Chapter Four

'Some people live more in twenty years than others do in eighty. It's not the time that matters, it's the person.'

'Oi, what's this?' Reno snapped, upon seeing Cloud in the bar that evening.

'Who,' Zack said, 'who's this. And you know Cloud; he's my best friend.'

Reno stared down at Cloud for a few moments without comprehension, and Cloud stared back from a position where it would be easy to jump behind Zack if the Turk decided to attack.

Cloud really, really missed being strong enough to fight.

'Oh yeah,' Reno said suddenly. 'The meat shield. Dude, we're not throwing materia at the animals in the zoo again, are we? Because I didn't bring anyone to protect me.'

'No, we're still banned from the zoo,' Zack said. 'Cloud wants to be our drinking buddy.'

There was a pause, over which time Zack and Reno peered at Cloud with sudden suspicion.

'How old are you, Cloud?' Zack said. Cloud hesitated.

'F-fourteen.'

Silence. Then, Zack sighed.

'Fine. No actual drinking for you.' He turned to Reno. 'First round's on you.'

Reno got up from their table and wandered over to the bar. Cloud, meanwhile, stared around the rest of the fancy lounge. Places like this in the Shinra building were usually packed with employees on a Friday evening. It was bizarre to see the place so quiet. There also, mysteriously, had been no guards anywhere in or around the building when he'd left the barracks to meet Zack at the bar. Cloud wondered if news had gotten out that Reno would be getting drunk, and everyone had fled.

'So, what games are we doing tonight?' Cloud asked eventually. Zack shrugged, but he was grinning.

'You'll see,' he said. 'I don't want to spoil anything.'

'Can we do that game in Hojo's lab?' Cloud pressed, trying very hard to keep his tone casual. 'That sounded… um… fun.'

Zack only tapped the side of his nose. Cloud took a deep breath and really, really hoped that meant 'yes'. He'd rather not have to wait for another month to get the information about Lucrecia. The longer he left it, the harder it was going to be to change anything. He needed to get started as soon as he could.

Reno returned at last, balancing three pints of beer in his arms. He dumped them all on the table and pushed them to their respective owners.

'Dude!' Zack said. 'It's only been like, five minutes. Cloud is still fourteen.'

Reno blinked.

'Oh yeah,' he said, and took a swig of his beer.

'So he can't drink,' Zack said a little more slowly. Reno stared.

'Why? Hasn't he learned yet?'

Zack pressed a hand to his forehead, gulped down the entirety of his drink in one go, and then took Cloud's. As he began to drink that one more slowly, Reno leaned over and whispered conspiringly to Cloud,

'Don't worry, yo. We'll teach you. It's really easy: way easier than eating.'

Cloud sat back and wished fervently that Zack hadn't stolen his drink after all.

They were there for several hours, just talking and getting drunk. The first hour or so consisted of Reno repeatedly buying Cloud drinks and Zack repeatedly drinking them for him. When Zack got too drunk to care whether Cloud was underage or not, Cloud started slipping the booze to Reno to even things out – as much as he'd rather not have to be sober around a plastered Turk, he knew he needed to be clear-headed to sneak through Hojo's files. Reno didn't seem to notice that his beer was multiplying.

It was past midnight when Reno got up and announced,

'Have I got a surprise for you!'

He lurched out, and lurched back in again a few minutes later with a bright yellow chocobo. Cloud looked to the bar, but the barkeeper wasn't there anymore and the metal grill had been pulled down to protect the booze.

'What… what do you have a chocobo for?' he asked. 'Where were you keeping it?'

Reno didn't answer him.

'I could only get the one, so we can't race,' he said, 'but we can do other stuff.'

'We haven't got Lazard yet,' Zack said, slurring just a little. It took a lot of alcohol to get a SOLDIER drunk, but he had worked hard and risen to the challenge. He snickered. 'The look on his face…'

The pair of them got up and left the bar, pulling the chocobo behind them. It plodded along happily as Reno tugged on its leash.

'What are we doing?' Cloud asked, but Zack only shushed him.

They snuck up the stairs and got out on Floor 51 – the SOLDIER floor. Cloud patted the chocobo's neck as they tip-toed down the corridor towards Lazard's office, to comfort himself as much as the bird, which seemed to be taking things very well so far. Just as Zack put his hand on the door marked Director Lazard, there was a creak from one of the rooms behind them.

Zack froze, and after a moment hissed,

'Oh, shit!'

Cloud and Reno looked at him, the first with terror and the second with distrust.

'What?' Reno said.

'It's Friday.'

'So…?'

'Sephiroth works late on a—'

'What are you doing?'

As one, the three of them turned around to face a mightily annoyed SOLDIER, First Class. Cloud tried to duck behind the chocobo, which started pecking at the floor.

Zack said,

'Um,' but stopped when Sephiroth pointed at him.

'No,' he said. He pointed at Cloud, and then Reno. 'No. No.'

Three blank faces gazed back at him. The chocobo ruffled its feathers and squatted down on the floor to rest. Sephiroth lifted his arms up in a gesture of surrender.

'There. I have told you not to do it. I don't know what you're doing, but I've told you not to do it. I wash my hands of whatever happens to you now.'

He turned and walked back into his office, slamming the door quite firmly behind him. Cloud thought he heard a lock click.

'Huh,' Zack said, and opened Lazard's office door.

Most of the cabinets were locked, but that didn't stop Zack and Reno. They picked one out that was 'big enough' within a few seconds, and a few minutes of Reno drunkenly fumbling with the lock and a length of wire had it open.

It took twice that long to get the chocobo inside, although that was probably because Cloud did nothing but stand next to the door with his mouth open, and Reno and Zack were giggling for most of the time about what Lazard's reaction would be in the morning. Finally, they managed to coax the bird into the cabinet, shut and lock the door behind it.

Zack flopped back against a desk. Reno stood proudly to admire the closed door, choosing to ignore the feeble cawing sounds coming from behind it.

'So… to Hojo's now?' Cloud said quietly, hopefully. The other two looked at him like he was mad.

'What? No. We've got shit to do before we knock ourselves out,' Reno said. Cloud slumped. Of course; the effects of eating things in Hojo's lab were bound to be enough to finish off a night out. As far as the other two were concerned, it would have to be the last thing they did.

'Now it's my turn!' Zack said, and cheerfully led the way back out of the office. They went quietly past Sephiroth's office door, because the soft, high sounds of a blade being sharpened were resonating from inside.

Zack took them all the way back downstairs to Weapons Development. He had a duffle bag waiting for them there.

'What's ins—' Cloud began, but then Zack opened the bag and he wished he hadn't asked.

It actually took a moment to recognise the bizarre-looking items Zack had packed in there. They came in various colours and materials, some knobbly and some smooth, several sporting weird extensions from one end or the other. All of them were between five and ten inches long, and about three inches thick.

Cloud felt the blood rush to his face, and his dignity rush somewhere far, far away.

'Are those…?'

'Dildos!' Zack said, picking one out and flicking it on. It started doing a strange, wiggly dance. 'Cool, aren't they?'

None of them even slightly resembled any part of the human anatomy. It was difficult to imagine how most of them worked, let alone where they went. Cloud pressed a hand to his mouth. He wasn't sure whether he was about to scream or laugh hysterically but he thought it was best to stop himself either way.

'How many do you have?' he said eventually, turning his gaze to the seemingly endless depths of the duffle bag.

'Sixty-nine,' Zack said, far too proudly. Cloud caught the significance of the number and grimaced. 'What we're going to do is – Reno don't put it in your mouth, trust me – what we're going to do is hide them around all of Scarlet's weapons, and then, then we'll tell her there's been a security breach so she has to check her room over. Then we can see how well she knows her own weapons.'

'Dude, we've done this one before,' Reno said, deeply unimpressed with the multi-pronged, buzzing gadget he was holding.

'Ah,' Zack held up a finger, 'but do you remember what happened last time?'

'Scarlet found 'em all.'

'And we said…'

Reno remembered, and sniggered.

'She'd probably kept them for herself, because we never saw them again.'

'Well, that would have been terrible,' Zack said, with profound misery. 'Because those dildos she found last time; they were evidence. Evidence of a malicious raid on Shinra property. It could have been terrorists that left those dildos.'

Cloud had to agree that the dildos were pretty terrifying.

'So, this time we shall catch her in the act! This time I have cunningly covered the vibrators in chilli powder,' Zack's grin bordered on manic. 'If she takes a day off tomorrow, we know she used them.'

They took their time hiding the dildos around the room. Cloud was forced to admit that, with their outlandish designs, the high tech sex toys were surprisingly indistinguishable from Scarlet's (equally bizarre) weapons designs. If she had found them all last time, she either really knew her weapons, or really knew her vibrators.

For his peace of mind, he hoped it was the former.

When all sixty-nine of the dildos were meticulously hidden around the room, Zack picked up the phone on Scarlet's desk and called the speed-dial number for her suite upstairs.

'Hello?' he said, putting on a much deeper voice than he usually used. 'Yes. Yes, this is Shinra Security. I know. There's been a security breach in Weapon's Development. We can't see anything amiss ourselves—'

Reno squawked with laughter.

'—But we highly recommend you come and examine the evidence yourself. I know it's late, madam, but justice doesn't sleep. Good night.'

He put the phone down.

'She's coming!' he said. 'Cheese it!'

They ran out of the door and got halfway up to the next floor before Zack realised that a) he'd left the duffle bag in Weapon's Development and it had his name on it and, b) Scarlet's suite was upstairs, so they'd only run into her if they kept going up. They fled back down again, retrieved the duffle bag, and hid for a while on the floor below. Zack pulled several beer bottles out of the duffle bag and they started to drink to the musical sounds of a sleepy Scarlet cursing upstairs.

They stopped drinking promptly when they realised that some of the chilli powder had rubbed off on the beer bottles.

'Okay,' Zack said, around slightly swollen lips, when Scarlet's colourful swearing upstairs had quieted down and their mouths had stopped burning. 'I think the new kid has earned the right to prove his mettle in a real man challenge of manliness.'

'To Hojo's lab?' Cloud asked tiredly, not really believing that they would say yes by now. There were plenty more Shinra employees to prank.

'To Hojo's lab, for the most stomach-burstingly awesome experience of your life,' Zack promised. Cloud nodded, relieved, and followed them up to Floor 67.

The doors were, unsurprisingly, locked tight. Reno happily started stripping. Zack produced a bottle of sunflower oil from his duffle bag, which Cloud was starting to suspect could hold all the secrets of the universe if only Zack wanted it to. When Reno was suitably greasy, he pulled the grate off of the air conditioning vents (fingers slipping on the bars) and squelched his way in.

I'm going to save the world, Cloud thought, pointedly looking anywhere but Reno's oiled backside as it retreated through the shaft. This is going to be worth it.

After a few moments there was a thump behind the door. Reno could be heard cursing, voice getting progressively louder as he came up closer to the door and opened it from the inside.

'Damn man, next time you can go through the air duct,' he said.

'I'm too big. You need someone without muscles.'

They both turned to Cloud for a moment, who suddenly found the floor between his feet incredibly fascinating.

'Well, we're in now,' Zack said cheerfully, sweeping an arm around Cloud's shoulders and pulling him forwards. Reno made absolutely no effort to reclaim his clothes, but hopped up on a desk and sat back.

'Rules of Hojo's Lab Eating Contest for Manly Men are as follows:' Zack announced, 'you must consume something in this room. You may not consume something that you have brought with you; that's cheating and cheating is not for manly men. Extra points will be awarded for consuming more than one item provided you are not the first to go out. The winner will be the last man to puke, pass out or transform into a monster.'

'Or spontaneously combust,' Reno added helpfully.

'Or spontaneously combust,' Zack agreed. 'Ready? Go!'

He and Reno ran to opposite ends of the room and started searching through all of the drawers and work stations for something that looked dangerous enough. Cloud watched them for a moment, and then sidled up to a computer and turned it on.

It booted up without asking for a password. Hojo must have thought the lock on the door was enough to keep snoopers out. Cloud glanced around and saw that his companions were still too involved in their search for something small enough to swallow and only almost deadly to care what he was up to. He sat down and started tapping at the keyboard.

Search: Lucrecia

He waited for a moment while the screen loaded, tapping his foot under the desk. Somewhere behind him, Reno made a sound of triumph Zack whined,

'I wanted one of those…'

It finished loading.

Sorry, no results to display.

Cloud just sat there for a moment, reading the words again and again with a blank expression. They obviously didn't mean what he'd thought they meant the first time, because if they meant that, this adventure had been pointless, and if he'd gone through this whole debacle for nothing…

He slumped in his chair. Hojo hadn't kept any digital records of Lucrecia. Perhaps there had been paper copies, but he could be hiding those anywhere. They weren't in the libraries in the Shinra building; Cloud had seen those, in the future. If they weren't around then, he doubted they would be now, when Sephiroth was still alive and likely to find them.

That said, he knew he'd be traipsing up to the library at the next opportunity to check, just in case. It was on one of the higher levels, so he'd need to convince Zack to bring him up there sometime with his privileged keycard access.

Cloud glanced back at Zack and Reno. The former was studying some beakers of different coloured liquids, the latter tossing something squishy from hand-to-hand. He turned back to the computer and started typing again.

Search: Jenova

Reams of files came up, but a quick scan through their titles told him nothing that Sephiroth wouldn't already know. It was all the information that Hojo had gotten wrong: Jenova was an Ancient, Jenova was the perfect weapon, Jenova could be used to help the world and better science…

It would take days to go through all of this properly, and he didn't have days. He checked his watch. It was four-thirty-five in the morning, and he was beyond exhausted; he could feel his eyes aching and his muscles sagging. Pulling all-nighters was not easy on a fourteen-year-old body. In an hour and a half it would be considered 'morning' enough for early birds to be getting out of bed. If any of them lived in the Shinra building, and worked in the science department, they could be here in this room perhaps half an hour after that.

He had a little less than two hours to read everything Hojo had ever written about Jenova, pick out anything that might help to convince Sephiroth that he was not an Ancient, and then run and hide in the barracks so that he could be 'woken up' for work the next day.

He groaned and buried his hands in his hair. This had been a terrible idea.

It became even more terrible when Reno suddenly said,

'Yo, Cloud, you picked what you're eating yet?'

Cloud looked up, saw the things that Reno and Zack had picked out to eat (a squishy object that might have been kind of fungus and a beaker of blue liquid respectively), and panicked slightly. He glanced around, saw a half-eaten sandwich on the desk next to him and picked that up.

'Yep,' he said.

Nobody said anything, and after a second or two Cloud recognised the expressions of Zack and Reno's faces. It was the expression people got when they were told that someone they knew had died in a really horrible way.

'Dude, I wouldn't,' Reno said, pointing at the sandwich. Cloud stared at the moist thing in Reno's hand. It was wriggling.

'Why not?' he said. 'Not manly enough?'

'Cloud,' Zack said in long-suffering tone, 'when the eggheads realised we were pissing about in here, they started leaving normal food out to poison us. A sandwich left in here will melt your skin off and turn your insides out.'

Cloud dropped the sandwich and checked the palms of his hands. Nothing was melting.

Then something else dawned on him.

'The… the scientists know we're in here?' he said.

'Sure,' Zack shrugged. 'They lock all their important stuff away so we can't get it; we don't piss them off that much.'

'They know we're in here, and they know what we're doing?' Cloud said, feeling dread tickle his back.

'Yeah,' Zack said. 'What's the proble—'

Cloud yelled in surprise as something hit his neck. He pulled the dart out, and then saw another hit Zack. He hit the ground hard and was out cold so fast he didn't get to see who'd attacked.