Trapdoor (Part 10)

by anza (30.11.05)

"Good morning," Rufus Shinra addressed everyone from his customary chair at the head of the table. With a press of a button, the projector screen came droning down, revealing another extraordinarily boring computer presentation, complete with arcane pie graphs, flowery language and unintelligible blabble.

It wasn't that Rufus Shinra was stupid. It was that these were really just for show to competitors who hoped they would trip somewhere - which, as far as Shin-Ra Company was concerned, wouldn't happen as long as Sephiroth was around. Sephiroth, second-in-command to "Prince Rufus" (as the company nicknames went) ruled the others with an iron glove that twisted tighter and tighter until everyone did what he wanted. The Prince didn't care as long as he got the women and the money. As childhood playmates (or rather, bully and victim), Cloud was seventy percent sure Sephiroth had pulled some strings to get him to where he was. Yet he'd never seemed to want any favors from him. Cloud liked to think it casted a more generous slant on his second cousin.

To his right, one white headphone cord ran under Scarlet's (appropriately) red jacket and hooked over her ear. It was something angry and screaming, the kind Cloud snuck into Loz's room for when the company was really throwing shit at him. Across the table, Reeve was doing the daily newspaper crossword puzzle under the handouts they had been given earlier. Ogham, who had taken over Vincent's position when he left, was the only one sitting upright and listening attentively, though Cloud could already seeing those eyes glaze over, only awakening to jot something down. Tseng, a newcomer with some trumped-up position that Cloud himself wasn't sure of, seemed to be productively taking notes, until Cloud shifted a little higher and saw he was scribbling Wutaian vows of homicide in the margin of his handouts. Cloud himself was doodling a chocobo sitting on top of his messy hair.

Sephiroth, sitting diagonally from him, tapped his pencil, shot a look at Cloud's drawing, and raised one fine silver eyebrow.

The next drawing Cloud drew was a chibi Sephiroth, spouting fire like a dragon.

He took a moment to tap Scarlet's knee. When he was sure she was paying attention, he tapped his ear twice, then pointed a finger down. A moment later he heard the tinnying screams from her earphone lower into smurfy whispers. He gave a half-smile and turned his attention back to doodling, this time of Rufus Shinra running away screaming from Sephiroth carrying a sword almost as high as he was.

Hmm. Funny where his imagination was taking him today.

Glancing over at Tseng's paper, he almost chuckled at the vein of thought the other had taken. "...and then the devil shall be purged in the pit of fire of the Death Serpent's belly, but the evil will not subside...," Tseng's scribbling just got faster as Rufus' voice floated above all other distractions.

"...I'd like to thank Cloud for figuring out the confusion with the dishwashers earlier this week, it was really good of him to catch that mistake..." Cloud nodded wearily. The others gave him half-hearted congratulatory looks, then turned back to their perspective hobbies.

It felt, Cloud thought laughingly, much like high school.

Reeve was writing something near the top of his paper. "What's another word for 'depressed'?" was now scrawled messily, backwards, under the title "Minutes From Last Week". Cloud noticed his S's were backwards.

Instantly people perked. Suddenly everyone began scribbling. Rufus Shinra noted the flurry of activity with a smile and continued talking about something.

"crestfallen, sad, disappointed," wrote Scarlet.

"unhappy, dejected, rejected, melancholy, distressed," wrote Ogham. His bushy brow twitched into a smile, but a glance from Sephiroth stopped it from forming completely.

"woebegone," Cloud wrote, and a round of muffled snickers ran around the table. Reeve gave a nod and scribbled it in.

"What about an antonym for 'war'?"

"That shouldn't be that hard," Scarlet shot back.

"peace," came Ogham's tentative guess.

"Nah, it's longer. Eight letters," came the reply.

There was a long, puzzled silence over the table. Rufus Shinra seemed to take their gloom as response to the decline in television sales, and continued saying something.

Finally Tseng wrote one word at the top of his paper, the only English word he'd written so far. It read, "creation".

With a marveled look that mirrored all of the looks around the table, Reeve copied it in and gave a grin.

"Reeve, you wouldn't mind explaining why the hell the Development Board hasn't come up with anything new for the last three months, now would you? It would be nice to know where sixty-seven percent of our funding is going." Apparently the increduous look applied to the Prince as well.

Cloud almost grinned at the chagrined look on Reeve's face. "Nice going," he wrote at the top of his page, and gave Tseng as large a smile as watching a fellow executive get chewed out would allow.

The Wutaian didn't blink or change expression, but he returned in Wutaian at the top right of his paper, in tiny print, "Thank you."

"My previous employment had better food." Tseng slid a slice of reheated pizza across the table to rest in front of the seat opposite Cloud. With a nod of agreement, Cloud dug into Kadaj's chicken tetrazini with gusto. His heart sank when he thought about it - no more home-cooked meals once Kadaj was at university, three hours away. He didn't know how he could take it when the time came to return to the old instant ramen after having such good fare...

"And what would that be?" Cloud was curious. He was rather sure he had never seen Tseng speak more than five words in one sitting in the last four months he'd been in the Company.

A wry half-smile. "Chopstix." Chopstix was a well-known Wutaian fast food chain. "So at least I got to eat ethnic food every day, even if it'd been Continentalized beyond belief."

"At least it was rice." He was missing Kadaj's rice pilaf, the one they always got into fights over because they both liked two different types of mushrooms, and the damn brother wasn't even out of the house yet! Mentally Cloud ripped himself away from thinking about anything but Kadaj - Sephiroth, dancing on a barstool with Tifa agape on the side, Ogham dressed as an elf from a medieval novel shooting cupid arrows at unsuspecting victims, Reeve butt-naked singing a love song at the top of his lungs -

- yes, his imagination was definitely acting funny today.

"Cloud?" The name rolled strangely out of Tseng's mouth. Suddenly Cloud was sensing danger.

He finished dinner quickly and left. Something had spooked him, and it was distressing not knowing what it was. He had just rounded the corner when he ran smack into Sephiroth. Rubbing his forehead, he looked up and expected to be chewed about having chocobo-roosted hair again...

...but instead, out came this:

"Strife." Sephiroth's voice was tight. "Just the person I need to talk to."