Lyla wished she could say that the walk to the lab had been uneventful. Unfortunately, Reno had found it absolutely necessary to hover over her as they went, leaning in far too close to inspect her handiwork as she input the codes to unlock the doors to the facility, following closely behind as she lead them towards the corridor that would take them to the second floor. The sentries had been disposed of easily, all automated, nothing sentient, nothing that bled, just quick, clean disposals of the machinery. Lyla had taken the opportunity to stand back and allow Reno and Rude to do most of the sentry-cleanup, but now she was beginning to wish she had let them know she was armed.
"Whatcha doing?" Reno asked for the fiftieth time, peering intently over her shoulder as she paused in the middle of putting in yet another access code, closing her eyes and letting out a long, slow exhale of breath, squaring her shoulders.
"Reno. Take a step back or suffer an atomic wedgie."
Reno leaned back - not quite as obedient as Lyla might have liked, but a start - and smiled. "A technical term?" he suggested.
"A prelude to what will follow."
Rude resisted the urge to sigh. Not that he wasn't entertained, himself. But it would ruin his day if the redhead got himself killed. He turned his gaze elsewhere, searching the immediate area for anything that might be on par with the coming storm- or at least in the general vicinity.
Otherwise the assistant's building rage might have it covered.
That was when the movement caught his eye.
Rude held up one hand.
Reno caught sight of Rude's hand out of the corner of his eye - it was enough to make him take a step back from breathing down Lyla's neck so that he could look over and raise his right arm to point at his partner. "Question, Rude?"
Without a word, the large man used the other hand to gesture down the corridor. "...Movement."
Lyla looked up from the control panel she had posted herself at. "We'll investigate and dispatch if necessary," she said evenly. "Did you get enough a glimpse to guess what it might be?"
"..." Rude glanced at his partner, flat line of his lips turning down into a frown.
The smirk left Reno's face then, the demeanor of a bothersome child fading as he fluidly slid his nightstick from its place at his belt. "Human," he confirmed, and something else tugged at his lips then - not quite a smirk, not quite a smile, but something far more predatory than pleased. "Let's see who else is snooping around, shall we?"
Lyla stepped forward, briefly laying a hand on Reno's forearm and removing it as she passed to join Rude. "Questions, then shoot," she said quietly. "Not the other way around."
Rude nodded, slouching a bit as he whipped the corner, drawing his body in for a possible strike.
The movement- all flashes of black and white from behind, froze very still as the duo followed behind.
"Identify yourself," Lyla instructed the body down the hall, frowning slightly as she reached for something inside her coat.
The man, because when it turned, it was a man. Or man shaped, if nothing else. Was tall and lean, his frame wirey lank and broad shouldered. He tilted his head down to look them over, eyes hidden by the unfortunate shift of the dark.
He was almost a painting in monochrome, difficult to distinguish from the wall behind him and the reaching shadows. His hair was dark, damp. But tied back in a high tail that dragged it from his deathly pale shoulders. He spread his hands, wide mouth pulling apart in a toothy grin.
Lyla stood still, studying him from a distance as she surfaced with a small device that switched on with a faint beep. She glanced upward at Rude, doing so at the expense of her neck as he towered over her even when they weren't standing mere inches apart. "Identify yourself," she repeated evenly. "Present your ID card."
Reno had joined them by now, leaning so that his head poked between the two of them. "Maybe he's deaf," he reasoned sagely.
"Lady." The man across the hall said, hands still raised. "I don't even have a shirt on. Where do you think I'm going to -put- an ID card? In these pants?" His grin hitched higher. "Nuh uh."
"You would sew it into your skin if you had to," Lyla replied calmly. "Hard to get by without one." She paused, a beat of silence as she looked him over once more. "... are you one of the Professor's samples?"
He arched a brow, the comment about locating it in his handy, genetically engineered kangaroo-pouch lost with the second question.
"Is... yes, the right answer?"
Rude frowned at Reno.
Lyla sighed, looking to both men before gesturing down the corridor. "Feel free to apprehend him. I'll download the last of the files, we can take him back to the Professor and sort things out there. And-" she went on, pointing sharply at Reno. Her finger normally would have landed about chest-high, though now it was just shy of his nose, thanks to his being bent over. "Be gentle, if you can."
"Yes ma'am, we all know how you love the little animals," Reno replied dryly, drawing up to his full height and giving his nightstick a twirl. "Sir. Accompany us, if you would. Our benevolent lab aid will make sure no harm comes to you." He smirked.
"Not a lab aid," Lyla grumbled as she turned her back to him, her attention on the console she had abandoned previously.
The pale man looked the pair of them over, then the ceiling, before fixing Reno with what was probably a squint-eyed look. "Somehow." He huffed. "I don't think I'm inclined to trust you, very much."
Rude smirked, setting his weight for the imminent fight.
"Hey. I hate to interrupt the three musketeers. But where exactly are we? Would you mind being specific?"
Reno smiled, pointing at the man to direct his attention to himself. "You're here. Don't you know?" he asked, the last of his words lilting upwards.
"Much of the equipment here is malfunctioning. I thought we had already extracted all of the live samples, but it's possible we missed him. If his pod has broken and he's walking freely, it's likely he's disoriented. Explain to him," Lyla suggested, eyes narrowed as she used her index finger to navigate the menu that had spread across the console's screen. A few more minutes and they would have gleaned everything useful from this place.
Reno slid one eye closed. "Could have told him yourself, after all that. This is a research facility belonging to Shinra, Inc. Currently abandoned. We're cleaning house," he supplied, smiling again.
At the end of the hall, the man turned away from them again, muttering quietly to himself. "Shinra." he said thoughtfully, eyeing the state of the paneling above them. "Shinra. Hm." He paused then, leaning back in a bend that shouldn't have been physically possible without a great deal of training, blinking at them upside down. "So that would make you lot, Shinra, Inc. employees, hmm?" He considered this, straightening up again. "Big company." He said absently.
"We run the world," Reno offered casually, taking two steps forward. "Or most of what's in it, at least. And our resident nerd here seems to think we created you," he went on, using his nightstick to point at the man in question. "Must have been in that tube a long time for Shinra to be hazy, my friend."
Reno's statement was rewarded with a lazy two-fingered salute. "Or forever? You lot do from the ground up, doncha?" The lilt of the question was strange, almost as if the answer didn't matter. Carefully, experimentally, he lay open palms on the wall in front of him.
Choices, choices. Run away like a sissy girl? Stay and fight? Go?
Should he... go with?
"Indeed." Reno beat the nightstick just once against the palm of his opposite hand before spreading it wide as though to show he meant no harm, sliding his weapon back into place at his belt. "No one will harm you. This just isn't somewhere you want to be, buddy. I'm sure all bossy britches wants to do is give you a little medical attention and ask some questions before sending you on your way." Behind him, Lyla snorted.
Hm. On the other hand, medical attention could suck.
"I don't think I'm anywhere she wants to be, either." The lank man grinned over his shoulder. "Between the two of us. Maybe you could just point me towards the door?"
Hey. It was worth a shot, right?
"See, the trouble with that is if you try to run off on your own, my friend here comes out to play," Reno explained as though illustrating the consequences of delinquent behavior to a child. "And that would really just be unfortunate."
He sighed as though the world were a very difficult place, stepping away from the wall in a half circle that brought him closer to the wall. "So, that's a no on the door pointing." The alleged experiment noted, focusing his gaze on Rude as he neared him.
The large man looked back, squinting as the odd color caught his attention. "...No mako."
"Weird. Especially for one of Hojo's," Reno mused aloud, as he did far more often than was prudent. He smiled again as he advanced, falling into step with Rude. Behind him, Lyla had finished her business with the console and had turned her attention back to the situation in the hallway, moving so that she was close behind the pair of Turks as they got closer to the unidentified man.
"So, what do you do?" Reno asked conversationally. "Walk through walls? Fly? Have a freakishly photographic memory?"
There was a beat that passed between them, flavored in the complete silence of dumb shock. Then the dark man grinned, wide enough to flash flat, white teeth. "Yeah." He said. "Let's go with that."
Rude jerked forward as the black ate it's way up the line of his pale abdomen, seeping through every inch of white skin until he was soaked through. And then he was gone, disintegrated into the clinging darkness of the poorly lit corridor.
By the time Reno reached out to strike, there was nothing left to make contact with; he stumbled slightly as his nightstick cut through thin air, the momentum throwing him. "Fuck," he snarled, "Or he teleports."
"Thank you for tipping him off to his powers," Lyla said irately, squeezing between Reno and the wall in order to get past, stepping into the shadows without hesitation to squint and search for any sign of the man that had stood before them just moments earlier. "He might still be here if you hadn't. Do you realize how dangerous it is, letting one of Hojo's experiments run loose? Most of them were just grotesque at best, but by and large they were designed to be biological weapons."
Reno paused in buffing his nails against his lapel. "Were you lecturing me? I'm sorry, honey, I didn't care."
Rude frowned, lowering his fisticuffs. The thing could be anywhere, now. But it hadn't seemed interested in fighting.
No reason to let your guard down. But no reason to grow paranoid, either.
He checked his watch.
Lyla looked between the two of them, back and forth a number of times before heaving a sigh. "... we're finished here. Thank you for the help. Let's get back."
Behind them something flickered.
Well. It wasn't exactly convenient. But at least it was a quick way to find the exit.