Quantum Nonlocality

Tseng had been rather unsettled by the past few month's events. The Turks were aware of Project G and considering the implications of degradation Genesis' and Angeal's desertions were not as surprising as they should have been, but the Deepground connection disturbed him. Hollander had not been in the loop for the project and how Genesis had stumbled across it was a mystery. That the Crimson General had not only found the project, but gotten in, totally obliterated the infrastructure, killed off every last guard and successfully escaped with the test subjects without leaving a single living witness behind indicated that frighteningly large amounts of highly sensitive information had been haemorrhaging from the company for some time.

Genesis' choice of strategy made excellent use of his barely-sane forces: the feral SOLDIERs were released into an area, harrying civilians and ShinRa operatives alike and attracting attention while the saner Deepgrounders and the defectors who had followed Genesis from Wutai slipped into the target area, stole everything not nailed down and melted away again. The stolen goods was highly varied, from foodstuffs through weaponry to medical Mako, indicating an organised logistical mind with an eye on the long-term. The Crimson General was a genius commander of men; Tseng would rather not be forced to meet the man on the battlefield once the redhead's strategy had come to fruition.

The Turk had only been informed of the bare bones of what Deepground had been, but what little data he had indicated that nine-tenths of the SOLDIERs who had not survived the project capable of rational thought had by now been killed. Of those judged sane and Genesis' fellow deserters only five had died, three killed by second-class Zackary Fair, who had taken the brunt of those missions by virtue of already being in the loop on what had really happened. The spiky-haired brunet was getting the look of someone seriously disillusioned by their life experiences, no longer bouncing cheerfully around Headquarters. Instead the SOLDIER trained hard and drifted around the building under a cloud of suppressed gloom when he wasn't on missions.

A cloud. That reminded him: Third-class Cloud Strife was a puzzle. Maybe not a problem, but the potential was there, lurking under the surface like a Midgar zolom in a swamp.

Tseng was rather embarrassed to admit that the Turks hadn't spotted the connection between the blond SOLDIER and the supposedly deceased Vincent Valentine until last month. The oversight was mortifying considering the sheer volume of evidence available: there had been a recognisable photograph of the two of them in the newspapers after they broke the bank in Golden Saucer, even! The duo had travelled all over the planet for almost four years! How the information could have taken six months to surface was unforgivable; they were Turks, damnit!

The second-in-command sighed. Now the teen was in the SOLDIER program with the full third-class Mako boost, Sephiroth's student and practically untouchable. Not that the Turk was tempted to pressure the boy: anyone who had spent their formative years training under the greatest Turk the Company had ever seen would be so easy to manipulate or dispatch. The Mako would only enhance the blond's already formidable skills. Tseng had read the SOLDIER's reviews: his growth rate was nothing short of phenomenal. In a few years he would be a first-class on par with Sephiroth himself if he kept it up.

What was even more embarrassing was that the Turks had stumbled across Cloud's past entirely by accident whilst investigating Lillith Valentine, Kunsel's Draculina. Veld had overseen that inquiry personally, creating a feasible time-line for those assigned to work from. The young woman was about twenty-four or twenty-five years old, had been raised in the Valentine manor to Turk standards and had started wandering the planet shortly after Vincent's own documented visit to Junon.

Evidence that the most dangerous Turk ever to work for ShinRa was at large had prompted Veld to release more detailed information on his former partner to the department. What sent shivers down the half-Wutaian's spine was that Vincent was not just the sharpshooter his official file suggested; instead the rogue Turk specialised in accidents. Generally tragically fatal accidents. He'd single-handedly wiped out the industrial competition to the ShinRa monopoly over twenty-five years ago over the span of just eighteen months. After learning that Tseng had ordered Maria, the efficient blonde whose main weapon was a handgun, to go through the last five years' worth of incident reports to see if the man had been active more recently.

There had been a whole slew of possibles but one instance really stuck out: thirteen months previously the eight Turks assigned to enforce and supervise disgraced Turk Avro's house arrest in Costa del Sol had been the victims of a sudden spate of messy, inconvenient and almost-fatal mishaps that had caused them to lose track of their charge for almost four hours. Looking over the mission report again Tseng could see Vincent's fingerprints all over the incident. What Veld was dispatching the tilak-marked Turk to Costa del Sol to find out was why the elder Valentine had bothered at all. What had the rogue Turk wanted from disgraced Avro Lancaster, the 'Death God of the Battlefield', that had required three-and-three-quarter hours of anonymity?


Late that evening Tseng flew back to Midgar, thoughts swirling erratically. Turk Avro had not been interesting in coming back on active duty to help stamp out the Wutai insurgents and saboteurs wreaking havoc for ShinRa now the war's end was officially being arranged, but had been perfectly willing to chat about his 'perfect day', as the strawberry blond bomber had designated the occasion his stalkers had been put out of commission.

Avro had indeed been approached by Vincent, who had wanted information, mainly on the backgrounds and affiliations of the various people -dead and still living- the bomber had worked with before joining ShinRa. In exchange for the aforementioned information the red-eyed rogue had offered the disgraced Turk a favour and suggested among other things the possibility of making his watchers disappear for a few hours. Entertained by the idea Avro had agreed, which set off the whole sorry mess that started six hours later.

Tseng had asked Avro what he'd done with his brief freedom. The other man had grinned like a loon:

"I took Vincent's apprentice shopping."

"Pardon?" Tseng had heard himself say.

"Vincent's apprentice. Cloud Strife. Probably fourteen by now, short, blue eyes, golden hair like a chocobo's crest. Knows a hell of a lot about chocobo racing and boardroom drama, listens well and remembers what he's been told. I bought him a few Materia, some ice cream and sufficient supplies for him to make enough explosives to bring down the ShinRa tower if he wired it right."

"You bought a thirteen-year-old bomb ingredients?" Tseng couldn't help repeating incredulously. Avro just shrugged.

"He was a good kid. Really good. Polite, accepting, not afraid to have fun and responsible." the man paused. "You've met him, haven't you? Little Cloudy?"

"He's in SOLDIER," the half-Wutaian admitted heavily. "General Sephiroth's protégé."

The bomber cackled. "Kid's a Turk to the bone despite being too honourable for his own good. All that covert training and Mako? He'll be unstoppable in a few years; less since the Silver General's taken a shine to him." Avro had paused then, turning around to look Tseng in the eye. "Free advice, Turk to Turk: Don't ever make an enemy of him. Strife's got nerves of ice, more determination than a damned army, a thick streak of luck, a dollop of crazy and a spine of pure Mako-reinforced titanium. He's also got an unforgiving temper, is more stubborn than Mount Nibel and completely, insanely loyal to those he's chosen to protect. You do not want someone like that pissed at you, believe me; people like that don't stop."

Tseng wanted to ask where the man had found all that information but the look in Avro's eye dissuaded him. The bomber had been interested enough in Cloud to dig a little and this was the final, refined result of what the Turk had found.

The very idea of Cloud Strife now made Tseng very, very uneasy. There was a reason why the Turks operated separately to SOLDIER and removed those suited to the Investigative Division of Internal Affairs from cadet training. Trained by Vincent Valentine for four years, Cloud was a Turk in essence if not in fact and now he was a SOLDIER as well. Tseng would have to watch the teen closely and figure out what his agenda was. Everybody had an agenda; however so long as Cloud's did not go counter to Tseng's orders the blond would be left mostly alone.


Tseng, because he needs more time on air. He deserves it for all the crap he's being forced to deal with.

Avro Lancaster is 'Legend' from Before Crisis. I named him for the infamous aircraft. Maria is 'Gun', also from Before Crisis and Elena's big sister.

The reason the Turks didn't put the pieces together sooner was that Vincent fiddled their computers to ignore both her and Cloud. Note also that Veld hasn't told his minions everything there is to know about dear Vincent yet.