CHAPTER 22: THERE'S SO MANY FRIVOLOUS THINGS IN THIS WORLD
An eventful chapter, in which Reno spreads gossip, Aviva bites her tongue, a new Turk joins the team, Veld has a plan, and the office cat meets the company President
2nd February 2002
"So this guy Charlie," said Cavour in the office the next morning. "I think I've heard of him. He's the Legend, right?"
"You got it," said Mozo, unscrewing a bottle of white-out. "Used to be a mercenary. Fought for Wutai at the beginning of the war. He left such a trail of carnage their soldiers gave him a nickname: 'The Legendary God of Death'. There's the Five Mighty Gods, you see, and then there's Charlie."
Rosalind giggled.
"There's probably a pagoda to him somewhere," Mozo added. "Where they sacrifice virgins."
Reno, who was sitting at the desk in the corner, tinkering with the internal mechanism of a Red Saucer robot, thought to himself that if there was a hall of fame for arrogant jerks, Charlie would be the prize exhibit. Yeah, sure the guy had saved Aviva's life yesterday – after blowing her up first. And Reno wasn't convinced that the sudden appearance of the Legend had made such a big difference to the outcome of the battle. They'd been holding their own all right till he showed up. Typical Charlie – to waltz in halfway through a mission, do something flashy, and then take all the credit.
"So when did the Legend join the Turks?" Cavour asked Mozo.
"Halfway through the war. The Chief talked him into changing sides."
Cavour tossed his head to throw his thick black fringe out of his eyes. "Where's he been all this time? Why haven't I seen him before?"
"For the last five years he's been under house arrest in Costa," said Rosalind. While she spoke, she scrunched up a piece of paper, lobbed it at the wastepaper basket, and missed.
"House arrest? What for?"
"Disobeying orders. One of the President's chums was kidnapped by a rebel faction. The Chief sent Charlie in to rescue him. But Charlie killed him instead."
Cavour's dark eyes widened in his swarthy face. "What?"
"Well – refused to save him, anyway," Rosalind amended.
"There was some – history between them," said Rude from behind his monitor. "Bad blood."
"And the Chief let him live?"
Reno looked up from his robot. "Don't go getting any ideas, Cavs."
"Reno's right," Mozo added, twisting the white-out cap back on. "The Legend's always been a law unto himself."
"A part-time Turk is what he is," said Reno. "Charlie does what Charlie wants, when he wants to. He must think we're SOLDIER or something."
Mink took no part in this conversation. She was crouched beside the opened photocopier, screw-driver in her right hand, examining its broken innards. The cat, who had been chasing Rosalind's scrunched-up ball of paper, came over to examine the row of nuts and washers Mink had neatly laid out on the blue tiled floor.
"Coffee, anyone?" asked Rosalind, rising from her chair to pick up the ball of paper and place it in the bin.
The cat nudged a washer with its paw. "Stop that," Mink murmured, putting her hand over the cat's face and giving it a gentle push backwards.
They had tried out all sorts of names on the cat, but none had stuck. Sometimes they called it Reno's cat, though the cat had made it clear that Rude was its favourite Turk: given half a chance, it would have spent all day draped around his broad shoulders, kneading the fabric of his jacket and purring contentedly.
Sometimes when the Boss was in earshot they pretended to call it 'Tseng'. Tseng was determined not to let them see that this annoyed him. While he felt that having an animal in the department made them look unprofessional, there seemed to be no way of getting rid of the creature short of shooting it. He might have been able to get away with that when the cat first joined them, but if it went missing now the girls would know whom to blame. Rosalind and Aviva lavished attention upon it, feeding it minced chocobo liver, tuna steaks and cream bought with their own money. Whether having this small soft thing to care for, sublimating their feminine instincts, made their work easier or harder for them, was a question Tseng often pondered, without ever coming to a satisfactory answer.
The fact remained that the little ginger cat had become a fixture of the department. It caught mice on a regular basis (and who would have imagined the Shinra building had so many? They cropped up in the oddest places: one of the Turks' computers, for example. The cat staked out the CPU for a week before it finally caught its prey, and when it did, it first ate the body, without spilling a drop of blood, and then deposited the head at Tseng's door. "What a suck up," said Reno. "At least it knows who's the boss," Tseng retorted.).
Occasionally it caught one of the large rats, flea-infested and yellow-toothed, that got into the building from the sewers and gnawed on the wiring. Once, hearing a loud knocking inside the ventilation shaft, Cavour had unscrewed the grille to have a look, only to find the cat attempting to drag out a nearly-dead hedgehog pie three times its size. It was on this occasion that Aviva, in all seriousness, suggested it might be the reincarnation of some long-lost Turk soul.
"It works for its keep, I'll give it that," Tseng admitted.
The little cat went where it pleased in the Shinra Building, as cats are wont to do, and because it was known as the Turks' cat, nobody got in its way. The girls' one concern was that it might wander up to the 67th floor and be mistaken, or simply taken, for an experimental specimen. However, when its curiosity did eventually lead it into the labs, Hojo merely ordered one of his underlings to take it back where it belonged.
"The Professor's allergic," the scientist explained to Rosalind, handing the cat over. He was dressed in dark corduroy trousers and a white lab coat, and his brown hair was thick and curly.
Rosalind hugged the cat as close as she dared. "Thank you so much. We were afraid you might – "
The young man laughed. "It's just an ordinary domestic cat. The Professor has no interest in such things. But try to keep it off our floor. We don't want cat hair contaminating the equipment."
He smiled at her. What nice teeth he has, Rosalind thought. And nice eyes, too, behind the glasses.
He said, "By the way, I'm Phil. Phil Harper. If you ever lose your cat again, just, um, give me a call. Or if you, um, ever felt like, um, going out for a drink, you could call me about that, too."
.
The end of February, 2002
Rude and Reno had a new mission, unlike any they'd undertaken before.
Deep inside the Plate, they were standing with the Chief in a very large, dark room with a high ceiling, almost the size of a warehouse, somewhere in the vicinity of Reactor 4. The air was warm and smelt of stale mako: no life had breathed inside this room for years. Beneath their feet the steel girders throbbed to the beat of the reactor. It had taken them a good two hours to walk here from Reactor 8; the Chief had brought them on a circuitous route involving shafts, walkways, ladders, tunnels, small mountains of rubble, and several encounters with monsters.
"Do you think you could find this place on your own?" Veld asked them, shining his flashlight into the corners.
"Yes, sir," said Rude.
"Good," said Veld, "Because it's off the map. Officially, this area doesn't even exist."
Their orders were to build some sort of holding pen, or bunker: Veld's design indicated two small dormitories, a bathroom, a kitchen, a rest area, and a communications bay. They would have to run plumbing down from the mains, which were much higher up, just under the skin of the plate, and they would have to devise something inconspicuous for the waste pipes. Veld told Reno to splice the wiring as close to the reactor's main artery as possible. Stealth modem cables would also have to be installed.
"You should find pretty much everything you need lying around," said Veld. "The contractors never cleaned up after themselves. I take it you know how to mix cement?"
"Yes, sir," said Rude.
"What?" exclaimed Reno.
"Construction site. Worked there six months when I was fifteen."
"Come on, follow me," said Veld. Once again he led the way through the maze of the inner plate. The boom of Reactor 4 gradually faded behind them, and Reactor 5 grew louder ahead. The room he took them to this time was much smaller, with a bed, a table, chairs, and various pieces of what looked like scientific equipment, including something both Rude and Reno recognised as a cloning tank like the one in Hojo's lab.
"This was Hollander's lair, wasn't it, sir?" asked Reno.
Veld nodded. "As I thought, nothing's been cleared away. Everyone thinks it's someone else's job. We've stripped the data from the computers, of course. I did it myself; you should find it's all operational and clean. Dismantle everything and move it to the room we were in before."
Rude pointed at the cloning tank questioningly.
"That thing?" Veld's tone was contemptuous. "We have no use for it. Destroy it."
"Roger, sir."
"And tell no one. About any of this."
The two Turks nodded. "Understood."
.
March 2002
As he studied the chart of AVALANCHE activity that was slowly growing and elaborating like a wild vine across the whiteboard in his office, Veld could begin to discern a pattern. One or two big assaults were usually followed by months of quiescence, during which time, he presumed, they built up their supplies, planned their next campaigns, and recruited new members to replace the fallen. That last, thought Veld, probably wasn't difficult. The economy was doing strange things these days. People who had a job, or owned land, or provided services, were prospering, but outside Midgar and Shinra jobs were hard to find, and in many parts of the planet the poor were struggling to survive.
Midgar's own slums undoubtedly provided AVALANCHE with a large percentage of their cannon fodder. The Shinra media and the P.R.-Schools liaison department were working hard to raise public awareness of the dangers of being seduced into terrorist cells – but realistically, when you took a young man with no job and no future and offered him money and a gun and a purpose, what did you expect him to do? Commander Veld knew how that worked; none better. The difference between him and AVALANCHE was that he was determined to keep his people alive.
Every day, when Veld woke up, the first thought that went through his mind was, where are they? Mentally he ticked them off, beginning with Tseng, and ending with Cissnei. Only when he was satisfied that he could account for each of the lives in his charge, knew where they were and what they were doing, only then did the weight of anxiety lift from his mind, allowing him to get up, make himself a coffee, and begin another day.
.
16th April 2002
Dawn was breaking as Reno slipped from the bed of the brunette reactor technician in whose arms he had spent the night and made his getaway, closing her apartment door quietly on his way out so as not to wake her. He went across town to the Shinra Building, and had a shower in the staff washrooms on the 64th floor before heading down to the office to see if anyone was around. In the materia room he found Aviva humming tunelessly to herself while she took an inventory: she was standing with her back to him, bent over a drawer full of garnet-coloured crystalline spheres, each one meticulously labeled in Rosalind's neat handwriting.
Though he would have preferred a larger audience, Aviva would do nicely for starters. She enjoyed a fresh piece of gossip almost as much as he did. From the unselfconscious way she hummed and moved he could tell she didn't know he was there. It would be fun to give her a little fright. Lounging against the doorpost, he said, "Hey, Veev – "
She jumped like a startled cat, dropping the materia she held in her hand. Reno flung himself forward and caught it before it hit the floor.
"You really scared me!" she gasped.
He could see he had; a pulse was throbbing in the base of her throat. "Didn't mean to," he smirked, reaching around her to put the materia back in its place. Standing this close to her made him conscious of how small a thing she was. Her head barely reached his shoulder. She was a bit like a materia herself, he thought: a little nugget of raw energy.
Reno hadn't seen much of their youngest Turk in the months since her near-death experience at the hands of the Legend in Junon; she'd been in hospital for weeks having her leg straightened, while he'd been working down in the bunker with Rude, or off on missions in pursuit of rumours from which they always returned empty-handed. According to Mozo, Charlie had been up from Junon five or six times just to see Aviva – which proved, Reno supposed, that the Legend had a conscience, of sorts.
He slouched against the wall, hands in pockets, and by scrunching his shoulders forward he brought his eyes down almost to a level with hers. "So listen, Veev - you'll like this. Guess who I saw last night? In a dress. With a man. On a date. Roz! With one of the eggheads from the labs."
"I know." Aviva was still a little breathless. "Dr Harper."
"What? You know about it? You know his name? And you didn't tell me? Some friend you are!"
He wasn't really surprised to hear that Aviva already knew. She and Rosalind were tight, and girls always told each other this stuff. Probably she could fill him in on some of the juicier details, if he could get her to spill the beans.
Aviva's black eyes were earnest in her pale face. "Please don't make fun of them. It's serious."
"What – serious serious?"
"She asked me not to tell anyone. Reno, please – don't tease her about it."
"Shit. That serious, huh?"
"It could be. She thinks he might – " Aviva broke off short.
"What? Might what? You don't mean – " Reno's voice dropped an octave – "Marry her?"
He had meant it as a joke – but Aviva's look of guilty discomfort told him that he'd hit the mark dead centre.
"Don't tell her I told," Aviva squirmed.
"But Veev, this is a disaster! If Roz gets married, who'll do my laundry?"
She stared at him.
Hey kid, he thought, I'm trying to make you laugh here. You could at least crack a smile for me.
"Reno, please… " She laid her hand on his arm, the lightest of touches. "Promise you won't - well, you know. Don't play any practical jokes or mess them around. Roz has been waiting for someone like Phil for a long time. She's really serious about him."
Reno's eyes danced. "Aw, come on. How serious can it be? I didn't even know she had a boyfriend. How long's she been going out with him?"
"What's that got to do with it? When you know, you know."
"Is that right?" He bent his mouth closer to her ear, grinning. "And how would you know?"
Her little face flushed pink. Quickly she turned away and tried to cover her confusion by busying herself with the materia, sliding the summons drawer shut, picking up her clipboard and moving along to the next case. He remained where he was, leaning against the wall, arms folded, waiting for the inevitable comeback. Aviva wasn't the kind of kid to meekly let him - or anyone - have the last word.
She shut the support materia cupboard with a slam and stood up straight to face him. Her cheeks were burning. Here we go, he thought.
"Not everyone is like you, Reno," she blazed at him. "Some guys like having one special girl. Some guys want to get married and settled down."
"Yeah, but – " He pushed off from the wall and sloped over to her. "Look, don't misunderstand me. Roz is my friend too. I want her to be happy. But married? That's just – unrealistic. And it wouldn't make her happy, no matter what she thinks. People like us don't get married."
"Knox did." Even before she'd finished saying it, Aviva bit her lip; she'd realized it was a stupid thing to say.
"Exactly. That's my point. People like us, Veev, we don't get married, and if we do, we don't stay married, because this job takes everything we've got. Nothing else is permanent. Every other relationship's going to fall short sooner or later, so the sooner you accept that, the happier you'll be, because nothing lasts forever – "
He stopped abruptly, remembering whose words those were.
Aviva took advantage of his silence to unleash a flood of indignation on him. "Is that right? And how would you know, Mister Reno, with an attitude like that? You never give anyone a chance! For all you know the best thing that ever happened to you could be right under your nose and you wouldn't see it because you're too busy running around after all those girls like a – like a kid in a candy store, always going after the ones with the shiniest wrappers. Don't you ever wish you could find some special someone you could spend your life with?" Red-cheeked and out of breath, she faltered and fell silent, looking anywhere but at his face.
Right now I'd settle for someone who could take my mind off Cissnei for a few hours, thought Reno wryly. He'd had no luck so far. But he kept trying.
Tseng's voice interrupted them, calling from down the corridor, "Reno, can you come here? I've got a job for you."
"Be right there, Boss. Well, Veev, duty calls. " Before Aviva could duck, he threw a playful punch that caught her lightly under the chin. "See you later, half-pint."
"I have work to do anyway," she replied, clutching the clipboard to her chest.
.
Extract from Aviva's diary, 16th April 2002
Oh my god, I can't believe I actually said that to him! I'm still shaking! My handwriting's all over the place.
It would have to be him who saw Roz and Phil together!
I don't know what came over me. I was this close to blurting it out. It's like there's this part of me that really wants to tell. Sometimes I feel like I'm going to spontaneously combust from all the feelings I've got trapped inside. In a way it would be such a relief to let it all out.
But then what? He'd tell the Chief. He'd have to. And I'd get sent away. And I might never see him again. Which would officially make me the biggest idiot who ever opened her fat mouth...
.
May 2002
At the beginning of May Commander Veld brought a new recruit into the office. The name she went by was Hunter. She was a tall, handsome girl, perhaps eighteen years old, with abundant light brown hair and hazel eyes. She came, Veld told them, from Mideel. That was all he would say.
To Tseng alone did he explain the full story of how he had found her living rough in the woods beyond the ruins of Banora. She had fled like a wild animal at the sight of him, but he had waited patiently, and eventually she had returned. It was his suit that drew her back, she told him. Veld asked her when she had seen a suit like his before. On the men who came to talk to Mr Rhapsodos, she said; the ones that Genesis killed. She asked Veld if he, too, was hunting Genesis. If so, she said, he was out of luck. The renegade SOLDIER hadn't been back to what was left of his hometown for five or six months, at least.
He's dead, Veld told her.
The girl burst out sobbing when she heard this news, beating her head with her fists.
What's wrong? Veld asked.
I wanted to kill him myself! she cried.
Bit by bit he pieced together her story. Her father had been old Mr Rhapsodos' gamekeeper. On the day of the massacre, Hunter had been up in the foothills at the other end of the estate, checking the traplines, and thus she had escaped with her life when everyone else – her parents, her aunts and uncles and cousins, her neighbours and friends, and the two Turks – had died.
Are you the one who buried them? Veld asked her.
Yes, she said. So he couldn't get them.
After covering their remains as best she could, she had searched the village for survivors. No one was left but Mrs Hewley. There were strange creatures everywhere: purple monsters, and things that were not quite men but that looked like Genesis. She had tried to persuade Mrs Hewley to leave, but Mrs Hewley would not go anywhere without her son's sword, and even between the two of them they could not lift it. For several days Hunter had hidden in the Hewley house. Then one afternoon she'd heard the sound of a helicopter approaching and had panicked, afraid that it was Genesis coming back. Abandoning Mrs Hewley, she had fled, running without stopping until she reached the distant woods. From there she had watched the bombs fall and the village burn.
You know who I work for, don't you? said Veld.
The girl nodded. She said she had realized at the time that it was Genesis Shinra were after. The bombs had made no difference. The village was already dead.
For more than two years Hunter had been living alone, foraging, hunting, doing whatever it took to survive. She was skilful with a shotgun and a skinning knife. These qualities, and her obvious intelligence, were the reasons the Commander gave for having hired her. But as the days passed, Tseng saw that the other Turks were finding her difficult to work with. She lacked the humility becoming in a raw recruit. Her manner declared, I can fend for myself; I don't need you. She was opinionated, demanding a reason for everything she was told to do, and if she didn't like the reason, she would argue.
Tseng was willing to acknowledge her strengths. He also understood why the Commander was so stubbornly determined to keep her, despite her obvious shortcomings. This insight he kept to himself. What he did express privately to Veld was his concern that the girl might not be enough of a team player to make the grade.
"Give her time," said the Commander. "Keep her on unclassified missions for now and see how she shapes up. If she still isn't fitting in, say, in three months' time, I'll see if I can transfer her out. Maybe to SOLDIER."
"But SOLDIER doesn't take women, sir."
"Well," said Veld absently, "We'll see, then."
.
Towards the end of May, when the work on the bunker was well under way, Reno found another postcard in his pigeonhole. On the front, President Shinra cutting the ribbon at the inauguration of the Junon cannon. On the back, this:
Dreamt of you last night. We were chasing Movers in the marine caves. I kept losing sight of you, then I'd find you again. I was sorry to wake up. Tell the guys I miss them.
He tucked the card away and went to the kitchen to pour himself a cup of black coffee.
Why was she jerking his chain like this? Was that, in fact, what she was doing? Or was she trying to patch things up? Keep the lines of communication open? Send him some sort of message?
His phone rang. "The President wants you upstairs," said Tseng. "Stat."
"Wants me? Or just a Turk?"
"He asked for you particularly. Don't keep him waiting." Tseng hung up.
This was a new one: Reno had never been summoned by name to the inner sanctum before. When the Old Man wanted a Turk, he called Veld, and Veld sent the best man for the job. Wondering what he could possibly have done to attract the President's personal attention, and how he might best talk his way out of trouble, if trouble was what this proved to be, he rode the elevator to the 69th floor (something he could never do without experiencing a knee-jerk surge of adrenaline), got out, and ran up the stairs to the Presidential office.
Far away on the other side of the room, the stout old man in his crimson velvet suit stood with his back to Reno, gazing out the window. Between them lay an expanse of marble floor geometrically patterned in shades of cream and charcoal, and so highly polished that Reno could see his own reflection in the tiles. Four finely carved columns held up the domed ceiling; five more framed the huge windowpanes, their looking-glass sheen mirroring ghostly duplicates of the room, the President, and the red-haired Turk. Outside the window the liverish glow from the reactors flickered across the underbelly of the clouds.
"Mr President, sir?"
"Reno." The President turned around. He wasn't smiling. "There's something here that I understand belongs to you."
Weird. People hinted sometimes that the Old Man might have a screw or two loose. Maybe they were right. "To me, sir?"
The President beckoned for Reno to come round the desk. This was a large semi-circular bulkhead of chrome and neon, raised up on a dais, and as complex as the cockpit of an airship. Curious, but wary, Reno approached.
In the President's chair the little ginger cat lay curled up fast asleep, faintly purring.
"This is your cat, isn't it, Reno?"
"Not exactly, sir," said Reno cautiously; the Old Man did not like to be contradicted. "It's more, you might say, on the payroll. Rodent control officer, yeah."
The President was not amused. "Don't be facetious. Are you telling me my building has a pest problem?"
So many possible answers sprang to Reno's mind in response to this question that he was momentarily at a loss for words.
"Well?" demanded the President. "Speak up, boy."
"No, sir. It's a, you know, precautionary measure."
"I don't like cats," the Old Man stated. "Take it away."
Was that all? Relieved, Reno reached forward to lift the cat from the chair. Before he could touch it, the cat opened one eye, yawned widely to display its mouthful of needle teeth, and stretched, unsheathing those switchblade claws.
Reno said, "Let me go get my gloves and – "
"Pansy! Just get rid of it. Here – " the Old Man made a lunge for the scruff of the cat's neck. Recoiling with a cry, he held his hand up in disbelief. "It bit me!"
A drop of presidential blood fell onto the immaculate marble floor.
"Kill it," said the President.
"But sir – "
"Shoot it! Now!"
"But sir – it's just a cat; it didn't know any better – "
"Why are you arguing with me? Just kill it."
Think, Reno, think. "But sir – what about your chair? And it'll make a mess of your desk. Why don't I take it outside and – "
"I don't give a shit about the chair. And you can clean up the mess. What's wrong with you, Turk? I told you to kill that madman Fuhito in Junon, and you wouldn't, and now I'm telling you to kill a cat, and you have the nerve to say No? Who do you think you work for? I'm ordering you: shoot that cat. Now. Or I'll have Veld sort you out once and for all."
Fucking hell, thought Reno, the old guy's batshit. But he's the President. So maybe I'm the crazy one. What the hell is wrong with me? Why can't I kill it? It's just a cat…. Cissnei's cat -
At that moment a rat emerged from behind one of the columns.
It was large, it was grey, and it was ugly. Its long naked tail was as muscular as a snake. Its jagged incisors were the colour of old bones. Its small red eyes glistened like two fresh drops of blood.
The President's cheeks turned pale. "Reno – do something – "
This time Reno did not hesitate. He drew his gun, but before he could take aim and fire a ginger streak came flying through the air, ears back, claws out, teeth bared. The cat landed on the rat's back and bit deeply into its neck. The rat squeaked furiously, bucking and twisting, and for a few seconds the two animals became one single struggling ball of grey and orange fur rolling back and forth between the pillars. Bright smears of blood appeared on the shining floor. Then the cat broke free and came in for the kill, taking hold of the rat by its head and tossing it into the air with a loud neck-breaking snap. The rat thudded to the floor, twitched, and was still. The cat sat down and began to clean its whiskers. Reno and the President stared.
"Bugger me," said the President, impressed in spite of himself. "Now that's what I call a professional job. Reno, you could learn a thing or two from that cat. All right, go on, take it and get out of here. Don't let me see it up here again. And take that – carcass – with you."
Reno did not wait to be told twice. With the cat tucked against his shoulder, and the dead rat held at arm's length, he sprinted down the stairs towards the elevator, pressed the call button, and jiggled impatiently from foot to foot. The tips of the little cat's claws prickled lightly on the skin of his neck.
"Don't even think about it, partner," he warned. "You fucking lucky little furry bastard, how many of the original nine you suppose you got left after this?"
"Reno," said a voice behind him.
Reno's heart sank. Turning round, he saw Rufus step forward from the shadows between two pillars, Dark Nation following at his heel.
I am so not in the fucking mood for him right now, thought Reno.
Resting one hand on his cuahl's head, Rufus said, "That was quite a risk you took just then. My old man expects his employees to do what they're told. Why wouldn't you kill it?"
God knows. Because I'm stupid, OK? It's just a cat. Cissnei's cat. And it's not like I think that as long as it stays here she's bound to come back, or anything, because that would just be superstitious –
He shrugged. "The girls are pretty fond of this little kitty. It'd be more than my life's worth to let anything happen to it."
The elevator pinged; the doors slid open. Reno stood aside to let the President's son enter; Dark Nation followed, and Reno brought up the rear. "Mezzanine," said Rufus. Reno pressed the button for him, asking, "You're leaving the building? Who's going with you?" because if Rufus went out without a bodyguard and the Chief ever found out Reno had let it happen, he'd be deader than this rat's arse he was holding.
"That new girl," said Rufus. "Hunter."
Dark Nation sank down on its haunches. Its head was at a level with Rufus' chest. It kept its slitted eyes fixed on the cat, though whether its expression was more hungry, or friendly, Reno couldn't decide.
"They say a cat may look at a king," said Rufus, reaching out to scratch the ginger cat behind its ear. Reno felt the rumble of its purr ignite.
Rufus smiled. "You know," he said, "It's possible I was wrong about you, Reno. You may have some redeeming qualities after all."
"That's big of you, V.P.," Reno replied, aiming for sincerity. "Thanks."
"I'd like you to teach me how to fly a helicopter. I'll speak to Veld and arrange a time for the lessons. Oh, and you can give me that rat."
Lip curled, Reno held up the stiffening corpse. "What d'you want this for? I was going to throw it in the incinerator – "
"Dark Nation likes them." Rufus took the rat by the tail.
Kid's weirder than ever, thought Reno. Still, with a father like old Shinra…. If that was what families did to you, then Reno thanked his lucky stars he'd shucked his early on.
The 'M' on the control panel lit up. The lift stopped; the doors parted. Hunter was standing there, an impatient scowl on her face. Reno held the doors open with one hand while Rufus and Dark Nation stepped out. Rufus, his face expressionless, held out the rat to Hunter. She looked at it in dismay, then glanced at Reno.
The lift doors were closing. He gave her a mocking grin. "Better take the V.P.'s rat, rookie." Her face darkened thunderously – but the doors were shut, and she was gone, and Rufus was gone, thank god. Reno had the lift to himself. Putting the cat down, he pressed 48. Then he took Cissnei's postcard out of his pocket and resumed what he had been doing before he was so strangely interrupted.
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31st May, 2002. Departmental Briefing
Tseng sat at the head of the table. Immediately to his left sat Rosalind, radiating happiness, and then Rude, listening carefully and offering the occasional pithy comment. Next to Rude sat Cavour, idly turning the small gold hoop in his left ear; next to Cavour, Aviva, surreptitiously rubbing at the ache in her game leg. Left of Aviva sat Knox, the dent in his skull clearly visible beneath the fuzz of new hair on his scalp; then Reno, tieless, shirt unbuttoned, half-asleep; then Skeeter, doodling explosions all over his note pad; then Mink, her rangy body slung sideways in her chair; and finally Mozo, his stiff brush of brown hair standing upright as if in astonishment above his beetling brows.
The rookie was out on patrol in Sector Eight. In the six weeks that had passed since Hunter joined the department, she had set a new monster killing record.
Tseng turned over the page of his briefing notebook, and continued, "Item three. New weapons testing, Quadra Island. Standard procedure. Rude, Mink, Skeeter, you'll be away three days. The helicopter leaves at 14.00 hours. You'll be accompanied by Director Scarlet and her P.A. Now, item four – Ciara Bloom, freelance hacker. What can you tell us about her, Rosalind?"
"We caught her attempting to break into our S-level encrypted files. She's had quite a field day with our less protected stuff. But she's cocky. She didn't cover her tracks as well as she thought she did. This is her picture –" Rosalind handed the paper across to Cavour – "And her address."
Cavour whistled. "Posh."
"Yes," said Tseng, "She's making good money. Find out who's paying her before you sort her out. Usual drill: bring back what you can, destroy what you can't…"
Meanwhile, Reno's thoughts were drifting. These jobs on the table were nothing out of the ordinary, mere Turk bread and butter. He'd already been assigned his own mission: find and bring in whichever employee was passing stolen items from the Shinra shop to the fences in Wall Market. Cakewalk.
His eyelids felt like they had weights attached to them. He'd had a rough night. Broken sleep. Intense dreams….
Tseng was saying, "Now, next item – the runaway pre-cog."
Skeeter asked, "Is it true they've lost their mojo?"
Tseng nodded. "Three of them are burnt out and the others are fading. It looks like putting them on mako literally drained their batteries."
"So why do we want this one back, sir? I mean, if he's no use?" asked Aviva.
"The integrity of the program has to be protected. With what he knows, and without his powers, he's too vulnerable. He was spotted in Kalm two days ago and may well still be there. Here's the dossier." He pushed the folder across to her. "Aviva, Mozo, you need to find him before our enemies do. Bring him back if you can. Otherwise….."
Last night I dreamed of you. I lost you; I found you –
Dreams, Reno reflected, could feel realer than the real thing. Awkwardly real. He'd been woken last night from his vivid dream by a girl whose name he couldn't quite remember; she'd kicked him and demanded, in an offended kind of way, to know just who the hell this Cissnei was. Well, there was no way he could tolerate that – the sound of her name on some strange girl's tongue - so he'd got dressed and left and found a bar open late, or early, depending on how you looked at it, and then wandered back to the office and caught a little shut-eye in the lounge –
"I'd like to move on to the last item on our agenda," said Tseng. "AVALANCHE."
"They've been quiet too long," said Knox. "They're planning something."
Well, duh, thought Reno.
Tseng said, "The Commander thinks their next move will be against Midgar, and that it will be a small-scale pinpoint raid against a single specific target. The worst case scenario would be an attack on the reactors. They've tried to blow one up before, and we have to expect that they'll try again, probably quite soon. I know security's been doubled, but – "
Reno stifled a yawn. Same old yada yada: don't relax your vigilance, keep your eyes and ears open, never forget they're out to get you. Sometimes Tseng acted like he thought they were all rookies.
It was frustrating, though, having to hang around waiting for AVALANCHE to make the first move. None of them liked being thrown onto the back foot like this, relying on guesswork, never able to relax, and never able to attack. What they needed - and what seemed impossible to get – was information –
Out of the blue the idea struck him.
It came ready-assembled, complete down to the last detail. He saw at once that it was foolproof. And it was brilliant.
Fuck it, he was brilliant. The Boss was going to love him for this.
Tseng said, "… That's all. Dismiss," and began to gather his papers. The other Turks got to their feet and left, coffee cups in hand, dispersing to their various assignments. Reno remained seated, one arm thrown over the back of his chair, drumming his fingers impatiently.
Tseng looked up. "Don't you have work to do?"
"I've had an idea. Thought you might like to hear it."
"About what?"
"Just a sec. I don't want Rude to overhear this." Reno went to the door, closed it, pulled a chair close to Tseng, and sat down. "It's about AVALANCHE. I think we need to pull a Chelsey on them."
Tseng frowned. "What?"
"You know. Get inside. Infiltrate them. Find out what they're doing."
Tseng leaned back in his seat, arms folded, and gave his subordinate a considering stare, as if he couldn't quite decide whether Reno was pulling his leg or being serious.
"You haven't forgotten Chelsey?" Reno asked him.
"Reno, do you really think that idea has never occurred to us?"
"Well, if it has, you haven't done anything about it, because everybody's still….."
The words died on his lips as the realization hit him.
It was one of those moments of illumination that were almost blinding in their obviousness. So, that was what she was up to! Reno felt a prick of annoyance with himself for having been so dense. Then, as the revelation took shape more firmly in his mind, and he realized exactly what it was that Tseng and the Chief had had in mind when they chose Cissnei for this mission, a wave of pure relief swept through him that felt almost like joy. He burst out laughing.
"What?" Tseng frowned. "What's so funny?"
"Boss, all I can say is, if Fuhito's your mark, you'd have done better to send Skeeter."
"Reno, I've warned you before not to speculate about other Turks' missions."
"Oh, come on. Tell me I'm wrong, then."
Tseng kept his lips sealed. He didn't look happy.
Reno grinned. "See? I knew it. But you're way off beam with this one. Our friend Fu-fu-fu-hito's as gay as a rainbow chocobo – you only have to look at him to know that. I've meet the guy, remember?" He paused, and went on more seriously, "Don't you ever think sometimes you might be taking this whole secretiveness shit a bit too far? I mean, you could have asked me. You could have said, Hey, Reno, you've met this twat, twice, so what d'you make of him? I could have saved you a lot of trouble. Could have saved us all a lot of time. So – has she had any luck?"
"None whatsoever," Tseng admitted.
"She made contact with them?"
"We thought so, once, but the trail dried up."
They both fell silent. Reno continued to study his boss' face closely. Tseng stared off into the middle distance, his eyes hooded, his thoughts veiled.
Reno was not deceived. He broke the silence, "Don't tell me you're not thinking about Nats, because I know you are."
"We're all in danger," replied Tseng slowly. "Whether we're here in Midgar, or out in the field. The less people who know about her mission, the safer she is. We haven't told the Board."
"I guess that's why she's still alive." A pulse of fear shot through him. "She is still alive, isn't she? When did you last hear from her?"
"The day before yesterday."
Reno took a deep breath. "So she's OK. For now. But it's been months. Her mission's a failure, you said so yourself. And the longer she's out there, the more she's exposed. You should bring her home, Boss. Tell the Chief he needs to bring her home."
"If we bring her home, we have nothing."
"We've got nothing now, so we've got nothing to lose. Maybe you should try something different."
"And you have a suggestion?"
This came out a little more sarcastically than Tseng had perhaps intended. Reno grinned. "Yeah, I do. It came to me in a flash of genius just as I was nodding off during the meeting."
Tseng raised his eyebrows. "All right. Tell me."
"Send Charlie instead." And when Tseng made a gesture as if to brush the notion aside, Reno insisted, "C'mon, think about it. He'd be perfect. He's changed sides before, so they'd believe it of him. And they'd want him. The Legend. Feather in their cap. And it'd be easy to come up with some story for him, like he's after more money, or he's sick of the way you've been treating him after all those years in Costa. They'd swallow that. Seriously, Boss – Charlie's the only one of us with a rat's chance of infiltrating AVALANCHE. You should bring Ciss home, and send him. If, that is, you trust him."
"I'd trust him with my life," said Tseng with feeling.
"Yeah? You didn't use to feel that way."
"I think I understand him better now."
Reno was torn between exasperation and amusement. Sometimes, he thought, I just don't get this guy at all. The Boss took likings to the most unlikely people, people you'd think he'd have more reason to loathe. Like Zack Fair. And now Charlie. But whatever. If it brought Cissnei home, Reno was good with it. And who knew – Charlie might blow himself up. Or he might even succeed. If he couldn't, no one could: Reno was sure of that much, at least.
"So how about a bonus for my brilliant idea, Boss?"
"Nice try," Tseng almost smiled. "But any inspirations you have on company time are Shinra's intellectual property. You ought to know that, Reno."
Notes:
The 'gay as a rainbow chocobo' line is borrowed in loving homage from OrgLIX and their 'Crisis Perverted' series on youtube; it seemed exactly like the kind of saying that would have common currency in Shinra's world. The new Turk 'Hunter' is more usually called 'Shotgun', and is the one most often featured in scripts or downloads of BC gameplay.