A/N: I know, this is the fourth chapter, and there's yet to be any major action or much sign of a plot. I promise that's going to change soon, as I've been trying to work on character development to the exclusion of all else, but I think I have their relationship where I need it for things to start happening - and things really do start happening beginning in this chapter. Thanks for being so patient as to read up to this point! Hope you enjoy it!

September 28

"You know, maybe you should consider taking that helmet off sometimes."

Kunsel glanced up from where he was meticulously cleaning and oiling his sword, and peered at the Turk through the slats in his helmet. She was sitting across from him at her office desk, frowning at the computer screen and not looking at him. The SOLDIER shrugged, leaning his blade against his chair, and sat back.

"It gives me a sense of security." Not that he hadn't thought plenty of times of taking it off, but safety and common sense had always won out. As did habit.

"You're in no danger here," Cissnei commented, eyes flicking between her keyboard and her screen.

"You know as well as I do that that's not true."

That got her attention away from whatever she was researching, and she leveled a flat stare at him. Three heartbeats passed as she sorted out her thoughts, then she answered carefully, "You know a lot for a warrior."

"Are brains and brawn mutually exclusive?"

"You get around a lot."

He tensed, expecting a comment on his late-night activities, but she glanced back at the computer for a second. Knowing it was probably the wrong thing to say, he replied, "Obviously, so do you; otherwise, why would they guard you this closely?"

She smiled, an expression that didn't reach her eyes. Time to deflect attention. "Back to my original inquiry: why not take off that ridiculous headpiece? You weren't assigned a combat mission. Unless you just like rubbing it in that you're on active duty and I'm not..." She really hadn't meant to say that last bit, but she supposed it couldn't do any real harm.

To her surprise, Kunsel reached up and swept the helmet off, dropping it on the floor next to his sword with a dull thud. She stared at his face, her eyebrows raised in surprise, although the rest of her expression was guarded.

He ran a hand through his sandy-orange hair, giving it some life from where it had been matted flat, and shrugged at her, smiling dryly. She was a Turk. And now she'd seen his face. She also knew his name, and where he lived and worked. There went security.

Kunsel met her stare, aqua-streaked brown eyes meeting hazel-brown, but she didn't seem fazed and instead continued her examination - as if she was memorizing his face. Now that was uncomfortable. He wondered if it would appear too suspicious if he slammed his helmet back on. But after a moment, she glanced away, her mouth twitching into a faint smile.

"What?"

"At least now I'll know it's you in there. Otherwise it could be any guy in a helmet following me around."

Kunsel grinned back. Cissnei could actually be pretty personable, once she opened up.

"You still don't know I'm actually the guy who was assigned to you."

"The fact that you know that someone was assigned to me proves that you were at the meeting, thus you must be Kunsel," she said, turning back to the screen.

Kunsel chuckled and resumed cleaning his sword for lack of anything more interesting or productive to do. Cissnei went back to glaring at her computer, punching buttons and obviously not being satisfied with the results. The SOLDIER glanced at his watch and noted that it had been three hours since they'd finished their awkward breakfast, three hours that he'd been sitting here, immobile, and bored out of his mind. He was so impatient to get a look at that data drive, but now that seemed like it would have to be postponed indefinitely.

"Scrub that thing any more, and there won't be much of it left."

He looked up to find the Turk watching him again. "You have any ideas of something more useful?"

She grimaced. "As a matter of fact...I might."

"What's the problem?"

Cissnei hesitated, frowning, then pushed back her chair and stared at him. He got that uncomfortable feeling again, like an insect under a microscope, so he grinned and casually leaned farther back in his chair. Cissnei couldn't help but smile back at him, although her next question was serious.

"Are you trustworthy?"

"Would you take my word for it?" he answered, surprised at this new turn.

For a moment, she paused still, then said, "Yes." She looked at him again, but it wasn't quite so analytical this time. "We both know enough to convict each other several times over. We might as well trust each other."

Kunsel nodded. "But usually trust comes after friendship, not before."

There was another moment of silence.

"Want to be friends, then?" Cissnei asked.

The orange-haired SOLDIER smiled again, this time with genuine humor. "With my personality, I figured that would probably be inevitable. In time, anyway."

He nearly got another stare for that, but Cissnei instead opted to turn the screen to face him, in place of an answer. He stood up and came over to her desk, and for a moment he stared blankly at the computer, not really wanting to read the fine text that covered the screen. Obviously Cissnei had been waiting for a more dramatic response, as she turned to look at him, then glanced back at the screen. "Don't you find this the least bit disturbing?"

"A little. Can you give me the lowdown so I know what I'm looking at here? I'm rather a slow reader..."

She motioned at the screen. "Have you ever heard of a creature called Zirconiade?"

"Nope. But if it's a summon, that's no surprise. I haven't been studying like I ought to've."

"It is a summon - the Ultimate Summon, in fact. It's never been seen before; supposedly it's the equivalent of one of the Planet's own WEAPONs. There's a huge materia to call it out, but it's been broken into five pieces. Four were thought lost, but one was the piece grafted into Elfé, Veld's daughter. Veld's been collecting the four support materia, because once together they'll fuse and stop draining her life. But -"

"But fusing materia means that the summon will be complete. Right?"

"And Zirconiade will be controlled by whoever gets to summon it, which at the moment will be that lunatic scientist Fuhito - who's going to use it to destroy all life on Gaia!"

"What? Why?"

"I don't know. I only know what little Veld told me nine months ago when we met in the Mansion. But that's not the point. We need to stop AVALANCHE before they collect all four materia, and right now there's only one still missing."

"Could you Turks find the last one and hide it? Doesn't sound too hard."

"Actually, we were the reason the three have been found. We were helping Veld - off-record, of course - and he ended up getting them stolen by AVALANCHE. Now, though, even we don't know where the last one is, although the rest of us Turks, Veld, and all of AVALANCHE are scouring the continents. And meanwhile, Elfé is dying."

"Hm." He thought for a moment, leaning heavily against her desk. "And what exactly is AVALANCHE?"

"It's a very long story. Perhaps one better suited for off-duty; I'm not entirely certain that these offices aren't all bugged to some extent," she said. "But in short, I have reason to believe Tseng, our current leader under Heidegger, is hiding something from me. Something big. All the other Turks are on active duty, and have been for some time. Meanwhile I've been kept here, doing paperwork and not going more than five miles from Midgar, for the last six months. If that's not a sure sign of things to come..."

"And what exactly do you want me to do? Even if I could help, do you know that I would?"

Cissnei shrugged one shoulder, smiling blandly at the screen. "No, but I figured you are probably just as bored as I am and would do anything for some excitement."

"Am I really that predictable already?"

She laughed, the first time he'd heard her do so. "Just a lucky guess."

"Oh, well, in that case...sure."

She whipped around to face him, her eyes wide in surprise. "Seriously? But if you get caught -"

"I don't get caught. What exactly do you need me to do?"

"For now, just keep your eyes open, see if any of your...sources know anything of what's going on in the world outside Midgar. I'll keep my eye on Tseng, and - if you know anyone who knows about Zirconiade, that would be a plus. I might buy you dinner."

"And then force me to stand during it?"

"Yeah, okay, sorry about that earlier. You just caught me at a really bad time. The day before I'd been out to the Wastes and seen the place where," she swallowed harshly, "where Zack died."

Kunsel looked at her with new sympathy. "You were more than passing acquaintances."

The Turk didn't answer but nodded sadly, looking aside and blinking repeatedly.

"I know how you feel," he began, but the memory was too close for him, and he quickly changed the subject. "So - about AVALANCHE. Wanna go somewhere after work to talk?"

"Sure," she said, her voice more subdued than he'd yet heard it.

Kunsel was about to say more, try to find something to change her mood, but just then the office door opened. Tseng came in, carrying an armload of papers, and set them down on Cissnei's desk. He barely spared the breath to bid them both a perfunctory good day, and even his explanation was brusque.

"A lot of these are reports that need to be filed. Simply organize them by operative and date; that's all. These others" - he indicated a much smaller stack clipped together inside a binder - "I want you to correlate the data, the times and locations, and try to find a pattern to them. If there isn't one, that's...expected, but I believe there'll be something."

He turned and left the room, walking past as if the SOLDIER didn't exist, although Kunsel noticed Tseng's own SOLDIER shadow in the corridor outside. The door shut, and Cissnei grimaced at the amount of paper now on her desk.

"And I thought I'd go home soon," she muttered, pulling the larger stack toward her.

"This may not be too bad," Kunsel answered, running a hand through his hair as he leaned over her desk. "Two of us working means it'll be twice as fast."

Cissnei paused from shuffling through the reports. The SOLDIER reached for the sheaf of data, but her hand moved faster than his and rested firmly on top of the binder. He glanced at her in surprise.

"I don't think I should let you read that - even if you probably already know what's in it."

"Just tryin' to help."

"If you want to organize reports, though, go for it." She nudged the pile in his direction, then pulled the binder into her lap.

Kunsel shrugged, hefting the papers, and dragged the chair over to her desk. This was certainly some work for a SOLDIER to be doing!

After skim-reading the first several and realizing that the Turks submitted reports mostly in code, he decided it was a waste of time to try to garner anything useful, and concentrated on sorting. The task took longer than he'd thought it would, but even when he was done, Cissnei was still staring at the screen where she'd entered the data Tseng had requested.

"What now?" Kunsel asked, setting his papers onto the desk.

"I recognize this. I don't think I'm supposed to, but - these are Veld's last known locations, all over the world."

The SOLDIER frowned, dredging up from his encyclopedic memory the relevant information. Veld: leader of the Turks practically since their inception, a man with an exemplary record who had given his all for Shinra and the Turks. Then, four years ago, he had abruptly disappeared while on a mission to save the new Corel reactor from some dissidents, and hadn't been heard from since. At least as far as Kunsel knew. Cissnei obviously knew otherwise, if she was able to recognize some of the places Veld had been.

"So the Turks are tracking Veld. Isn't that what Turks do?" Kunsel asked. "Makes sense, as he's listed as a traitor." He'd learned long ago that Turk business was generally better left alone, and for once he showed little interest in new information.

Cissnei, however, was more animated - and angry - than he'd yet seen her. "If they've been tracing him, they haven't told me. And Turks are a team; we're all supposed to know everything! How could Tseng hide this..."

"Maybe he was trying to protect you."

The acid stare Cissnei narrowed at him made him immediately shut his mouth. She continued, "Why so many secrets? Why's everyone being so cryptic? This is my job, by Gaia, but everyone's hiding things from me and trying to stall me. I want to know what's so darn secret that Tseng isn't telling me! I need to know what's going on." She sighed, dropping her head into her hands. When she spoke again, her tone was much calmer although still taut. "Let's...go. To my apartment, maybe. Somewhere we can talk."

"Fine by me. However, is there really that much to talk about? I don't know if I can completely, well, trust you yet, and it's not like we really have common ground anyway."

Cissnei made an impatient gesture, slamming the binder down onto the desk. "I'll be off duty! Can't we just talk?" She glared at him, but her jaw was clenched to keep from trembling. She was tough as nails on the outside, Kunsel realized, but she was cracking. He wondered whether he was much better.

"Yeah." He nodded abruptly. "Sure."

She was out of her desk like a whirlwind, slinging her jacket around her shoulders and locking the binder in her desk drawer, then she whisked out of the room, leaving Kunsel to collect his gear and follow in his own time. He just prayed Scarlet wasn't wandering the halls right now.

He hurried out into the hallway, afraid he'd already lost her, but Cissnei had stopped right outside her office and was waiting for him. Without a word, she took off once again, toward the elevators.

Only when they were both in her quarters with the door shut did she slow down, remembering courtesy. She ushered him into the small living room, telling him to make himself comfortable, as she paused in the doorway to the kitchenette. "Want some coffee?"

He glanced up at her sharply then half-laughed. "No. No thanks." Cissnei had her eyebrows up again, and he realized further explanation might be helpful. "Mako's already a stimulant - you really don't want to see a SOLDIER on caffeine. However, if you have any milk, I'll take that."

She slipped into the kitchen, leaving him to look around her quarters. He didn't want to pry, but a lot of information could be gained from observing someone's house. A single shelf of books rigidly alphabetized above her desk. Her furniture, neat and clean to the point of obsession, with the pencil-straight folds in the blankets and draperies. Not a thing was out of place, except for...he leaned down. On the floor was a small scattered pile of wadded papers with writing on them.

Kunsel stared at them in puzzlement for a moment, unable to reconcile them with the rest of the room's meticulous neatness. He glanced up quickly. Cissnei was certainly taking her time getting the drinks... He leaned over for a closer look, and caught Zack's name amid the writing. Without hesitation, he snatched up the sheet, swiftly flattening it out, all the while keeping one eye on the doorway to the kitchenette. Reading hurriedly, his eyes widened at what was written. "I can hardly find the words to tell you this, but your son Zack was killed in action three days ago. I can't say that his death was painless, but he fought till the last against all odds, a true hero if there ever was one -"

There were footsteps from the kitchen, and in one motion he'd rewadded the letter, tossed it back onto the floor, and stood with a vaguely subdued expression as Cissnei came in, a mug in each hand.

As she came around the corner of the couch, she glanced at the floor, at the letters, and almost imperceptibly flinched. How had she forgotten those? Better make the best of a bad situation - and hope Kunsel hadn't noticed. But he inadvertently glanced down with her, and she had to think quickly.

"You must find those very interesting," she said, handing him the mug of milk. In the process of moving she less than inadvertently kicked the letters under the couch. "I can almost see your head beginning to overheat trying to figure it out."

He laughed, hoping it didn't sound too forced. "And I imagine you planted 'em there just to mystify me, right?"

"No," she answered. "Actually, I -" She stopped, staring into her coffee as she slowly stirred it.

Kunsel picked up on her uncertainty and was all too willing to change the subject. "I have the impression there's something more pressing on your mind than telling me your life story?"

Kunsel pulled out the desk chair and sat backwards on it, resting his chin on his arms crossed on the chair's back, and studied her. In all his years of reading people, he'd never encountered someone as difficult to understand as Cissnei was. Well, except for one of his former bosses...but that was below the Plate, years ago, and needed to be forgotten.

But Cissnei: she was made of contradictions. She wavered between absolute loyalty to the Turks and working behind her own Department's back; she wanted friends, had obviously made friends, but then pushed them away. And she didn't fit the typical Turk profile; she wasn't desperate for money or fame or blood. Her motives...they were about as clear as mud.

"So you're looking for excitement," he finally said, coming to the most logical explanation he could think of.

"Yeah, I guess so. Real work. Something to give me a reason to continue." She sipped her coffee. "So, about AVALANCHE... I don't even know where to begin. Everything ties into so much bigger things."

"Start small - remember, I'm still at square one. I usually stay shy of Turk business. Now, Veld; I know him, or know of him, at least. What have you heard of him since he left Shinra? Only what was compiled in those reports you had earlier?" Kunsel asked.

"Yes, although...I met him many months ago. It was in the Shinra Mansion, in Nibelheim, after I'd run into Zack at the strait separating the Western Continent. Veld was there, desperately searching for the third materia. I didn't know what he was doing there, although he briefly explained the support materia, and he knocked me out when Shinra troops came after him. I guess they thought he'd attacked me, because they didn't arrest me or anything."

"And this materia will both summon Zirconiade and heal Elfé." He paused. Elfé. Nope, no idea. "This girl, Elfé. Who is she? Why's she so special?"

"Well, not only is she our director's daughter, but she's also the leader of the terrorist group AVALANCHE. If we can get her healed and turned to our side, that threat will be neutralized."

"Is it really that serious a threat? Couldn't Shinra wipe them off the map if they put their mind to it?"

"In a word, no. AVALANCHE has connections everywhere. They're good - we thought we'd caught them once, only to find we'd captured decoys. When we have encountered their leaders, we've never had the power to take them down. You forget they're being led by a Turk-trained girl, as well as a genius scientist and a hardened outlaw. Heck, they were able to shoot the President when he was in Junon."

"Seriously? I thought that was a random assassin."

"That's what they want everyone to believe. Shinra's in denial about the whole deal, at least to the public. Inside, they're using everything they can short of the Sister Ray to bring AVALANCHE down." She set her coffee aside. "I've done what I can to warn Veld, both for his sake and Elfé's, but..."

Kunsel slid around in his chair, sitting straight in it and facing her. "You helped a convicted criminal?" Not much of a surprise, he thought, considering her loyalty to the Turks as a whole, and her own questionable activities, but to openly help Veld? More than her sense of duty seemed to be involved here.

"He's a criminal only by chance. He was driven to it, after he was forced to destroy his town, his daughter was supposedly killed, and then she was found again as the leader of Shinra's biggest enemy since Wutai! I would help him again, if I knew where he was right now."

He stared at her, then shook his head. "Why risk your job, your morals, your life helping him? I don't see why you would ever -"

"He's like a father to me. He lost his family ten years ago when Kalm burned, and I - I never had a family to start with. Turks all might as well be related, as strong as the bonds are between us." She was speaking quietly, but her eyes were stone-hard and dark.

Kunsel was silent for a long time. There'd been more information in this single conversation than he'd gathered in the last six months. It was a lot to think about; there were still some holes, but the big picture was finally starting to make sense. However, one question kept coming to the front, and it was one he couldn't ignore. "So Veld is family. I still don't understand your ties to him, but then, I never had much of a family. I don't blame you at all. I'm just a little confused as to one thing: why are you trusting me with this? I'm not a Turk. What could a SOLDIER possibly do to help you?"

"Don't you see? I'm going to take down AVALANCHE - and you're coming with me."