been taking them for granted for too long. Palmer's neglect and abuse of the department had tipped the scales, and threatening the three airship pilots was the last straw. It was still faintly dazzling to Darill - how well-known and well-liked the three of them were. Their fan clubs had seemingly exploded out of nowhere, breaking through the stratified airfield cliques and compartmentalized nature of the Company, even reaching the public. Between that and the sheer amount of media coverage this unprecedented and extremely obvious strike was getting, Shinra couldn't simply sweep this under the rug.
"Alright. Thank you. Let him know we'll meet with him, and pass the word to Setzer and Cid to meet him where he lands." More than likely he'd have a Turk with him - a potential saboteur. Best to keep them away from the other aircraft.
She sent a few runners to gather people together. They needed to fill in the gaps where a helicopter could safely fit, forcing the new arrival to land on the outskirts where an eye could be kept on all its passengers. Darill, Setzer, Cid, Ines, Besrudio, and three of the Mog brothers walked out to meet them.
Her red coat flapped as she approached the helicopter settling on the prairie grass. Some of the grass actually ran away - a patch of mandragora scared off by the helicopter's noise. The door slid open. Qator, in his fancy new white captain's coat, stepped out.
"Darill!" he shouted in greeting over the noise.
"Qator. You're here for the Company."
"This strike business is nonsense." He met her steely gaze with his one good eye, face settling into an equally stern expression. "Let's go where we can talk properly."
"We can talk here." The noise didn't bother her, and she'd rather keep an eye on the helicopter's pilot and other passenger, both wearing the dark blue suits of the Administrative Research Department.
He frowned. "Darill, you're smart and adventurous, but I've never known you to be reckless. You're risking everyone's lives with this strike. Let me talk to the rest of the department." He looked over her shoulder to her small entourage, the other department members standing further behind, and raised his voice further. "All of you need to go back. The company is willing to overlook most of your transgressions."
Iosh, oldest of the Mog brothers, spoke up. "What about Cid and Setzer?" He gestured toward the men.
Qator's mouth turned down at the corners. "They are to turn themselves in."
There were frowns and angry mutterings in the group. Setzer shrugged. His calm voice was almost lost in the wind. "Only if the dice roll ill."
Cid lifted a one finger salute and didn't bother to stay sotto voce. "Go back and tell 'em I said to suck on a sewer line!"
Darill made a flat gesture with her hand, cutting off any further insults. "Qator, we aren't going back until things change." She could tell he was frustrated by the refusal. He followed orders no matter what and he expected others to do the same.
"The only reason you're on strike is that the department was infiltrated by terrorists. You've all been compromised and you don't even know it."
Haze's group, presumably. They'd been labeled terrorists? How desperate was Shinra feeling, to spin a story like that? "We aren't here because of them. It's because of how we're treated. If they helped the scales fall from our eyes, it's because what they were saying was true. If the Company really wants us back, it needs to act like it."
The noise meant she had to shout her answers. This wasn't really a conversation between the strike leaders and Qator, it was a public showdown, and everyone could hear. One of the Turks stepped up beside Qator as Darill finished. She was holding her long brown ponytail under control with one hand, but her blue suit flapped in the wind, the butt of her shotgun peaking over her shoulder. Both captains tensed at her presence but carried on.
"The company doesn't want you back, but in your selfishness, you've left people stranded all over Gaia. They need at least a few of you, and so they're willing to forgive the greater part of your renegades to bring a sufficient number back."
She knew that was true. It was their main bargaining chip. Without them, Shinra was vulnerable. She took a step forward, invading his space. "Who has your loyalty, Qator? The hard-working members of your department, or the man who steals from all of us?"
The Turk's brown eyes narrowed slightly, but she remained silent.
"Shinra is the only place this department can function. Who else has the-"
She cut him off. "This isn't about Shinra as a company. We've already made it clear that we'll still work for them if they meet our demand. We're not even asking for a bigger budget - we want the money that should be coming to us, but isn't. We want Palmer gone. When they need us, we'll be there - provided they give us a real say in how our department's run. We're through with his bullshit. Aren't you?"
They stared at each other. Darill didn't blink. Finally, finally, Qator relented. "Yes."
She tried not to smirk at the Turk's glower.
"Alright, Darill. I'll back you against Palmer for Department Head. But..." His mouth twisted as though he tasted something bitter. "Cid and Setzer put Heidegger into a coma. Even if he wakes up, he'll likely be paralyzed. They need to be handed over."
"No." Her response was automatic. That was not part of any deal she could make. Her eyes darted back to the Turk. The spy took the opportunity to smile smugly back.
If Qator had something to say to that blunt refusal, Besrudio beat him to speaking. "What's done is done. You can't go back and rewrite the past. Heidegger's gone, no matter what. If Darill's off to the Board, and Cid and Setzer are taken out, the company'd lose all three of its best pilots at one sweep. I believe Setzer and Cid are part of the deal to getting us back."
Shouts and cheers went up from the steadily increasing crowd. Another voice, one she couldn't place offhand, shouted out, "Those are our demands! Darill as department head, Setzer and Cid get pardoned!" The cheers redoubled.
Qator gazed over the assembled crewmen in silence. His mouth twitched suddenly, and he took two steps forward and turned to stand at Darill's shoulder, placing himself on their side. He nodded to the Turk. "It's what the department wants."
Having the whole department behind her bolstered her. She met the Turk's furious eyes head-on. "These are our demands. Meet them and we'll return to work."
Notes
Well, Shinra's Board is shrinking fast. Heidegger is out, Scarlet's dead, Palmer's grip on his job is tenuous, Hojo is off hiding in some secret lab, Reeve has a new agenda, Hollander - not part of the board but still a major player in the Science Department - is dead, and Veld is off chasing the group responsible. I wonder how President Shinra's feeling these days...