Ergodicity

After the debrief of the frankly disastrous mission to take out the AVALANCHE base at Icicle Inn, Zack decided to take the stairs rather than the lift. He needed to think things over.

Ever since starting to date Rosso Valentine Zack had learned a lot, most of which had very little to do with romance or women. For one he was now a convert to Rosso's views on heroics. Not that the pretty redhead had anything against heroes or the time-and-tested strategy of charging headlong into battle; rather she felt that in order for heroics to be successful proper timing was a must.

Of course, in order to time something properly a person needs information on the situation they will be charging into. Zack had started paying considerably more attention to the things people talked about since Rosso had pointed that out and had been surprised by how much information was readily available around ShinRa headquarters to anyone actually listening. Even more amazing was that when he acted harmless, sympathetic and slightly dense people would almost trip over eachother to spill confidential information while talking to him, whether so as to appear superior or just to gain a little sympathy.

However when cheerful cluelessness was not enough to prise secrets out of people there was always the third option: positioning oneself so as to 'accidentally' overhear confidential or otherwise suppressed information. Zack was perfectly capable of keeping his mouth shut –he'd never have made it to first class if he wasn't– so did not see a problem in acquiring extraneous details that never quite made it to the public forum. He had a whole lot of secrets he was keeping already; what were a few more in the grand scheme of things?

In fact knowing the extra stuff could be a genuine life-saver: If he hadn't known all the highly restricted stuff Cloud had privately told him about Ravens just in case the Icicle Inn mission would have gone completely pear-shaped. Losing Sebastien and Essai had been horrible but they had been the only SOLDIER casualties.


Zack paused thoughtfully on the landing next to the door leading to the Turk floor. The mission had initially belonged to the Turks until the men on the ground had rescued Essai and Sebastien from the AVALANCHE base the first time around, after which the SOLDIERs had been called in. Zack had led the attack, found the terrorists inexplicably ready for them and retreated. Essai and Sebastien had been re-kidnapped, the first-class had lead a second, more successful assault then been sidetracked by having to rescue a Turk who looked like Reno's big brother from a Raven-ified Sebastien. The base had then exploded, making the mission a total loss.

From what he'd overheard from PHS conversations whilst pretending to sleep on the way back to Midgar it seemed likely that the Turks would be taking the blame for the casualties and presumed information leak. A year ago Zack would have loudly protested the unfairness of this scapegoating but he'd changed since then. Life wasn't fair and part of being a hero was doing what you could to even the odds against those who stacked the deck. Someone had to have leaked the information but until he knew who it was there wasn't anything he could do except make sure he knew what was going on.

With all this in mind the first-class pushed open the door and strolled into the Department of Administrative Research looking for all the world as if he was running an errand and belonged there.

Something else Zack had picked up recently –mostly from Cloud– was the myriad ways in which Materia could be used outside of actual battle, especially around unenhanced people who couldn't feel the Spells being cast. Manipulate, for example, could get you all sorts of interesting things and create all sorts of problems for other people when they didn't realise you had it. Similarly Transform could be very useful if you needed to get through spaces fully grown humans couldn't fit into or onto things which wouldn't otherwise bear your weight. It was in fact the most useful Materia you could have if you wanted to overhear private conversations.

Exit was a favourite: it enabled a person to break into places without leaving a trail that could be followed so long as you knew exactly where it was you needed to land. Of course it was also great for getaways but that was a given. Seal was also fairly handy as a Silence Spell deadened all the noise the victim made rather than just cutting off their ability to speak; cast Silence on yourself and nobody could hear you at all.

Enemy Away was by far the most amusing to use in crowded spaces as it responded directly to the wielder's idea of who they didn't want to be seen by. For example, Zack was not strictly speaking supposed to be in the Turk Department and did not want to be seen –and therefore remembered– walking towards Tseng's office, which made anyone likely to notice him doing so was automatically 'the enemy'. Having an Enemy Away Materia active as he strolled towards his destination meant that the Turks who might have challenged him or stared suspiciously just walked past without even noticing him, which was really neat.


The first class paused outside the door he'd been aiming for, cast Silence on himself and leaned forward to press his ear to the wood. Nope, far too conspicuous. Plan B it is. He moved back a step, used the handle of his Buster sword to lift and slide open a ceiling panel then jumped up into the gap. Halfway through the created hole the beamed groaned under the SOLDIER's weight, prompting him to cast Mini on himself. Newly chibified, Zack scurried deftly through the narrow crawlspace until he could hear Tseng shuffling paperwork beneath him.

Zack knew that the tilak-marked Turk was the de-facto second in command of his department. This meant that once the President had finished with Veld the older Turk would most likely come and find Tseng so as to talk about whatever it was that had been said. The first-class wasn't too bothered about understanding what was said; he could always turn to Cloud for a translation.

It would have come as a surprise to the entire population of Midgar –and especially his recently-established fanclub– that Zack Fair could, in fact, sit still without running his mouth. For whole minutes at a time, even. Zack had to renew the Mini while he waited in the dark, but the sound of footsteps in the hall finally approached and someone let themselves into Tseng's office.

"Veld-" came Tseng's soft voice, confirming the identity of the visitor. Zack's ears pricked up.

"The President has relieved me of my duties as Department Head," Veld said, his voice bland with only the faintest hint of strain, "and transferred me to another department so as not to encourage lack of confidence in the chain of command. Heidegger will be issuing orders in future but you, Tseng, are in charge of the Turks."

The door opened and shut and Veld's footsteps faded down the hall. Zack heard a sigh, then more footsteps as the door opened and closed again. The SOLDIER swiftly let himself out of the space inside the ceiling, cancelled all the Spells he had cast on himself and left the floor. Spiky would be around here somewhere and he would know what to do about what Zack had just heard.


Locating the short bland proved unexpectedly difficult: Zack had to trek through the VR room and half-a-dozen other training rooms before he found a SOLDIER who knew where Cloud had gone. Out on a mission to Kalm with Seph, as it happened, and not due back for several hours. Since it was his day to hang around headquarters and he didn't really want to talk about this over the phone –it wasn't urgent enough to risk being overheard– Zack found a mostly empty training room and diligently practiced the kata Angeal had taught him and Cloud for the Buster, various tricks he'd picked up from Genesis and the moves Sephiroth was in the process of teaching him whenever the two of them had time, which wasn't often. Half the time the Silver General sent Cloud to teach Zack a new move and texted the first-class a short apology, citing overwork and being double-booked by the management. Zack felt sorry for the man: where before the three Generals had divided the social unpleasantness and propaganda calls between them, Seph now had to do all of them on top of the necessary SOLDIER stuff.

He was however quietly pleased that the Silver General still made the effort to teach him new stuff, even if it was by proxy most of the time. The overall quality of SOLDIER had fallen significantly since Genesis defected with most of the competent veterans below first-class. The Turks had 'recruited' –read press-ganged– a whole lot of new people to replace those who had defected and cadet recruitment standards had been relaxed slightly –just the physical and intelligence related ones– so as to get in as many new SOLDIERs as possible, but the newcomers were nothing special. Well, other than that Azul guy, but he was just effin' massive! Nine foot five and built like a pro wrestler, Azul was not in any way average except perhaps in intelligence.

However despite Azul throwing the curve, the average SOLDIER was less accomplished than had been the case even two years previously and the extremely low levels of accomplished veterans still in the department meant that the new guys weren't being pushed to improve as hard as they should be. Ifrit's Hells, there were only about a dozen first-classes left including him and Seph and most of them didn't have the time to whip the thirds into shape. Zack knew all kinds of nifty ways to take advantage of his superior strength and senses that he'd picked up from various more experiences SOLDIERs over the years, none of which were actually explained in the standard introductory sessions. He was still learning new stuff even now. Without the handing down of those little tips SOLDIER as a whole would become far less capable and versatile a unit.

In fact, Zack latest teacher had been none other than Rosso: she'd finally relaxed enough to divulge a little of her experiences in Deepground. Zack had recently discovered that being Mako-enhanced meant you really could rip someone's arm off and beat them to death with it. You could also rip off other appendages like legs, jaws and –most cringe-worthy of all– balls. Rosso had done half of the above to a scientist who'd tried to drug and rape her, then the other half to an insane fellow test subject whom she'd been locked in with as punishment for killing her aggressor. She'd also bashed the proto-Beast's brains out on the floor just to make sure.

His girlfriend could be really scary when she put her mind to it.


It you really want to know what 'Ergodicity' means, look up 'ergodic' on wikipedia. It's a quantum thing.

Well, I read Escape Plan Green by Mistic 777 and my Zack decided he wanted to do all that stuff too, 'cause it looked fun. So this chapter came into being; I hope they don't mind that I made use of their concept.