A/N: Rated M for language and sexual content. Standard disclaimer applies.

Updated 6/24/2020: Additional scenes added throughout, including a more intense battle scene for the Turks.

Chapter 10:

"It's good to see you again, Vincent," Tifa said warmly, trying to break the silence that had fallen over them after their fight with the levrikons. Vincent had followed her into the bar without saying a word, even though she tried to make small talk with him as they walked.

They were now standing in her kitchen, upstairs from the bar. Tifa leaned back on her counter, while Vincent leaned over the island and faced her, tapping his metal fingers on the granite. Tifa had tried taking deep breaths to remind him that she was in the room, but she knew from experience that Vincent spoke when Vincent decided to speak.

After an agonizingly long couple of minutes, Vincent finally straightened his back to look at her.

"Where's Cloud?" he asked.

Tifa's shoulders slumped and she groaned. Did he really travel all the way here for Cloud? She didn't want to have to explain the situation to another person. Each time she did, she died a little inside. As the months had dragged on, her claims that he was just out for supplies rang hollow, and she hadn't told any member of AVALANCHE except Yuffie. She was herself beginning to doubt he was ever coming back.

"He's not here. He's been gone for over four months. I haven't heard from him. I don't know where he is or where he was going," she decided to answer all of his questions before he could ask them.

Vincent's expression didn't change; he merely stared at her, hardly blinking. Either he wasn't listening, or he didn't care.

"I'd like you to come with me to the Shinra mansion in Nibelheim," he said after a long pause.

"Why?"

"I think there may be information there regarding the recent increase in monster attacks around the world," Vincent said. "I'd like to check the laboratory in the basement."

"Why do you need Cloud?"

"I was hoping you would both be able to help. I tried going myself, but there are too many fiends to go alone."

Tifa stared at him a moment. She didn't want to go back to Nibelheim; too many bad memories, too many good memories with Cloud. She was shocked to learn Vincent would admit to being unable to handle a situation on his own, however.

"Can someone else go with you? I'm kind of busy here by myself," she said, crossing her arms and looking away from him as he stared at her intently.

"No one knows that town or mansion better than you and Cloud."

"Cloud," she corrected. "I didn't go down there until the day we found you."

As children, Tifa and her friends would often talk about going into the abandoned mansion, but they never truly followed through. Every once in a while, the boys that followed her everywhere would dare each other to climb the fence in order to impress her. Once, one managed to squeeze through the bars and after a quick victory dance, ran back through the bars upon hearing an unsettling noise coming from inside the mansion. Tifa never knew it at the time, but Cloud informed her during a happier time in their relationship that he had once traveled into the mansion as a child to impress her, though he never told her about it because he fell down the stairs and broke his arm running from a ghirofelgo.

"Tifa, please," Vincent almost pleaded.

Tifa could have sworn she heard a faint trace of desperation in his voice. While Nibelheim wasn't her ideal destination, she thought it might be good to get out of town for a while. She knew that Cloud would never go back there, so she wouldn't have to worry about running into him. And it might be a good way to clear her head, since she had been thinking about Reno way too much the past few days. He still hadn't texted her again or shown his face in the bar. It was getting to the point where she was considering texting him something snarky like "guess this text was meant for some other girl" or something equally as snippy. She had smacked herself in the head each time she considered sending such a message.

Reno's company may have been welcome at this point, but the feelings she had about him were not.

"I'll go," she said, looking Vincent squarely in the eye. Her eyes were determined, unnerved even. The bar would survive a few days without her.

"Good," Vincent replied. "Let's head out."

"On foot?"

"Yes?"

"In case you haven't noticed, the monster population is out of control. There's no way we'll make it by foot," she explained, now wondering how he got to Edge without transportation.

Vincent groaned ever so softly, the most emotion he had shown all day.

"Fine, why don't you call Cid and see if he can help."

Tifa kept her smile, remembering Vincent didn't have a phone and wasn't a sociable person anyway. Even if he had a phone, he'd probably use it less than Cloud used his. The barmaid pulled out her own PHS and dialed Cid's number from her contacts list.

"Hey darlin', stayin' outta trouble?" the pilot asked when he answered.

"Mostly," Tifa responded. "Hey Cid… could you do me a huge favor?"

Silence. For several seconds. Then came Cid's heavy sigh.

"Whatcha need?" he asked.

"Would you be able to fly Vincent and I to Nibelheim so we can search through the mansion basement for information about what's happening with the monsters around the world?"

"What?"

"Can you fly Vincent and I to Nibelheim?"

"Fine, but this ain't some damned air taxi business," Cid huffed. "I'll swing by later, gotta get to the ship first, and there's so many Goddamn fiends circlin' her."

The pilot hung up before Tifa could respond.

"I'll guess he'll get here when he gets here," she informed Vincent, who merely blinked in response.

Having access to the airship again made something spark in Tifa's mind. Something she had wanted to avoid, too afraid of the consequences and implications. Cid's tone let her know that any additional request would not be welcome, but Tifa decided in that moment that she would have to ask anyway – when they were face to face. Cid might find it more difficult to say no if he could see Tifa's worried expression.

Meanwhile…

"Aaaaaaiiiiiigggghhhaaaaaackkk," Reno howled during an exaggerated stretch and yawn, his whole body aching after sleeping on the cold metal floor of the stairwell. He managed to get some sleep in between the sounds of fiends pounding on the nearby exit door.

The monsters sensed fresh blood. The two Turks thought it'd be quieter a few floors up, and even though they were so damn sick of stairs, they started walking back up, only to find that fiends were knocking on every one of the lower few floors – and they were not traveling any higher.

"Looks like we made our presence known," Reno had said the night before, sinking down onto the landing and trying to find a comfortable position. He eventually fell asleep even as his mind raced with thoughts of the horrors he had seen in The Drum – and imaginations of Tifa. Unbeknownst to the redhead, Rude was also struggling to sleep while thinking about how Tifa would answer his offer of a date.

The bald Turk, naturally, was already awake and eating breakfast when Reno awoke. The redhead wondered if his friend had even slept. Not that he could blame him if he hadn't, they weren't exactly staying in a luxury suite at the Gold Saucer. Reno rubbed his lower back as he sat up and reached for some food.

"It's basement day!" he said once he was finally awake and had some food in his belly. Rude let out a subtle smile.

"Basement day," he repeated.

With renewed energy, the duo entered the main lobby of the Shinra building to find the door that led to the basement. To their surprise, creatures not native to Midgar had taken up residence in the lobby, though they seemed to be trying to get out of the back of the building. There was no door there, however, so they were just clawing and pounding on the back wall of the car showroom. A few ark dragons spotted the pair of Turks and rushed over with a shriek, which alerted other monsters. It seemed like creatures that usually inhabited Midgar, the Mythril Mines, and all the way down to Mideel were in the Shinra building. The Turks had to kill crawlers, hippogriffs, and even a few zemzeletts just to get across the lobby to the door Rufus had told them led to the basement. T

he refugee camp that had once been set up in the Shinra lobby was nothing but tattered cloth and debris. The glass throughout the car showroom was shattered, and claw marks on the wall made unreadable Reno's years-old spray-painted sign instructing people to take shelter from Meteor in the slums.

Had they not been fighting their way through a sea of fiends, they would have examined what was left of their old office building. The central receptionist desk had been uprooted from the floor, crushed and laying in pieces scattered throughout the surrounding area. How many front-desk receptionists had Reno slept with? At one point he knew the number, but eventually lost track. It wasn't his fault Shinra kept hiring attractive women to be the first company face seen by visitors.

They finally crossed the showroom and found the door Rufus had described, which was nowhere near the door they had once tried to go through. What was behind that door? A mystery for another day, perhaps. They opened the door to the basement to find… more stairs.

"I never wanted to see stairs again," Reno whined before they once again traveled down a couple flights to reach the massive metal door that blocked the entrance to all the basement secrets. The door required a physical key as well as the combination to an ancient mechanism to unlock that only a handful of top employees knew – most of whom were dead. Whatever Shinra kept down there, they didn't want to leave it vulnerable to a power failure.

At the base of the door lay two skeletons, their clothes disintegrating due to time. The Turks carefully stepped over the bodies to unlock the door and pull it open. It was heavy, but it rolled along the floor and into the wall. Thankfully for them, there didn't seem to be any fiends down here – at least not that they had seen yet.

Beyond what was essentially a vault door lay, to the Turks' dismay, boring white hallways that stretched to the left, right, and forward. Plain white doors dotted the walls on either side with simple gray plastic room numbers on the walls beside them.

Rufus had given them specific instructions on what turns to make and what door to enter. He was adamant that they enter only that one door. Reno, of course, tried to open the first door they passed. He held his hand over the knob and licked his lips in anticipation, his fingers twitching as he prepared to open it. He dreamed of an arsenal of weapons he couldn't even begin to imagine, or hell, maybe a room filled with gil that he could swim through. When he finally grabbed the doorknob, he was surprised to find several thousand volts of electricity coursing through his veins. His limbs tensed as he shook in place, his hair standing on end and blue sparks traveling along his skin, crackling as if to laugh at him. He was no stranger to electrocution, given his choice of weapon, but it had been a while.

His clothes were singed, and his mane became even wilder than before, now showing the effects of static electricity as he released the door and staggered backwards.

"Hmm," Rude said, doing a surprisingly good job of holding back laughter. "The generator must still be working. The key Rufus gave us must remove the electric shock."

"Thanks for the exposition, Brainiac," Reno sputtered as his face continued to twitch. He tried to push his hair back into place, but every time he touched it he made the static worse. Rude waited for Reno to turn his back so he could snap a couple pictures with his phone. While Reno's trademark scarlet spikes had lost their shape, spread out like a hair dome atop his head, his ponytail resembled the tail of a panicked house cat.

The redhead staggered and twitched down the hall for a few steps, like a toddler first learning how to walk, before he started to regain his composure. Rude stood behind, biting his fist.

"I'm going to say they 'Reno-proofed' the basement," Rude called after him.

"Here's the damn door," Reno said while walking his hands along the wall for support as he moved down the hallway, stopping outside a door with a sign that read, simply: "B0604."

Rufus had given Rude strict instructions not to give Reno access to the key, so the bald Turk reached into his pocket and retrieved the item. Rufus also said this particular key only opened Hojo's basement lab, and after seeing Reno continue to twitch from head to toe, Rude decided not to press his luck by sticking the key into any other door locks.

The first thing the Turks noticed when they entered was the smell. It was unlike the stench of the fiends in the main building; this was something different. Clearly, the monsters that had been kept down here were different from those above ground, probably species unheard of in the natural world – they were also probably dead and rotting or fully rotted by now.

Hojo's second lab was surprisingly well organized, unlike the more well-known lab in the old headquarters. There were numerous desks with medical and lab equipment on them and filing cabinets lining one whole wall. Along the back wall sat several cages and a few more of those glass holding cells, all completely unscathed – and dark. The room was longer than the Turks expected, and the lights that did still work were dim. The lights over the back wall were completely out, preventing the Turks from clearly seeing what was back there, and a few in the middle of the room flickered with a low humming sound. There were also doors placed in seemingly random spaces along the wall, no doubt leading to a maze of experiment rooms and arenas just like upstairs. Reno wasn't about to touch those door knobs, either.

As soon as Rude took a step toward the filing cabinets, the two turned abruptly to the back of the room, having heard a loud "stomp" coming from one of the holding cells. The duo looked at each other for a few moments before continuing toward the cabinets, listening for the sound again. Whatever made it remained quiet, for now.

"Well, time to get filing," Reno said, more cheerfully than Rude expected. The redhead stretched his arms in front of him and laced his fingers together, cracking them.

Rude nodded his head and the two started rifling through cabinets for any files that may assist Rufus. Glancing down the long role of filing cabinets, each with four drawers, Reno knew they were going to be here for a while.

He hadn't expected to be gone so long. He texted Tifa shortly before they left to prepare for this excursion. He had kind of hoped she would text back, even though he knew that was a long shot and would be crossing a line as far as his friendship with Rude. But they were just starting to go through the records in Hojo's secret lab. Who knew how many files would be relevant? They could be here a couple more days just going through the files. After all, it took Sephiroth nearly a week to go through Hojo's notes and the books in the basement of the Shinra manor. And depending on how much they found, they may need to make numerous lengthy trips to and from the car to transport it all. On top of all of that, he hadn't gotten to see what else was in the basement, rendering his enthusiasm for the mission null and void.

He wondered if Tifa missed him in his absence; he wondered if she missed Rude. He had certainly left her with something to think about. He tried again in vain to push her from his mind, as Rude was the one with the hopeless crush. Reno merely wanted to fuck her, he kept telling himself, and he could imagine her naked whenever he wanted.

He learned quickly that he would need to take frequent breaks to bust up the monotony of looking through Hojo's research. A pile of files and documents was started near the door, and it was beginning to get daunting. It seemed all Hojo studied was Jenova, and without the scientific background to decipher what was germane or not, the two Turks thought it best to just take anything even remotely related to the alien, the experiments Hojo conducted with its cells, and the Lifestream.

As they searched, an ever-present threat yet occasional pounding would resound from the back of the room. The Turks got used to the thumping, knowing that as long as they heard the same sound over and over again, whatever was causing it was contained. When they wouldn't hear it for a few hours, they'd get nervous, preparing to fight whatever was making the noise.

The noise became comforting after a while. It reminded them they were still in the basement and were not alone, but it broke up the long periods of reading and searching. They gave the sound a name, "Chester," and started giving it a backstory as they worked in an effort to stave off the crushing boredom breathing down their necks.

Chester, they decided, had once been a free roaming monster until Hojo's scientists captured it and began their experiments. Too hideous yet weak to be of use, he was left forgotten in the basement as Hojo moved on to other "toys." For all they knew, Hojo could have been here for years, before the Nibelheim incident.

Based on what Tseng and one of the rehired Turks – Shotgun, Reno called her since he couldn't remember her real name – had said of Nibelheim, Chester could very well have been salvaged from the Shinra manor. Reno and Rude had been elsewhere during the cleanup of Nibelheim, so only heard stories secondhand. The fire, the murders, Hojo ordering subordinates to salvage what they could – stretchers and equipment being carried into the manor as the town was evacuated. Reno knew the story by now, having read numerous documents about the incident, but he imagined no one knew the full story given Shinra's coverup.

As they searched, the Turks faced an imminent problem: The intense smell emanating from the back of the room, which became more unbearable with each step they took toward the creature's cell.

Chester roared again. It was an unearthly shriek that rang in their ears for several seconds after, sounding almost like an unpleasant piano chord that echoed through the room.

"Oh, Chester," Reno said, shaking his head as he opened up another drawer after the ringing stopped.

He wasn't sure how much time had passed since they entered the basement lab. They took breaks to eat and explore the rest of the lab (the other wall had tables lined with small containers of various specimens) and of course to sleep when they were tired. If their sleep habits were in line with the surface time, they had been in the basement two days. At least they were nearing the last few cabinets.

Reno had done most of the exploring of the rest of the room, finding the files less than thrilling. He read the labels on every vial and specimen container, interested yet fearful of what he would find. He found several vials labeled "S-TYPE" and a few labeled "G-TYPE," along with one that said "GENESIS" on it. He didn't recognize the creatures in the smaller specimen containers that sat on the desk. They must have been dead fetus' preserved with formaldehyde, but of what, Reno couldn't tell, though at least one looked somewhat human. A shiver ran down his spine as he placed the canister back on the table and returned to the filing cabinets. Maybe the files weren't so bad after all.

Chester's growls and thrashings were more agitated and frequent as the Turks approached the final few filing cabinets, which were nearest to the darkened part of the lab. Reno knew he saw movement in the back of the room a few times when Chester thumped, but he couldn't determine what shape the creature was or even how big. Neither he nor Rude attempted to go into the shadowy area where Chester certainly lurked, worrying their proximity would cause him to go insane and possibly escape.

The pile of documents near the front of the door sat in multiple stacks, each several feet high. It would take a while to get it all into the back of Reno's car, and he dreaded the trips and monster attacks that would surely occur in between. He really just wanted to get the information delivered to Rufus so that he could sift through it all. Reno wanted to get the hell out of here and away from Chester. It was better to think of the beast as some restrained animal from a distance than to learn what it was up close and personal. From the sound of it, Chester seemed like he was capable of doing some serious damage if unleashed.

Rude opened the first drawer on the last filing cabinet, with Reno looking over his shoulder. By now they both had their dress shirts pulled up over their noses to try to mitigate some of the stench, though Reno occasionally had to remove his so he could smoke. For once, Rude didn't mind the smell of the tobacco, since it somewhat mitigated the smell of death. Chester's jerking became more erratic than ever as the two Turks approached, however. Rude knew they didn't have much time left before the beast was thoroughly pissed off.

He was right. As if Chester had been waiting for his moment, he broke through the glass of his containment cell as soon as Rude closed the last drawer. They heard the crash of the glass, but then nothing for a moment. They froze, hoping whatever Chester was would only respond if they were moving. They soon heard what sounded like something wet and muscly scraping over the crushed glass. There were no footsteps, yet the glass shards tinkled and cracked beneath whatever moved atop them. It was as if something solid were being rolled over them at an even pace.

No beast came barreling toward them, as they expected. They gripped the last of the files for Rufus to their chests as they gingerly backed toward the door.

They hadn't gone far when a form stepped – or rather, scuttled? Hovered? Slithered? – out of the darkness and rose to loom over them. Even now, the creature couldn't adjust to its full height, as the ceiling was too low. Both Turks' jaws dropped open (Reno lost his cigarette, not even noticing that it burned his leg through one of the tears in his pants) as they looked at the lifeform before them.

It looked like one of the Jenova monsters, but it was mixed with other creatures. Its shoulders spread out into wide, asymmetric growths with seemingly random horns jutting out in several places. Its waist was narrow, its lower body wide and cone shaped, with hardened growths and tumors rising up from its base. Its head was long and narrow, coming to a small point in front of its own waist. It had a long face with two large fangs hanging out of its mouth, and the Turks could see it had small, sharp teeth that stretched far back into its head. Its eyes didn't blink and were narrowed down on the duo. It hissed and growled as drool fell from its mouth onto the floor. Small puffs of smoke rose out of the drops left behind, and the Turks continued to back away.

Several large tentacles unwrapped from its back and reached out toward the two men, its teeth snapping as it closed the space between them.

"…Chester?" Reno asked, as if he had just found out his puppy was rabid.

Chester let out an earth-shattering roar and Reno reached for his weapons while Rude readied his fists. Reno delivered the first blow with his EMR but was quickly swatted away by a tentacle. Rude threw a couple strong punches before his hands were disabled by two other tentacles. Chester pulled the bald-headed Turk toward him, bringing fangs within inches of Rude's face as he fought against his restraints. The more stoic Turk could feel hot spit on his skin that burned to the touch, and he winced. Chester cried out in pain as Reno drove his EMR into the creature's side while firing his pistol.

"Run!" the fire-haired Turk yelled.

If there was one advantage the duo had over Chester, it was speed. The Jenova mutant could only slide across the floor, using its tentacles to lash out at the Turks as they ran for the door. They had planned on running out the door and living to fight another day, but the sight of the document pile stopped them in their tracks.

"Shit!" Reno said as he cut left to keep Chester from trashing Hojo's research.

Rude hung back a second to get behind the creature. This was not what they were used to fighting. These types of monsters were better left to AVALANCHE. At least if one of them died, Rude wouldn't feel shame – unless it was Tifa, of course. But it was just him and Reno now, and he didn't like their odds.

As Reno kited Chester around the front of the lab and away from the stack of papers, he grabbed every container he could along the opposite wall to throw at the thing. Canisters containing fiend and animal remains, beakers with unknown liquids, even staplers became projectiles as he ran. At least one of the beakers seemed to slow Chester down, but not for long.

Reno was approaching the dark end of the lab when Chester stopped and let out one of its ear-splitting screeches. Reno instinctively closed his eyes tight and held his hands over his ears to muffle the sound. When he opened his eyes, he saw tall, fat tentacles all over the room, rising from the floor. He didn't know how, but they were somehow all part of Chester. He tried to dodge between them but was grabbed by one, which wrapped around his chest and midsection and began to constrict Reno like he was a mouse caught in a snake's coil.

The redhead struggled against the beast as it became harder to breathe. He shifted the handle of his mag rod in his hand so that the weapon was pointing backwards toward the base of the tentacle that held him. Just as he began to feel lightheaded, he flicked his EMR on and shocked the tentacle, causing it to drop him to the ground. He dropped to a kneeling position and had only a second to catch his breath before two more tentacles reached out to smack him.

He looked around. More tentacles had sprung up and he couldn't even see Rude. Reno beat back tentacles with his mag rod while firing his pistol at others, trying to get away from Chester as it continued to advance.

Rude was fighting tentacles in the front of the room and getting nowhere as Chester stayed focused on Reno. Rude punched one tentacle multiple times and shot out his foot to kick another, but it wrapped around his ankle and threw him into the nearby wall. The bald Turk got up quickly, too quickly, and hit his head on something attached to the front wall of the lab, near the door. He stepped back to see what he had hit and for the first time paid attention to what it was. He'd glanced past it before as they were in the room, assuming it was just another fire extinguisher. Now, however, he noticed that above a cluttered desk, on the wall, was a glass container with a label on the front that read: "IN CASE OF BREAKOUT BREAK GLASS." Rude did as the label suggested, sending his foot through the glass while dodging another of Chester's tentacles, and removed a spiffy, unused, military-grade weapon.

"Thank you, Scarlet," Rude said to himself, patting the weapon gently. He flicked a switch to power up the massive gun he held in his hands. "Reno, get back here!"

Reno glanced over at his partner to see the mako-charged firearm drawing power. Tiny lights appeared to be getting sucked into the end of the barrel as a high-pitched squeal hummed it to life. The sound caught Chester's attention, and it turned its attention toward Rude.

Reno used the distraction to weave through the remaining tentacles. A pair reached for him and he slid beneath them on the tiled floor, one leg stretched out in front and the other bent beneath him. He jumped over the next tentacle that tried to grab him, twisted out of another's grasp, and finally caught up to his partner before Chester. Rude pulled the trigger once his sharp-tongued friend was at his side.

"Yeah! Kick it!" Reno shouted as the gun fired, leaving a smoldering hole right through Chester's middle.

The creature's upper body slumped backwards as foul-smelling smoke rose into the ceiling. The tentacles around the room immediately stopped moving and fell before they and Chester returned to the Lifestream in a large cloud of pyreflies. There was a ringing sound in the Turks' ears after the gun was fired, and they were certain by now that they had lost at least some of their hearing due to this mission.

Rude turned to his comrade to see the redhead trying to shout something, but all he saw was his lips moving. Rude pointed a finger at his ear and shook his head to indicate he couldn't hear anything. Reno started pointing at the documents and motioning with his hands as if he were carrying stacks of papers. Rude understood.

They each grabbed what they could carry of the information they had gathered and left the basement lab. Once outside in the hallway, they both dropped what they were carrying and gasped for air, realizing just how much they missed the smell of… well, nothing. The Shinra basement was stuffy with stale air, but it was far more preferable than what they had just been subjected to in Hojo's lab. Their hearing still muffled, the two picked up the documents and continued out of the basement.

They had nearly forgotten what they were in for when they opened the door to the old Shinra lobby. There were no fewer fiends this time around than the last time, and with their hands full, they didn't have much choice but to run with the occasional kick to keep a monster away. They ran into the side stairwell for a reprieve before heading outside to face whatever was lingering out there.

They were bloodied and bruised from their battle with Chester, but the adrenaline and desire to get the hell out of there carried them this far. Now that they weren't in immediate danger, they each noticed the other was in bad shape. Rude had lost his sunglasses – a sure sign something had gone wrong – and hadn't even grabbed a new pair from his jacket yet. He favored one leg and had small burn marks all over his face from Chester's spittle. Reno wasn't much better. One of his shoulders sat awkwardly, causing him to balance the drawer of documents in his other arm. It wasn't visible, but now that the adrenaline was gone he could feel a searing pain in his ribs.

Reno called Elena and Tseng once they had the first batch of papers into his car and his hearing returned - somewhat. There was no way they were going to make the trek back to the basement 10 more times, alone. A couple extra hands would be helpful now. They didn't have to let the other Turks into the basement (and they knew not to ask questions) but they were exhausted and wanted to get away from the decaying corpse of Chester.

"What happened to you two?" Elena asked when she saw her friends quickly staggering toward her, each carrying a large metal drawer full of files.

"Don't ask," Rude said as he handed her the drawer and turned to head back into the building. The blonde Turk cast a Cure spell on each of them to help them finish their mission. She and Tseng then fought the monsters as Reno and Rude made the lengthy trips to and from the basement.

"Rufus wanted to see you," Tseng told Reno and Rude as he loaded the last of the files into the backseat of his even more luxurious car. Reno had the RS-97. Tseng had the RS-100a with all the bells and whistles. But then, he was the leader of the Turks. "But before that, I'm having Elena take you to our new medical ward to get checked out and stay for observation. Who knows what you could have come into contact with in Hojo's lab."

Reno and Rude narrowed their eyes at Tseng and opened their mouths to say something. Rude couldn't find the words, but as always, Reno did.

"Is this payback for when we took care of you after the Temple?" he asked. It was two years ago, but they really had coddled Tseng against his will to make sure he would survive.

The corners of their boss' lips twitched upward.

Rude nodded in acknowledgement as he watched his boss drive away with a car full of documents. Elena then approached the drivers-side door of Reno's car and grinned mischievously.

"Look who has to rescue you two numskulls again," she said, clearly enjoying the orders Tseng gave her. The two other Turks groaned loudly.

"We'll be out of that sick bay faster than you can get out of the room, so I'd watch the attitude," Reno said in a teasing tone. Elena laughed nervously. Reno and Rude were not above pranking her.

The three Turks got into Reno's car – the redhead sat up front even though Rude was taller.

"Oh my Gods, you guys stink!" Elena complained as soon as the doors were closed.

"How do you know it's us and not you?" Reno snapped, wondering if the smell would linger in his car forever.

"Fuck you," Elena mumbled, unable to think of a better comeback. Reno smiled triumphantly and rested his hands behind his head.

Shinra's new infirmary was much more pleasant than the one in the old building, mainly because Hojo wasn't running it. There were plenty of doctors in the old sick bay, but Hojo had taken control at some point, meaning anyone who entered was subject to possible experimentation. The Turks learned to take care of their own injuries to avoid falling into Hojo's clutches.

The new infirmary didn't include any experimentation, but that didn't mean the Turks were any happier to be there. Reno had told Rude they would go to Seventh Heaven when they were done with the mission, and that's where he wanted to be right now. Instead, they were stripped and wearing flimsy hospital gowns while Shinra doctors poked and prodded them. At least the stench of Chester was gone. Neither wanted to enter Tifa's bar smelling like a death swamp.

The first thing Reno had done after getting clear of the old building was check his phone. Not a single text from her. That's what he expected, but something nagged at him; his chest felt heavy and hollow. Probably just another injury from Chester.

Rude, too, had wanted to go to Seventh Heaven. After the ordeal they had just gone through, seeing Tifa's pretty face was exactly what he wanted to lift his spirits, even if it meant she answered his date proposal in the negative. Alcohol and the woman of his dreams sounded pretty good right about now. He also thought she'd get a kick out of the pictures he had taken of an electrocuted Reno.

"Yeah, Tseng is definitely punishing us for the Temple," Rude said as he leaned back against the bed he was on. He had ointment on his face for the burns and his leg was propped up in a sling. Reno lay on a bed on the other side of the room, his arm in a sling and bandages around his chest underneath his hospital gown.

In the morning, tests came back negative for any unknown diseases, as expected. Rude's leg was still sore, but he could walk on it and promised to "take it easy" in order to get discharged. Reno's shoulder had been popped back into place, so he just needed some painkillers to get him through recovery. His cracked rib, however, slowed him down somewhat, though he was determined to get out of the sick bay with his partner.

The president of Shinra met them in the waiting room as soon as they arrived mid-morning. He seemed hurried and agitated.

"Come in," he said, quickly ushering Reno and Rude into his office.

He walked past them to stand behind his desk, as the sun's light illuminated his office in a foggy gray glow. It was one of those rare days where even though the clouds shrouded the sun in a gauzy haze, the gray sky was bright enough to require sunglasses.

"I've gotten word that some members of AVALANCHE are looking for the same information we are – in the Nibelheim mansion," Rufus said in a haughty tone. He leaned over his desk, supporting himself on his knuckles, and narrowed his eyes to shift his gaze from Reno to Rude. "Now, I know you have become friendly with some of them, but for the sake of your employer – and your employment – you can't let those sewer rats get their hands on anything useful."

Reno was surprised at Rufus' spiteful words. Rufus had previously mentioned wanting to atone for the sins of Shinra's past, so hating AVALANCHE didn't seem prudent. He must have known that members of AVALANCHE were helping to cull the monster herds around the world. Why was he so irritated?

"Boss?" Reno asked, tentatively.

"Shinra has to be the ones to solve this problem, not AVALANCHE," Rufus spewed. "We can't let them get the glory of saving the world again."

Rude nodded and stood up to leave.

"Do you know who's there?" Reno asked before heading out the door.

Rufus had settled back into his desk chair and taken out one of Hojo's files to flip through.

"The vampire and the barmaid," he said without looking up from his work.