Fifth Iteration

Cloud never, ever forgot even for a moment that Vincent was a Turk. He just couldn't: it pervaded her very being, colouring everything she said and did. Every move was deliberate, every word calculated on one level or another, all backed up by the Turk creed: gather information, uncover facts, consider the mission, take appropriate action and cover your tracks. Vincent likely didn't know how to stop being a Turk anymore.

Since settling in Midgar and joining SOLDIER Cloud had acquired a whole lot more information on Turks, partly courtesy of Kunsel but mostly as a result of his own finely tuned observation and hacking skills. Firstly, that trier internal hierarchy dictated which missions they took, what orders they followed and when. The President had less control over the Investigative Division of General Affairs than he thought he did and the rest of the board had no say at all, despite the Turks occasionally accepting missions from Hojo or Scarlet, generally at the President's behest. Like the ongoing situation with the pretty flower girl in Sector Five of the slums: Hojo wanted her as a specimen but Tseng had been in charge of that mission for months and she was still at large. With blue-suited bodyguards trailing her at a distance, in fact.

Second was the simple fact that Rufus Shinra, the President's son, had greater personal sway over the Turks than his father did. Cloud only picked that up from reading between the lines on mission reports, careful eavesdropping and attention to gossip and rumour, but it was there out in the open provided a person understood the Turk mindset. So far as he could see, it had been a gradual shift in loyalty that took root and spread as the President grew to depend more on SOLDIER and Sephiroth to protect him and enforce his will over the past seven or eight years, pushing the Turks aside to a supporting role and to guard his son. The loyalty shift probably also had something to do with Veld's family getting killed back when Kalm was firebombed, Vincent's own suspicious death ‒recently revealed to have been falsified by Hojo‒ and the surfacing of the Science Department's other disgusting covert projects such as Deepground. The Turks practically raising Rufus gave them an alternative boss who Veld was certainly grooming for leadership: the younger Shinra likely knew Turks better than his father ever had, having been around them and actually interacting with them for years just as Cloud had been mostly raised my Vincent for the second half of his life.

Which brought up the most salient point: in order to carry out their jobs to the highest possible standard and stay mostly sane, all Turks sooner or later delegated a third party as their moral anchor and conscience. Aged sixteen and a new Turk, Vincent had 'killed her heart' ‒her own words‒ and made President Shinra her conscience, since he was the one giving her orders. She therefore had gone out to fulfil said orders with such ruthless efficiency and chilling thoroughness as to become the ultimate ideal all Turks were encouraged to aspire to over twenty years later.

Vincent had been the perfect killer for a decade, until Lucretia Crescent had caught her eye and awakened her heart in Nibelhiem, slowly revitalising the red-eyed Turk's own battered moral compass. Then had come Sephiroth, who had instantly become Vincent's Personage ‒person to be protected at all costs‒ and Hojo had become the enemy, later cementing his role by experimenting on her personally. That hadn't helped her sanity and had chipped off pieces of her personality so they operated independently when she was under stress. That's what Galian Beast, Death Gigas and Hellmasker were, after all: manifestations of her then-most-prominent personality facets, Instinct, Obsessiveness and Schadenfreude, all pushed beyond their limits. The sudden lessening of those factors' influence on her psyche had given her a rather abrupt personality shift, making her less violently inclined, more mentally flexible and more empathetic. Ironically it also made her more competent at functioning in an unstructured environment; the old Vincent Cloud had read about in reports might just have gone back to working for ShinRa out of the simple need for imposed boundaries and limits.


Cloud still wasn't sure why Vincent had agreed to train him back when he had been eight. He hadn't been anything special as a child, short skinny and horribly naïve. However the quiet, calculating avatar of Chaos had seen something in him that prompted her to teach him. Not merely teach: two years later she'd assumed full responsibility for him and taken him on a tour of the Planet. Looking back on that decision the blond realised that by that point Vincent had totally abandoned her loyalty to President Shinra and made Cloud her moral compass, making herself his personal Turk as they embarked on their shared mission to help Sephiroth and destroy Hojo. Looking back, Vincent had only started investing in sustainable energy after Cloud himself pointed out that Mako reactors were using up the Lifestream and killing the Planet.

That Vincent and by extension all Turks were hopelessly co-dependent as a result of their training did not come as a surprise; that it was Cloud that Vincent was depending on and had ever since he was ten was a bit of a shock. He'd been totally oblivious, so his red-eyed teacher must have relied entirely on his subconscious non-verbal cues and occasionally expressed personal opinions. That she'd managed to find a measure of personal inner balance after her ordeal at Hojo's hands was seriously impressive; that Cloud had been elected to help supplement that balance was humbling.

Of course, Cloud had been somewhat corrupted by his teacher's ruthless Turk practicality but unlike Vincent he still had his own moral foundation informing his actions. Now he understood the true nature of their relationship it was a rather scary responsibility, but the blond SOLDIER understood now that Vincent had been a Turk for too long and been too badly damaged by Hojo to be able to respond proportionally to perceived threats of different types. She needed Cloud's softer perspective to keep herself in line, especially with Hellmasker being the psychopath he was.

What really puzzled Cloud however was why ShinRa's greatest ever Turk ‒however battered and fractured she was‒ had picked a backwater nobody as her ultimate moral authority. Vincent had pretty much appointed the blond as her new boss, which just did not make sense. Turks were supposed to act in the best interests of the ShinRa Electric Power Company and the Shinra family, quietly ensuring the road to global supremacy was free of potholes and bumps. The transferral of authority over the main body of the Turks to Rufus Shinra could be explained away since he was the company heir and embodiment of its future, but Cloud wasn't any of that. He was just Cloud Strife, fatherless Nibelheimer. What on the planet had Vincent seen in him to make a naïve, half-trained child her ultimate authority?

Of course Cloud was a SOLDIER third now and hailed as a prodigy likely to make it to first-class in a few years, but most of that was due to Vincent's rigorous training. He was also rather attached to all of the extended Valentine family despite not knowing them very well. The blond had not the slightest intention of using his newly-discovered authority to veto Vincent's vendetta against the Company, but he was uncomfortably aware that if he told her to drop it she probably would. Which was creepy to even think about.

Cloud did not however intend to let the President or Hojo get away with anything, which was why he was in the process of exchanging detailed messages on his personal PHS with both Vincent and Genesis to organise a strike to the Science Department main headquarters to liberate the hard-drives containing all the Deepground data that wasn't written anywhere else. Said hard-drives were not connected to the main Company network, so they had to go and retrieve them in person rather than just have Weiss and Shelke retrieve the information through synaptic net diving. The actual plot was Cloud's brainchild and Vincent had approved its simplicity. It was military sleight-of-hand with Genesis, Rosso and the few remaining feral Deepgrounders acting as the distraction, Angeal keeping Hollander in check and Vincent ensuring the Turks would not interfere. Meanwhile Cloud, Weiss and Nero would just walk right into the Science Department, get what they were after and walk out again. No mess, no fuss. If things did go wrong then Nero just had to use his newly-mastered powers to teleport everyone to safety.

Weiss had liked the plan too, if the rather manic grin on his face when he'd arrived at Vincent's Midgar apartment at the end of March was any indication. Nero on the other hand had that thoughtful look that Cloud recognised from watching Seph plot pranks. Part of Cloud wished the Silver General could join in the fun, but for the plan to work all the blond could do was warm Sephiroth in private that Vincent and co were going to infiltrate the Science department to steal more data. That way Seph knew to stay out of the way and do other things elsewhere.


A more in-depth explanation of what exactly is wrong with Vincent in particular and the Turk mindset in general. I think Cloud will be discovering his heritage soon.

The way I've set it up is that Mako affects men and women differently, which is why there are no women in SOLDIER. Men are affected physically first, their bodies being strengthened and warped until their minds can no longer cope and they eventually crack if their Mako levels get too high. Only the most self-accepting and emotionally supported cope.

Women are affected mentally first, becoming physically affected as the Mako changes their bodies to reflect mental changes. This means that, while women are generally more able to deal with how they are changed at the highest Mako levels, they are likely to be completely insane by then. Vincent is crazy but functional and totally uncontrollable by anyone except her chosen authority, which is Cloud. Hence why Hojoj decided that women in SOLDIER were not a sound investment.

This is why there are only men in SOLDIER, why Rosso is so fragile mentally and why Mako levels have to be carefully monitored.