Twilight Perfected Chapter 16: It's my time to rule at last, fifteen years have I been waiting to sit upon my throne.
To Sephiroth's surprise, Shinra didn't even make a token effort at chasing after them, though after what he'd just been through he was just fine with leaving a gift chocobo's beak unexamined.
Eventually, the two stolen vehicles managed to make it to the very edge of Midgar; whenever Sephiroth saw that gigantic 'off-ramp' it left him with a strange sense of melancholy. Even Midgar, the very seat of their power, had been ill-treated by Shinra; it was a city more abandoned than fully built.
"So, we're really leaving Midgar?" Kadaj glanced back as he killed his cycle's engines and dismounted.
"For now. I'd like to think that our recent show of force will make Shinra behave in a more circumspect manner, but we wouldn't be doing this if they didn't have a bad habit of fouling their own nest. We'll be back to deal with them properly once we get the chance."
"Tifa, you really think that our best shot at saving the Planet is out there?" Barret wondered as he gazed out at the bright noonday sun.
"I don't… I don't know if what's out there is going to help us save the Planet the same way that destroying more mako reactors will." She admitted, clearly somewhat reluctant about parting ways with the city that had been her home for five years. "But Avalanche, our Avalanche, we're as much about saving people as saving the Planet. I trust Sephiroth, and if he says there are a lot of people out there who are going to need saving very soon..."
"The sooner we put this place behind us and I return home the better," huffed Stargazer as he hopped out of the truck-bed.
"Well then, what are we waiting around for? Let's get going." Barret ordered as he headed for one of the nearby construction cranes.
Since he'd managed the climb up from Lower Midgar, the prospect of climbing down to the grass below didn't seem to bother him.
"You know, for a showroom piece, this truck was awfully well stocked..." Aerith announced playfully before holding up a canteen, a few ration bars, and then roughly a thousand Gil.
"They may be a bunch of professional bad guys, but the Turks did leave us some lovely going away gifts," She reflected, before on a hunch checking under her chair and discovering a silvery survival blanket.
Surprised by the Ancient's foraging, Tifa checked under her own chair and discovered a second blanket.
"This is suspiciously convenient..."
"Damn right, why would Shinra's favorite killers want to play nice with us? Unless they laced the stuff with poison..." Barret scoffed.
"Oh, let me try! The doctors taught me how to taste at least five different poisons!" Kadaj instantly volunteered.
"That won't be necessary; if Tseng wanted us dead, planting explosives inside the vehicles would have been a far more effective way to express it. That said, please pass me the canteen."
"Thirsty?" Aerith half teased as she handed it over.
Sephiroth discharged a powerful electrical pulse into the container.
"Cautious. We'll also need to sweep the blankets when we get a chance; Shinra was already working on waterproof tracking devices no larger than a penny five years ago, so I'm sure they've only gotten better since then. He's giving us this equipment because Shinra needs Aerith alive and healthy. They might not have the resources to take her back on hand at the moment, but they're not going to forget about her any time soon; they've lost a battle, not the war. This is all getting a lot more complicated than I imagined it would be, and now we've found ourselves fighting on two fronts."
"Only General Sephiroth would imagine that forcing Shinra to own up to all the shit they've done could be taken care of in a single weekend. What sort of 'second front' are you talkin' about, then?" Barret demanded.
"We might be out of Shinra HQ, but we still need to put more distance between ourselves and Midgar before I have time to explain. Once we get to Kalm, I promise."
Rather than focusing on trying to further convince Barret, something he'd hopefully accomplish by laying out how he'd ended up spending five years in the Lifestream, Sephiroth focused his attention on Aerith.
A part of him pondered offering to help her get back to Sector Five. That part, he subjected to a high-speed slideshow of his track record at convincing Aerith to favor the path of least resistance. Internal dissent quashed, he decided to save time by just accepting the inevitable.
"Welcome to Avalanche, Ms. Gainsborough."
For reasons he couldn't even begin to fathom she suddenly broke out in giggles, though when they finally subsided she noticed his raised eyebrow of confusion.
"Sorry, it's just that back in Don Corneo's dungeon, Kadaj told me the exact same thing! I wasn't sure if I wanted to join Avalanche back then, but, somewhere between them trying to murder tens of thousands of people and kidnapping me... I'd say my opinion of Shinra has soured just a bit."
XXX XXX XXX
"Goodbye, Midgar."
Aerith sighed wistfully as she finally planted her boots on the grass surrounding the world's largest city.
"Is it your first time outside, too?" Kadaj promptly piped up.
"Yeah, twenty-two years… almost seems a shame to break a streak like that."
"Twenty-two years? Wow, we both lived our entire lives in Midgar, but yours is way longer than mine."
"Well, how old are you?"
"Coupla months.".
Aerith blinked. Then she blinked again.
"Oh that's right, I never got around to telling you- I'm a quick grown clone of Sephiroth!" Kadaj 'explained,' for a given definition of the term...
Aerith blinked. Then she blinked again.
She decided for the moment to focus on a simpler matter: a familiar yellow flower which was still attached to Kadaj's outfit. That said, it wasn't looking anywhere near as healthy as it had the last time she'd laid eyes on it; it'd already lost one petal and all of its others were starting to wilt.
"I'm surprised you're still carrying around that flower; it probably won't last more than another day or two at this rate."
Kadaj glanced down to the small island of gold in the middle of a sea of black and silver and then shot her a look that suggested that what she'd just said was as befuddling to him as the revelation of his true age had been to her.
"No matter what happens to the flower, no matter how it looks… its still the flower that Sephiroth gave me because we're brothers." He insisted earnestly, without a discernible trace of irony or self-consciousness. "That said, um... if you want to tell me how to take better care of it, I'm all ears!"
"You know, I think that me giving botany lessons would actually be something of a first; most guys I sell flowers to just end up giving them to girls they like."
Which was how a few moments later she wound up having her own yellow flower neatly attached to her dress.
"My brother seriously cares about you, so that means I know I'm gonna like you, too!" Kadaj promised cheerfully,
Aerith had given the flower to Sephiroth, who had given it to Kadaj, who had given it back to Aerith… a part of her couldn't help but wonder if they would somehow end up repeating the cycle if she managed to convince Sephiroth to take another flower.
She was jolted out of her musings by Barret loudly clearing his throat.
"Look, there's something that we're gonna have to sort out, and now that we're outside of Midgar, this is as good a time as any. Back in Seventh Heaven, you and your brother were walking into my headquarters, but now it's you, your brother, this Ancient you met, and this lab rat cat dog you freed. Not only that, but you've even got Tifa in your corner. Since Avalanche taking our revolution on the road is your idea, I think it's time that you took charge."
Silence hung in the air for a few moments.
"Thank you for your vote of confidence, Mr. Wallace."
"Doesn't take a genius to know when a train has to shift tracks. Though if you're willing to take some advice from a subordinate; you might want to try and build some relationships rather than just giving orders. You could start by calling me 'Barret'."
XXX XXX XXX
"I wanted to say...thank you for showing restraint and not blowing up Shinra HQ on your way out."
Barret was glad he had his sunglasses on; it meant that their captive wouldn't be able to notice the way his eyes widened in shock.
"Blow up Shinra HQ? You really think that we'd destroy an entire office building full of corporate drones just to get at the assholes running the place? I mean, if we'd had the chance, redistributing the wealth of the top five floors across a few city blocks does have a certain appeal..." Barret couldn't help but chuckle to himself.
"You destroyed Reactor One, and Reactor Five."
Barret was a little surprised at just how much anger and pain there was in Reeve's voice.
"After Reactor One went down, something happened which limited the loss of life, but Reactor Five's destruction was every bit as bad as my projections. Not just 'corporate drones' but ordinary people who died from mundane things like car crashes when the traffic lights suddenly went out."
The Director of Shinra's Urban Development Department was actually on the tall side, but right now he reminded Barret of an especially yappy chihuahua… you wouldn't have expected a dog like that to have so much anger in it.
Not that Barret was going to let himself be railroaded.
"Don't go blaming that on us! Avalanche's plan called for pinpoint sabotage of the reactor pump to shut it down while minimizing fallout."
"Do you honestly think that would have made a big difference? Maybe a hundred or so fewer people would have died, out of a death toll of thousands. Do you know how many riots there were in Sectors One and Five? Above and below the Plate! I've spent my entire life watching how people will tear each other apart the moment they get one excuse… and Avalanche causing blackouts gave two entire sectors an excuse."
"It ain't in people's nature to tear each other apart if they get an excuse, it's in Shinra's! They've been dripping their poison in everyone's souls, making us forget how to care about one another, how to care about the Planet!"
"You want to talk about caring about the planet? My upgraded reactors improved the Lifestream to mako distillation process to be nearly twice as efficient as the prior versions! I donate over a quarter of my salary to various charities! Which do you think has saved more lives, my spreadsheets or your bombs?"
"Well ain't you just the grease that makes it possible for the wheels of industry to keep on spinning? Doesn't matter who gets hurt, doesn't matter why, all that matters is they gotta spin... Besides, they weren't all our bombs; that smug shitheel Heidegger somehow found out what we had planned ahead of time. He must have wired the entire reactor with explosives so that we'd end up looking like monsters. Sounds like it worked..."
"You expect me to take you at your word alone that Shinra would be willing to sabotage its own reactors and kill thousands of people just to win a propaganda victory?"
"...Operation Damocles."
"Touche," Reeve admitted. "In light of that, I've got no right to assume that Heidegger and the President weren't plotting something that insane, but I wasn't involved in it. My job was keeping a roof over people's heads, not blowing them up!"
"Guess that must have made you feel pretty darn proud of yourself… wonder how many people in Sector Seven would have been thankful for that 'roof' as they watched it come screaming down on them."
"I told you, I did everything in my power to stop the Plate from being dropped."
"No, you did everything you could that you thought you'd get away with while still being part of Shinra."
Reeve raised a finger defiantly, but no words left his mouth. He gritted his teeth, his steps slowing as Barret left him in his wake.
XXX XXX XXX
There was a famous Wutain curse "may you live in interesting times", and at the moment Leslie Kyle understood its meaning all too well.
Sector Six was an "interesting" enough place to live most of the time, but right now, not only was everyone trying to grab various pieces of Don Corneo's empire in the wake of his apparent scarpering, but there were growing rumors that Sector Seven was about to start flooding the market with slightly-used military surplus. That meant the local arms merchants might soon be taking a bath; one that would be unlikely to make them smell any better, but would leave a lot of people with a lot of guns very angry about the loss of their cornered market.
This was a recipe that had never led to anything unpleasant happening to anyone.
Which left Leslie asking himself if he should make a play to become one of the new rising powers in Wall Market, or simply strive to maintain his position as a trusted lieutenant to the rich and powerful. If he went with the latter, which "rich and powerful" figure should he align himself with?
In short, if he never saw another person with silver hair in his life again, it would be too soon.
"Leslie! Old buddy, old pal, I could use favor..."
Not that redheads hadn't brought their own share of troubles to his door.
"Yes, Reno?"
"There's something I want. I have a briefcase with Gil in it that I'd be willing to bet you want. Deal, or no deal?"
XXX XXX XXX
With John Shinra's death, Reeve Tuesti was now one of the six richest men on the Planet. So why exactly was he spending the night sleeping in the middle of nowhere on a survival blanket, squeezed between two men who wouldn't hesitate to kill him the moment he disobeyed their orders?
Because just once he'd broken the golden rule of business: "lead, follow, or get out of the way", that was why. Because given a flat choice between loyalty to Shinra and 60,000 people's lives, Reeve had discovered that there were lines he wasn't willing to cross.
Just like that, Reeve had his answer; he finally realized why he was here- he'd thrown in his lot, whether he realized it at the time or not He'd already betrayed Shinra once; pondering what it would take to get him to do it again was just quibbling over the price.
XXX XXX XXX
Reno lay sprawled across the couch in the General Affairs Auditing Department Lounge. Yesterday had been a busy day: he'd needed to perform interoffice sabotage of the Science and Research department, lost all his gambling money to a dog, the entire building had been raided by Avalanche, President Shinra had been killed, he'd eaten an especially succulent zolom steak that would have otherwise gone completely to waste, needed to oversee the installation of a replacement door to the lounge, and, worst of all, hadn't been able to watch The Causeway Relay.
Now, with a normal show he could have just set his DVR or caught it on reruns, but that was a mite hard when the show in question was illegal, so reruns were a little on the sparse side and the last thing that you wanted to do was to leave a digital footprint of your illicit viewing habits.
Thankfully, you didn't spend long as a Turk- let alone the Turk Commander of Vice- without getting to know a few people in Midgar's extensive black market and so now he had his very own physical copy of last night's episode.
Some people might be dead, a lot more injured, to say nothing of the value in company assets that had been damaged or stolen, and he might have committed some light treason, but Reno wasn't going to let a few minor details get in the way of being able to enjoy his favorite show.
A few moments after loading the disc, the TV's screen flickered from an unbroken blue background to revealing a middle-aged man in a suit with dark brown hair in glasses sitting behind a desk.
"Tonight: how many of our brave boys in blue must lay down their lives before the people of the slums realize that Shinra loves them to death? Then, why are the poor lucky enough that all the horrible things happen to them- when will rich people finally get the sympathy they deserve? My guest is a Wutain ninja who snuck into Midgar so that they could answer the most pressing question of our times, Avalanche: great threat to civilization as we know it or greatest threat to civilization as we know it? This, is the Causeway Relay!" announced Stefan Causeway, who had been considered Shinra's number one enemy in the honeymoon between the first version of Avalanche being put down and its second iteration springing up.
The door to the Turks' office opened, but Reno didn't bother to turn off the broadcast; Rude and Tseng already knew about his viewing habits, and anybody else with permission to automatically open that door would only bother to visit Shinra HQ's third sub-level in person if they already had enough evidence to sign his death warrant.
Except that to his surprise; it was neither his fellow Turks nor a SOLDIER death squad, instead, Dark Nation trotted into the room.
It seemed that Hojo hadn't been kidding when he'd talk about how the dog had a higher security clearance than Reno; Rufus' bodyguard must have been implanted with some kind of microchip that caused any door in Shinra HQ to automatically open at his approach.
Dark Nation took one look at the TV screen and then whined pathetically.
"Fine you can stay and watch, but if you tell anyone about this, I promise I'll take the time to actually read some veterinary textbooks and then, well, let's just say snitches don't get bitches."
Dark Nation jumped up onto the couch, landing directly on the Turk's stomach.
His view of the TV screen now obscured by a face full of waving tentacle, Reno was somewhat less than pleased.
XXX XXX XXX
One large pillow procurement and protracted argument later; the episode viewing resumed, with Dark Nation still on the couch and Reno on the pillow.
"If the people of Midgar are going hungry, then clearly they need to figure out a new diet, and that brings me to tonight's 'The Phrase'." Stefan paused dramatically.
There was a metallic "clang" sound effect as a graphic slid onto the screen bearing the words "Let them eat Mako."
"Just think about it, how much better off would we be if we could just figure out how to eat Mako? I mean, the stuff is limitless! Professor Simon Hojo says so, and if you can't trust a man who wrote his thesis statement on how Doctor Moreau failed to follow proper safety procedures while experimenting with dangerous animals, who can you trust?"
As Stefan spoke, metallic silver words slid onto the screen declaring the message "Also forgot to create a control group."
XXX XXX XXX
"Morning Reno."
"Morning Rude."
"Nice pillow."
"Ho ho, very funny, hah, hah, it is to laugh."
XXX XXX XXX
"Reno, you know I'm going to need to confiscate that recording once you're done with it."
"Couldn't find your own?"
"No, I'm trying to keep you alive so I don't wind up even more shorthanded. Heidegger has been kneecapping our department for years, and now when Shinra needs the Turks more than ever, you two are the only field agents I have. Speaking of, after today's meeting with our new president, I want you to go out there and buy a copy of every newspaper in Midgar; we need to find out what people are saying and see if any of it is useful."
"Even the crazy one that's wrong all the time?"
"Especially the crazy one that's wrong all the time. By sheer random chance, they're bound to get something right eventually, and we'll need all the help we can get to track down whoever killed President Shinra. Right now our evidence amounts to 'had a sword' and that's it."
"Okay, but just so you know, the last headline of theirs I remember seeing was about Shinra putting together a special squad of 'Dog SOLDIERs' who would hunt down terrorist werewolves."
"Since we're going to try and make this place presentable for the new President, I want all your Causeway Relay merchandise hidden. You can start with this mug." Tseng picked the item in question off of his desk and tossed it to his subordinate.
It was times like this when Reno was glad that he'd hollowed out the floor of the lounge to make his very own bolthole; not only was it a good place to store contraband, but it'd also helped him become good friends with Billy from the Environmental Impact Assessment Department. Billy's office was located on floor B4, directly below the Turks' lounge.
Some people might have gotten upset at having a co-worker plunge through the ceiling when they dug too deep, but Billy had simply asked Reno if he wanted any medical attention.
"Why do you have so much of this stuff anyway?"
"Because Stefan Causeway and I have got a good system going; every time I land a round within a foot of him, he sends me free merchandise! It's like the best promotional giveaway ever! I'm especially proud of the Causeway Relay T-shirt I got for attaching a block of C4 with no blasting caps to his car," Reno boasted, holding up the shirt in question.
Said shirt depicted the Turk standing next to Stefan Causeway, Reno's right arm around the host's shoulder and his left hand pointing proudly at Stefan's chest while the broadcaster bore a look of dour resignation bordering on scorn.
"You do realize that C4 costs more than a T-shirt?"
"Not when it's actually play-doh! I scammed him but good!" Reno scoffed, amazed his boss thought so little of him.
XXX XXX XXX
"Are you sensing something?" Sephiroth inquired, his tone polite, with a faint hint of reverence.
Deep down Aerith wished that she had been. If she'd had some sort of special "Cetra-sense" that was telling her half a dozen Shinra helicopters were about to swoop down on them and deploy four times that many SOLDIERs, it would have meant she wasn't just jumping at her own shadow over and over again.
Which, in point of fact, was exactly what she was doing. Jumping at her stupid shadow cast by the stupid too bright gigantic ball of orange fire hanging in the sky that somehow managed to convey a sense that it bore a particular ire against her. She'd been outside of Midgar for less than twenty-four hours, and already she was missing the Plate's comforting presence.
"No, I'm just trying to make sure we don't get ambushed." She tried to recast her nerves in the best light possible.
"So what is it like when you're talking with the Planet? I mean, I've been able to hear lots of stuff that other people can't, like the time I played the headphone beeping game with the Doctors. They were all really impressed and insisted that they'd make sure that all the troopers in the place knew how to handle their K9's without dog whistles…." Kadaj interjected.
At the word "dog whistle" both Sephiroth and Stargazer winced.
"But I've got no idea what it's like to talk with an entire Planet. What does its voice sound like? Oh! Is the Planet an 'it' or does the Planet have a gender?"
"I don't really talk with the Planet, it is more like it talks to me. Even then it's not really 'talking' it's more like… smells from things that aren't there, music that no one is playing…" She tried her best to explain.
"To hear the call of Gaia herself is a rare gift indeed." Stargazer intoned solemnly.
"Her. Right, got it."
"As my brother pointed out, if you're relying on your conventional senses, we'd probably detect any approaching Shinra troops before you, and Stargazer before either of us. As for the local wildlife, it's been years since I've been attacked by a monster while on foot."
Aerith wasn't sure if Sephiroth was boasting or simply stating a fact. She'd never paid especially close attention to the Wutain War, and even though he wasn't the only First Class SOLDIER she'd met, she'd never expected Sephiroth to be quite so… Sephirothic.
"Yeah, I sorta figured. The problem is that what I know in my head never seems to quite make it down to my gut." She lamented.
"Look, you just got kidnapped by Shinra and joined up with an Avalanche cell within the last 24 hours. Being on edge after having your whole life turned upside down is natural." Tifa reassured her.
"It's… it's a lot to take in your first time out of Midgar isn't it?" Sephiroth admitted, a faraway look in his eyes.
"Too much..." Aerith agreed, as once again the sight of the endless fields of green grass sent an unexplained shiver up her spine.
"But isn't that what makes it awesome? There's so much stuff out here to see! Grass, trees, birds, clouds, dirt…" Kadaj eagerly began to rattle off each and every single object he could lay his eyes on at the moment.
Sephiroth decided to take a different approach.
"Agoraphobia is one of the most commonly experienced phobias, though I'm surprised that a Cetra would have it. It's an atavistic throwback to when being out in the open meant being in danger of being ambushed by monsters, or even other humans."
"'We don't get to choose the things that we're afraid of, only how we react to them'…." Aerith murmured with a wan smile.
Sephiroth's eyes narrowed. "What was that?"
"Oh! It's just... one of the last things my mother- my birth mother, I mean- said to me. Why?"
"It's... nothing. Just hearing ghosts. Did you- no, he'd have died before you were born. Don't worry about it."
XXX XXX XXX
Rufus Shinra surveyed the boardroom that was finally his. With his father's death, he was at last free to take command of the Shinra Electric Power Company and lead it into the future. Except that, at the moment it felt more like he was having to drag it kicking and screaming into the future….
"Professor Hojo, would you care to explain to me why the head of Shinra's Science and Research Department, is delivering his most recent report to me, Through. A. Slide. Show?" Rufus growled through gritted teeth.
As if on cue, Dark Nation, previously lying peacefully at the feet of his chair, growled even more fiercely. Rufus had only just met his new bodyguard, but so far he was turning out to be the one part of his father's organization that seemed to be living up to its potential.
"Mr. President, please remember that I put in, and was approved for, a week-long working vacation in Costa Del Sol just before John Shinra's untimely demise. Even simply being able to physically attend this meeting is an accomplishment unto itself. On top of that, my intern, who normally handles the task of transcribing my work to a digital format, insisted that she would not be coming to the office until we could go at least a week without a life-threatening security failure." Hojo protested.
Rufus rolled his eyes in exasperation. When he was done finally auditing this organization, his first major task was going to be having a long discussion with Hojo about that vacation he'd insisted on leaving for right before Avalanche had attacked Shinra HQ. Had he known something was about to happen, and if so, how? Even more importantly, why hadn't he shared it with the rest of Shinra?
"Since I know you haven't been kept fully up to date on the important work we do in the Science and Research Division, it's important that you understand exactly what we are dealing with at the moment. It all starts with the subject dubbed 'Jenova' discovered thirty years ago by myself… and Professor Gast, frozen in the area of North Crate.
Hojo brought up a picture of Jenova.
"Where is its head and why does it have an eye for a nipple?" Rufus winced.
"I will explain the missing head in due time. As for your other question, Jenova has proven to be extremely morphologically flexible. Still, its discovery was a boon for Shinra; without it, the SOLDIER program would have never left the drawing board."
Hojo brought up another slide of Jenova and this one led to Rufus tilting his head to the side to make sure he was seeing it correctly.
"This… this is what the Ancients look like? But Sephiroth looks more or less human..." Shinra's new President pondered.
"Oh, I'm afraid that in your previous position as Vice President you weren't cleared for that information… When we originally uncovered Jenova, carbon dating confirmed that it hailed from the time of the Ancients, but after years of further testing we eventually determined that whatever Jenova is… it is not an Ancient. The Science Department had begun to suspect that such might be the case when Sephiroth displayed no ability to speak with the Planet, but did possess superhuman physical capabilities."
"I can't help but notice, you used present tense to describe Jenova," worry began to creep into Rufus' voice.
"That is correct, Jenova is very much alive. It was why we had to take somewhat extreme cautions to keep the subject contained; the system is energy intensive to the point that it was decided a mako reactor itself would be the safest place to store Jenova. Until five years ago, Jenova was held in the Nibelheim Reactor, but after the incident that took place there, it was decided that Shinra would no longer keep all their eggs in one basket.
During said incident, Jenova's head went missing, so Shinra decided to amputate Jenova's limbs and store Jenova in five separate locations." As Hojo explained, a new slide was brought up highlighting key Shinra reactors across the Planet.
"While its torso was stored here in Midgar, one limb each is kept in Junon, Nibelheim, Rocket Town, and Corel. We mustn't lose access to these limbs or else I'll have to devote considerable time to developing new cultures of Jenova cells from our existing samples. I've already needed to order a container full of them to be flown here from Junon to avoid delays."
"That's fascinating Professor, but you were going to tell me about Sephiroth?" Rufus all but growled.
"Sephiroth is the one weak link that is putting the entire Great Chain of Industry at risk of fracturing. Shinra has tens of thousands of SOLDIERs, hundreds of them First Class; why have we not been able to. Deal. With. One. Man?"
Tseng was so skilled at reading body language he could be considered bilingual, but none of that expertise was necessary to see how Rufus' words had affected Simon Hojo. The young president hadn't so much struck a nerve as taken a jackhammer to it.
"You think Sephiroth is weak? You think that Sephiroth represents something other than the very pinnacle of humanity, the avatar of science's ability to allow us to shape this world to suit our whims? The embodiment of our triumph over the cruel randomness of evolution? You truly want to know what makes Sephiroth so special?" Professor Hojo was all but spitting his words now.
"Mr. President, since you clearly require a most thorough education on the subject of Sephiroth, allow me to provide you with one..."
XXX XXX XXX
"Is it okay if we take a break?" Aerith had been the one to ask, but Reeve could barely hide his gratitude.
He had been worried that the other members of Avalanche might insist they spend all day walking until they finally reached Kalm. Luckily, since Ancients seemed to have physical limits closer to those of baseline humans than SOLDIERs, the rest of the group deferred to her needs.
"I don't suppose any of you happen to have a PHS you could lend me?" Reeve asked awkwardly.
His request was rewarded with a sea of stares ranging from confused at best to accusatory at worst.
"You think we're just going to give you a PHS so you can call in a Shinra strike team to come rescue you?" Tifa scoffed.
"Look, I'll admit that this is my first time being taken hostage, but I've spent enough of my life balancing budgets to have a rough idea of what to expect; sooner or later, things that aren't providing some kind of value get the axe.
So, in the interest of getting some green or black, well 'not red', in your books; I'd like to show you just what I'm capable of. For example; how would you like to be invisible?"
"That sounds awesome!" Kadaj eagerly agreed.
"To be clear, I'm speaking metaphorically."
The youth's face promptly transformed from euphoric joy to a disappointed pout.
"As the Director of Urban Development Department, there are all sorts of things I can accomplish. I can even give you the instructions instead of typing in the commands myself if that makes you feel more comfortable.
"Wouldn't the system administrators have just cut your access after we captured you?" Barret pointed out.
"Funny story, all of the other heads of Shinra's major departments refused to allow some random computer specialist to have any sort of control over their accounts. Thus, every time I raised the topic of my department's cybersecurity system no longer having a single point of failure, it was shot down for fear it would end up happening to them as well.
[AN: Is Reeve's use of "funny story" out of character here?]
"So the person whose job it is, and the only person with the access to lock you out of the system… is you?" Sephiroth felt vicarious embarrassment at Shinra's slapdash security procedures.
"Correct. For some reason, though, I'm not feeling especially predisposed to taking the necessary steps at the moment. Granted, President Shinra also had the codes to lock me out… but…" Reeve could only shrug his shoulders; he wouldn't be dancing on John Shinra's grave any time soon, but it was hard to mourn a man who was about to order your execution.
"So when do we turn 'metaphorically' invisible?"
It was clear that if Kadaj had a PHS on him he would have already handed it over.
"I don't have the spreadsheets on me at the moment, but Kalm has at least a hundred security cameras set up across the city, and Junon has something like three times that many. All of them are capable of triggering an alert in Shinra HQ should they record anything that matches certain programmed parameters."
"Which would bode ill for our cause?" Stargazer interrupted.
"Correct. One look at anyone with silver hair and green eyes with vertical pupils, someone with a gun for an arm, or something on four legs with red fur and Shinra will start mobilizing their forces." Reeve agreed, making sure to tilt his gaze downwards slightly to make eye contact with Stargazer.
He still wasn't quite used to the idea of holding a conversation with what his mind insisted on considering "an animal", but hopefully, it would get easier with practice. For the moment he just kept reminding himself that he'd spent years holding conversations with Palmer, and between the two of them, he suspected Stargazer would doubtlessly prove to make for a more intelligent conversationalist.
"However, even though those alerts trigger the deployment of Public Safety personnel, everything relating to how they're triggered belongs to Urban Development. So, if you give me a few moments with a PHS, or a few more moments giving someone else instructions, I'll remove all alarm triggers that would be sprung by your group. Then, to help add a layer of verisimilitude to anyone glancing at the data tables, I'll replace them with nonsense reasons to trigger an alarm, like ordering two dozen First Class SOLDIERs to be deployed if the cameras detect someone pretending to be trapped in an invisible box or if anyone wearing a fedora says 'M'lady'."
"You can access Shinra's systems on my PHS?" Tifa unclipped the device in question from her belt but seemed unsure about handing it over.
"Even an off-the-shelf model should be able to detect my voice identification pass phrase. I tried to warn the board that Shinra needed two-factor authentication linked to a physical object, but President Shinra had just read an article about how your average well-designed password could withstand a sustained dictionary attack until the heat death of the universe."
"I thought I spoke your two-legged language fairly well…. how many of those are real words?" Stargazer asked.
"Wait, since you've got access to Shinra's systems, can you like…. send a message that they can't track?" Aerith abruptly joined the conversation.
"It would depend on multiple factors: the contents of the message, who exactly it is being sent to, and what format it is being sent in. Emails are always forever no matter what you might have heard someone else say, and if I'm supposed to get in touch with someone that Shinra already has their eye on it'll be trickier."
"Could you give me a chance to call someone without it leading to Turks kicking down their door?"
Reeve interleaved his fingers and then cracked them with the air of a gymnast limbering up before their routine.
"Thank you for asking for only a phone call. So, what we'll need to do is bounce this call through half a dozen different networks, with a slightly more obvious network in Cosmo Canyon being involved about halfway up the chain, though it shouldn't be too obvious, otherwise it wouldn't work as a false final origin point.
"I can't really obfuscate who is going received the call without access to their hardware, so instead we're going to throw up some digital chaff by having this mysterious account place calls to random people all over the planet with the actual call you're placing being buried around a third of the way through the process.
"Not only that, but once the call concludes I'll need to adjust some variables on the Shinra's phone call recording tables. I'll make it so that one archive period will end just before the call starts with the next not beginning until just after the call ends. So, with all that in mind, the shorter your call the better."
"Stargazer, if it helps, you're not the only one who thinks he's making up words." Aerith admitted.
XXX XXX XXX
Tseng sat in stony silence as Hojo prattled on about exactly why Sephiroth was the most powerful SOLDIER who had ever been created, with special emphasis paid to how he clearly surpassed any of Doctor Hollander's G-Type SOLDIERs. So far as the Turks' Commander was concerned, it amounted to little more than Hojo patting himself on the back for having created a massive bomb from twigs and rocks, ignoring the fact that they'd forgotten to include a way to disarm it.
As Hojo's slide show finally concluded and the lights were turned back on, Tseng tapped out a quick text message on his PHS before addressing the room.
"Thank you Professor Hojo for that enlightening presentation, if you have no further comments, the Investigation Sector of the General Affairs Department would like to catch our new President up on our own current status. To that end, my second in command has prepared a presentation."
Reno swaggered into the conference room with all the restraint of a plane coming in for a crash landing. Tseng knew that his subordinate was stone-cold sober, yet Reno moved with the comically exaggerated style of an actor seeking to let the entire theater know their character was three sheets to the wind. The red-haired Turk was surrounded by the most powerful people in the world, and yet his body language suggested that they should be overawed by the prospect of being allowed to share a room with him.
There were people who wondered why shortly after taking over command of the Turks; Tseng had decided to make Reno his second in command as opposed to Rude. After all, Rude was stoic, competent, unflaggingly loyal to Shinra, and seemingly without so much as a single vice. Reno, on the other hand, seemed to be without a single virtue, unless you counted being unfailingly able to locate the cheapest purveyor of alcoholic beverages in any town within five minutes of arriving.
Not only that, but Rude was two years Reno's senior, so why had Tseng promoted a reckless man-child to a position of power when he had such a superior alternative?
Because Tseng wanted to make it very clear to everyone at Shinra that if one day he should die under mysterious circumstances, Reno would happily step into Tseng's shoes… and then burn the entire company to the ground to avenge his fallen superior. If anyone didn't like dealing with good, solid, reliable, stuffy Tseng, they could imagine a future with Reno running the Turks instead.
It was also why Tseng was letting his subordinate give this presentation: so that Shinra's newest President would learn exactly why it was in his best interest to make sure nothing unpleasant happened to the current head of the Investigation Sector of the General Affairs Department.
XXX XXX XXX
"R&R Productions Present: How Everything Went to Hell and it was not the Fault of the Investigation Sector of the General Affairs Department. Copyright MMVII, Shinra Electric Power Company Production, all rights reserved."
"Why is THIS. Also. A. Slide. Show?" Rufus demanded.
Reno somehow doubted that the richest man in the world would be especially accommodating to hearing that the first Shinra-run orphanage Reno had been sent to was so poorly funded that it didn't even have a television, just a slide projector. Which in turn, was why he'd had to start his criminal career by breaking into convenience stores to steal chemicals from their 24-hour photo-development labs to create his own slide shows.
Needless to say, somewhere in the process of setting up a makeshift darkroom he should have realized he was inevitably going to get caught. As it turned out, however, young Reno had been showing "initiative", "creativity" and "a real go-getter spirit of pulling himself up by his own bootstraps"; so instead of being punished, he was rewarded with a transfer to a much more well-funded orphanage in Upper Midgar. That one had set about preparing him for a bright future in the Investigation Sector of the General Affairs Department. From this, Reno had learned the important lesson that if you were going to break the rules, make sure to do it spectacularly.
"Operational security. The slides are physical objects so they can't be hacked via computer. Not only that, but instead of putting all our eggs in one basket like with a video recording, multiple slides have to be stolen to present any true danger. If those Avalanche Terrorists managed to grab only a single slide then they might wind up with just this..." Reno clicked his remote revealing the same image as before, but now bearing a seal in the middle depicting a caricature version of himself with a broad smile giving a thumbs up while an equally caricatured version of Rude stood beside him, face utterly impassive.
"They might even end up only stealing this..." Reno clicked the remote.
Unlike the previous slides which were drawn in a quick and carefree cartoonish style, this one was rendered in the sort of exquisite detail only a man who had been forging banknotes before he'd gone through puberty could produce; it depicted Aerith standing on a stepladder embracing Sephiroth as the two kissed passionately.
Sounds of unseemly delight emerged from the director of Shinra's Science and Research Department.
"Moving on, I think it's important that when all is said and done, we assign the blame squarely where it belongs for the recent attack on Shinra HQ…."
The fourth slide revealed an image of Reno, Rude, and Tseng standing in a triangle around an exaggeratedly fat version of Heidegger pointing fingers squarely at the girthy general.
"What is this outrage?!" roared Heidegger.
"Please hold all questions until the slide show is finished." Reno insisted, before moving onto the fifth slide, a huge Plate suspended by a single string above Sephiroth.
"Now, I think we all know exactly how we got into this mess. Operation Damocles was a bad, bad plan. With it no longer being double superduper top-secret classified, I've discovered that it basically amounted to 'let's hit Sephiroth with a rock', and please no comments from the peanut gallery about how it was a big rock."
Another slide depicted the string being cut and the Plate having fallen and completely crushed Sephiroth. The one after that, however, depicted an extremely angry Sephiroth, to the point that his entire face had turned red and he'd sprouted devil horns, breaking the Plate and tossing it aside.
"Even though it was kicking the mother of all hornet nests, Operation Damocles amounted to: step one, drop the Plate on Avalanche, step two... Idunnaknow." This comment was emphasized by a slide containing a huge red question mark.
"Step three, profit." A slide showing Heidegger, President Shinra, Hojo, and Scarlet clinking glasses together while standing on Sephiroth's corpse.
"A more well thought out operation might have taken into account that terrorists aren't known for good long term planning and destroying an entire Sector was bound to have some blowback. As the saying goes, failing to plan is planning to fail. So, now that we've covered how I've seen my World of SOLDIERcraft guild come up with better plans than Operation Damocles on drunk raid night; let's move onto the next ball that got dropped, because typically you have to visit an amateur juggling school to see this many!" Reno scoffed before advancing slides once more.
The newest one showed a drawing of Shinra HQ with a gigantic arrow helpfully captioned "ATTACK HERE" at the front door.
"When Operation Damocles failed, for reasons that are still unclear, the obvious call to be made was to reinforce Shinra HQ with all the SOLDIERs in Midgar who were still fit for combat. Except nobody bothered to do that.
Nobody bothered to do anything, and since many of the SOLDIERs who routinely work at Shinra HQ were rendered wounded, missing or killed in action during Operation Damocles, we were less heavily defended than normal! Not only that, but the brand new Valkyrie gunship we were going to use to guard our secret route into and out of Lower Midgar, was instead, on General Heidegger's direct orders, committed to Operation Damocles, where it got Sephirothed. So, at this point, not only were we understaffed but also deaf and blind to any threats rising out of Lower Midgar.
All of these failures led to the completely expected outcome of Sephiroth tearing through this place like shit through a goose."
The next slide was surprisingly non-scatological in nature, but instead depicted a gigantic goose with Sephiroth's hairstyle slapping Shinra HQ with its wings.
"Now, the question must be asked, what exactly were the agents of the Investigation Sector of the General Affairs Department doing during this mess? The three of them were assigned to work in Shinra HQ themselves at the time, weren't they?
Well, much like a wimpy kid on dodgeball day, I happen to have a doctor's note…."
For the first time, one of Reno's slides wasn't hand-drawn but instead a photo.
"Here are the results of a physical I was given by Shinra's very own Doctor Percival Cox. He noted that over the course of Operation Damocles; during which I was the only Shinra field operative to have been in position to activate the Plate Release System, I suffered injuries that on a normal human would amount to: a spinal fracture, several broken ribs, enough voltage run through my body that my hair should still be standing on end, one black eye, a chipped tooth, a broken nose, general trauma relating to exfiltrating via my partner snagging a helicopter with his grappling gun while we were both in free-fall, and also breaking a nail so badly that it could only be set right by a specialist in Sector Six.
He concluded that healing magic can only do so much and that I should avoid engaging in direct combat if at all possible for at least forty-eight hours. As for my partner..." Reno brought up another slide as he rattled off a list of all the physical maladies that Rude had suffered recently.
"So, the two of us can hardly be blamed for following doctor's orders. Which brings us around to our commander Tseng." The remote clicked.
Tseng wasn't sure why his second in command insisted on drawing him with an 8-pack.
"What was Tseng doing during this mess? Well, you see it's a funny story, but being a Turk Commander means that sometimes you have to actually, well command! He felt that as one of the few higher-ups inside Shinra HQ who was neither figuratively nor literally losing his head, he should try to focus on coordinating our military response. His quick response to the Class J biological containment breach is the reason that this building isn't currently growing tentacles and or eyes.
The simple truth of the matter is that right now, there are too many fires and too few Turks to deal with them..."
A slide depicting Tseng Reno and Rude desperately sloshing around water on Midgar despite all eight sectors being on fire and only having three buckets to work with.
"What is the root cause of this problem? Well, what is the root cause of every problem? Money! In this case, our budget."
Reno moved onto a slide depicting the trio of Turks in shabby versions of their suits, well shabbier in one case, holding out an empty cup before a "Will garrote for Gil" sign.
"Our budget, much like my bosses' abs, can best be described as totally shredded. The solution? Give us more money." The next slide depicted Rufus Shinra dumping a chest full of Gil coins onto the Turks.
"Depending on how much money we're given, that will determine exactly how many new Turks we're able to employ and how effective they'll be. Based on certain information I recently gained access to, Professor Hojo has been doing some very impressive things with cloning; so allow me to present a proposal I like to call the Division of Labor Initiative. It involves creating four clones of me who we'll call Rena, Rene, Reni, and Renu for simplicity's sake, that way each clone will only have to come into the office one day a week. The plan would work even better with a fifth clone but let no one say I'm not open to compromise…"
XXX XXX XXX
Elmyra Gainsborough was in the words of a movie she'd once seen, getting too old for this shit. She didn't regret any of the choices that had led her to this particular outcome, but at the same time, she wished that the universe could have given her a chance to do something with her life rather than feeling like it was stuck in a time loop.
How else could you explain the fact that she was once again sitting in her home as the only caregiver for a little girl she'd only just met? She didn't resent the fact that Marlene was even younger than Aerith had been… but she did resent that she was so much older than she had been back then; that hardly seemed fair.
She had no way of knowing if Barret Wallace was dead or alive, and in some ways that was going to be even worse; it left them in a limbo where she didn't know if she needed to help the young girl cut ties with someone who had passed on, or hold out hope for a parent who might one day return.
Even worse, she didn't know if her own daughter was still alive or not.
Something had happened at Shinra HQ, everyone knew that, just as everyone knew that John Shinra was dead, but all major news sources refused to agree on anything else. She had noticed one interesting thing though; she hadn't heard the word "Wutai" once.
Well, maybe just once, when an interview with Godo Kisaragi involved him insisting that Wutai categorically denied the accusation that it had offered any funding to the cell of Avalanche responsible for the attack on Midgar's mako reactors, and had produced the necessary paperwork to prove it. Although it was never directly stated, the obvious implication was that this cell of Avalanche was so extreme that even Wutai refused to condone their actions.
A neat pivot to start defusing tensions with Wutai so that Shinra could focus on solving problems in its own backyard.
Not that picking apart global political ramifications of corporate broadcasts got Elmyra one single step closer to figuring out if her daughter was even alive at the moment...
The phone rang. Elmyra yanked it to her ear before the second ring.
"Hello?"
Elmyra recognized the voice at once, but she needed a few moments to convince herself that it was real and not just her mind playing tricks on her.
"Baby? You doing alright?"
"I'm safe. I can't come home right now, but I'm somewhere safe with friends." Aerith answered, sounding nearly as choked up as her adoptive mother.
Elmyra felt a crushing weight lift from her chest, it might not be the same as having her daughter back home, but it was infinitely preferable to being left completely in the dark.
"Been up to no good?" Somehow she found the strength to almost tell a joke.
"That's one way to put it. By the way, make sure to take good care of your guest, there's someone out there whose heart goes out to her."
Well, that was another worry she could let go of, it seemed Marlene's father was still alive.
"Glad to hear it, but is there somebody taking good care of you?" Elmyra could already tell that she was unlikely to get any clear-cut answers during this conversation but it wasn't going to stop her from trying.
"You know me, I've always had plenty of friends."
If Aerith had been in arm's reach Elmyra would have wanted to wash her mouth out with soap for that lie. It was hard enough just being a single woman's adopted daughter, let alone all the other ways that Aerith had been different as a child.
"Any idea when you will be able to come back?"
"Not until I never have to leave again."
Click
Elmyra only had the polite chime of a dial tone for company now.
Her eyes had turned watery before she'd even managed to hang up, but... tears of sheer relief were at least a welcome surprise.
XXX XXX XXX
"I'm sorry that I had to overhear that." Reeve awkwardly apologized as she handed him back Tifa's PHS.
The moment he got the chance Reeve began typing away on it with blistering speed. If anything, he was going faster than he had before she'd placed her call.
"I thought you already did most of the work to cover my tracks?"
"I just realized that there's someone I need to get in touch with, if Avalanche is willing to grant me permission, of course…."
XXX XXX XXX
"Here you go, Boss, latest edition of the Midgar Mouthpiece, the only paper brave enough to tell people the real news. Today's top story, 'Ghost of General Sephiroth and Chairith Painsborough stage home invasion against local businessman.'" Reno announced while laying the paper on Tseng's desk.
"Any idea where they got the photo from?" Tseng pondered.
Reno had carried the paper all the way from Lower Midgar, and never once contemplated that question.
"She's got good form with the chair though." The Turk's commander idly noted.
""I taught her that, the important part is to make sure to attack from the correct angle, don't be standing perpendicular to the asshole whose day you want to ruin. That's my little sister from a completely different set of parents!" Reno could feel himself getting a little misty-eyed finally seeing proof that all the time he'd spent teaching Aerith about fighting dirty hadn't gone to waste.
"Sephiroth looks strange in this picture... We need to find out if there was any sort of video evidence of this event."
"Might be a little harder than normal Boss, Don Corneo probably blames us for getting him on Avalanche's shit list, and I've even heard rumors he's not in charge anymore." Reno advised.
"Do you want to go lean on normal human gangsters, or do you want to get involved in another operation directly targeting Avalanche?"
"I'm gonna go lean on some gangsters so hard that they'll think I've come down with lumbago!"
End Chapter.
AN: Stefan Causeway is very much the FF7 equivalent of Stephen Colbert, doing his previous shtick (right down to his show having a quasi-rhyming name) of presenting himself as a farcically exaggerated proponent of a cause he disagrees with.
Anyway, most of the stuff I reference but don't directly state in this story should be accessible to anyone with a reasonable knowledge of FF7 from just having played the original video game, but in this particular case, something risks falling through the cracks unless I directly state it, so that's what I'm going to do. Reeve's mother Ruvie is still alive and lives in Upper Sector Five, that's who he's calling.
Also, I'm sorry, this is supposed to be an Aeriseph story, not the Reeve has a midlife crisis and then explains cyber-security and the exploitation thereof 101 while Shinra presents slideshows story.
I'm also sorry that my version of Rufus and Turk interaction is going to diverge somewhat heavily from their canon relationship, but don't worry, I know what I'm doing and why. It is worth pointing out that since the Turks got so much whitewashing from the compilation (especially in before Crisis when they get to be out and out heroes compared to genocidal original incarnation of Avalanche 1.0) there is a point where it is easier to just have the Turks be at least mildly better people than they were in canon than to change the expected audience reaction to them.
I mean lets be honest, during the first section of the game when you're in Midgar the Turks are presented as Fascist Secret Police, once you leave Midgar though they suddenly turn into Bulk and Skull from the Power Rangers, laughably harmless bullies who certainly would not murder fifty thousand people by dropping ten thousand other people on top of them. This is not a transition that the original game handled well, and it remains to be seen if the remake is any better at it. So yeah, Tseng, Reno and Rude will all be mildly better people than in canon, as you already saw with the Aerith Protection Squad.
To make up for that stuff, here's an omake of Reno's presentation.
XXX XXX XXX
"Well Mr. Vice President, since I'm detecting a certain amount of negativity in the room towards my slide show, I do have a backup plan. This is a little something that I managed to put together with Debbie from Marketing. It will quickly catch you up on the hard work we do in the Investigation Sector of the General Affairs Department..."
Reno shoved the slide projector off the table and Rude replaced it with a DVD player into which Reno slipped a disc. While the disc loaded Reno took the time to turn off all the lights in the room to create the correct ambiance.
"When you want somebody gone, and you don't wanna wait too long, call the immediate murder professionals!
Hand grenade or cyanide, we'll make it look like suicide! The immediate murder professionals!
We'll kill your husband or your wife, we'll even let you keep the knife! We're the immediate, murder, professionals! KIDS DIE FOR FREEEEEEEEEEEEEeeeee!"
Reno made sure to harmonize along with his recorded voice on the song's coda, it was what really sold the piece.
XXX XXX XXX
In closing, for a quick moment of "the more you know", the most common cause of agoraphobia (fear of open spaces) is genetic. I think it's a fair assumption that Aerith seems to suffer from at least a minor case of agoraphobia in canon given her comments from Crisis Core about being afraid of the sky, and in the remake as well since she talks about "missing the steel sky" when leaving Midgar.
Granted, on the other hand it might just also be the loss of a lifelong constant which could probably make anybody somewhat uneasy as my editor Fenrir is quick to point out.