Established Alliance
In the end, it was almost evening by the time Genesis, Angeal, and Sephiroth finished going through everything and had jogged the red haired man's memory enough for him to write his reports. They'd just finished supper in Genesis' apartment—the food Sephiroth had brought in the morning had lasted through breakfast and lunch, but Angeal had gone to get ingredients from his place to cook a meal for them for supper. How many mundane things Genesis had completely forgotten was the biggest key which caused the other two young men to believe he really had ended up with Leviathan's Blessing in full form. His lack of interest in spouting LOVELESS also helped a great deal, because the Genesis they had known could never resist, and had done it at some very odd times.
When they were finally done, Genesis sat rubbing the back of his neck as he stared down at the completed paperwork and said in a dry tone, "I'm going to cause heart attacks tomorrow, you know. For the finished paperwork as well as what I'm going to do with that Cadet."
"That's not actually rare for you—it's just that the things you're going to be doing tomorrow will be ones no one ever thought you would do," Angeal pointed out dryly. "Think we should check on the Turks and see if they're still jumpy?"
A silence fell, then Sephiroth offered, "I can call over to Doriss and ask her how they are. She is likely to answer me honestly."
"That's probably the best option. And if she says things are fine now, ask her if Tseng is there," Genesis agreed. "Thanks, Seph. That saves us a lot of time."
"Of course," the silver haired eighteen-year-old agreed, pulling out his PHS and dialing the number he needed.
Sephiroth had been working with Doriss often since she had joined the Turks, so they had something of a rapport, just like Angeal had with one named Donnel. The one Genesis had once had such a rapport with had died a year or so ago, and he hadn't managed to establish a new Turk contact yet—mainly because most of them, even the mild ones, couldn't deal with him for extended times. His best bet in the new set of Turks was Ansha so far, but he felt there was potential it would switch to Tseng, or to someone Tseng recommended.
When Sephiroth's call was answered, he said, "I was wondering how the Turks are doing after whatever upset them earlier." There was a pause while he listened to the answer, then he said, "That is good to know. If such is the case, would Tseng happen to be available to speak with?" He then blinked in mild surprise and looked over at Genesis before saying, "Genesis and Angeal would be with me, as this meeting is at Genesis' request." The other two men traded raised brows, then looked back at the younger as he said, "We will be there shortly, then. Thank you."
When he hung up, Angeal asked, "A meeting with Tseng depended on Genesis being present?"
"Not depended, necessarily, but it certainly prioritized the meeting," Sephiroth answered, standing. "Come. They are fit to have us there now."
Both Commanders rose and followed Sephiroth to the Turks' office, where they were met by bright red haired Reno—and Genesis had to blink at what he was seeing several times before following the teen to Veld's office in the back of the room. Reno noticed and raised a brow before smirking, but he said nothing, and the rest of the Turks seemed more confused than anything—not with the SOLDIERs' presence, but with their own paperwork. The three men were tempted to ask, but thought that could wait until they were on their way out.
In Veld's office, they saw the named man sitting at his desk with several folders open, Tseng with a folder in his hands by the filing cabinet, and Kariya (who none of the three SOLDIERs had known well) by the window with a paper in one hand. Then there was Reno—who went back to sorting through another cabinet of folders, occasionally pulling one or two out to set on top of the cabinet.
It actually shocked them for Tseng to say as Angeal shut the door, "It's a good thing you waited until now to come by, Genesis."
"And apparently you've thrown the Turks into complete chaos in less than twenty-four hours after getting that stupid 'Blessing' you Wutains hold in such high regard," Genesis shot back immediately.
"What else was I supposed to do?" the Wutain asked, brow raised as he made a note in the file he held, shut it, and tossed it onto Veld's desk. "Reno, next stack."
"A little discretion would have been nice, since that's supposed to be what you Turks are known for," the red haired now-twenty-year-old replied in an equally dry tone as he watched Reno take several of the folders on the cabinet he was sorting through and hand those to Tseng.
As the black haired Wutain took them and opened the top one, he answered, "And there's an immediate problem with trying to hide something like that with the Turks, not even factoring in the fact that I got no sleep last night, woke in excruciating pain, and decided to try to work without all my memories intact and no food." His eyes moved up to the three SOLDIERs as he finished, "Unlike in SOLDIER, Turks notice changes to the people they see every day. The thing which most caught Reno's attention about me being 'not right' was how I was making an effort not to meet anyone's eyes, or even to look up from my work. He read it, unfortunately, as me essentially behaving like a rape victim. That in turn meant Veld needed an explanation. So, we're fixing things to cover our asses in case the President finds out too soon."
"Don't forget your 'talk' with Kariya, yo," Reno threw in, already back to the folders. "But do we really hafta do all this paperwork now?" the sixteen-year-old whined.
Genesis snorted as Angeal gave a chuckle and said, "Now that sounds familiar."
"We must do it now so we have it to use to show we're 'working' when we, in fact, aren't," Veld answered Reno's question as he shut several of the folders on his desk. "As such, we can't do it later—the work has to show as having been done before we need to present it. Reno, take this next set to the Turks outside." The younger red haired teen sighed, took the stack Veld had pushed to the edge of his desk, and left the office. Veld wrote a list on a sheet of paper, which he then held out to Kariya and said, "Here's another list for you."
"Right," the orange haired Turk agreed, taking it and adding it to the one (maybe it was actually 'ones'?) he already had in his hand. In the meantime, two more of the folders from Tseng's hands found their way to Veld's desk.
"Does this mean we can safely assume both Genesis and Tseng do indeed have Leviathan's Blessing?" Sephiroth asked.
"It does," Tseng agreed.
"You remember the answers to so many of your missions from fourteen years ago?" Genesis gaped at the not quite eighteen-year-old Turk.
"It's in a Turk's job description to have a very good memory," the Wutain shrugged.
"In which case, what needs to be done for us to find the ones in Nibelheim?" Sephiroth asked. "And is it a good idea for Genesis to Mentor a Cadet named Kunzel Tarins?"
Tseng snorted and looked up at Sephiroth to say, "I had been debating moving Kunzel into the Turks—he's certainly got all the skills we require. But, he wanted to be in SOLDIER, so if Genesis wants him, he can take him and train him properly for both his mind and body structure. If you're asking whether Genesis is capable of being a Mentor or not—with the extra fourteen years of knowledge which I have no idea how he even managed to survive to gain, then yes. As for Nibelheim, Turks make deliveries to drop off data for the Science Department every three months or so, but we've gotten some reports of Dragons near the town this time. It happens periodically. Normally, we'd stealth in, but we can request a SOLDIER to go with our delivery person to do the drop-off."
"Then we have two options. You and Angeal or me and another Turk," Genesis put in immediately, and Tseng's brow rose questioningly. "Verification. It's one thing for both of us to go and say Cloud and Vincent are there and knew us on sight—but if no one else can verify that, it starts to become complicated and suspect."
Tseng reached up to rub the back of his neck as he thought about the words, then said, "Cloud's suspicious by nature—I can't blame him, really—but he especially isn't inclined to trust strangers, especially not 'strange Turks', because he's already allocated us as 'enemies'. Until he gets over that, the only one of us he has any chance of dealing with is me, so it would have to be Commander Hewley and myself. I can only hope he's gotten Vincent out of the basement by then, because the drop-off is scheduled for only eight days from now."
"Does this Vincent person matter so much, besides having been a former Turk?" Angeal asked curiously.
"Vincent is the only one who can take care of one of our very immediate problems, one which will, by extension, fix at least two others in the future," Tseng shrugged, going back to his papers. "How much of what we actually need to fix has Genesis told you?"
"Not a lot," Angeal admitted. "He was too busy trying to get his memory straight for the whole of today. Did you also end up with some 'gifts' from Leviathan?"
"Forty-three of them, one I truly wasn't expecting to get," the Wutain answered while writing a note in the file he was working on. "I didn't, and don't, remember everything about all the missions I worked on, so you realize this. I just remember more of it than most would have because it's what I'm trained for. Cloud's childhood left a lot to be desired, so I wouldn't put it past him to know most of what happened in his life at that time. Vincent, as a former Turk and having spent most of this period sleeping, would also remember most of it. I honestly don't know about Weiss, but if his life was anything like Cloud's, he probably won't have forgotten much, either."
"I doubt he would have," Genesis agreed.
Tseng wrote another note in the file, shut it, and threw it on Veld's desk before looking up at the red haired SOLDIER to ask, "How did you survive, anyway? We all thought you were dead after that—War."
"I would have been. I have the Puppy and Minerva to thank for my survival, but then I got taken off to Deepground—by Weiss and Nero, just so you realize how closely connected this actually is—and decided it was better to just go to sleep for however many years it was," Genesis answered wryly.
"You were in Deepground?" Angeal asked in alarm as Sephiroth's hand rested on Genesis' shoulder.
"Oh, don't worry, they never hurt me—they didn't have time before I conjured a magical cocoon and went to sleep for...I guess it only wound up being about three years," the red haired SOLDIER shrugged. "I woke up when—Weiss was defeated and the thing controlling him let go. We spent the next two years working with Vincent before the world went to Hellfire in a hand basket."
"So you're saying 'the Puppy' just weakened you, he didn't kill you, and Vincent just weakened Weiss, he didn't actually kill him?" Tseng asked with a bit of a frown.
"I don't think the Puppy would have killed anyone if he hadn't felt he had no choice, so when he saw a way he didn't have to kill me, he took it. I think he figured I would end up dying, anyway, by then," Genesis shrugged. "And the one Vincent actually killed was Hojo, who had hijacked Weiss' body to enact his own plan to call Omega, so when Hojo died, Weiss got his body back—he was just really weak for awhile afterwards."
"Omega?" everyone in the office besides Tseng asked—even Reno from where he'd just come back into the office, the door closed behind him.
"Wait, Hojo did what?" Sephiroth asked in a sharp tone.
"I don't think it's in effect yet..." Genesis said softly as he looked up at the silver haired man a little uncertainly. It still was somewhat amusing to realize both Angeal and Sephiroth were slightly taller than him, even if it was only by an inch or two. And Tseng was a few inches shorter, though tall for a Wutain.
With a small sigh, Tseng said, "This is why Hojo is one of the problems we need to—take care of. He's aware of Chaos and Omega Theory, and he's aware of Deepground. Giving him 'toys' like that is very, very dangerous, so if we want to save the world, we have to get rid of him. As for Chaos and Omega Theory, the data is at Shinra Manor, along with other data we need to bring back. I'll be able to hand around the paperwork once I have it in hand. But, to make a long story short, Chaos—the same being attached to Vincent—is supposed to slaughter everything on the Planet to return all the energy to the Lifestream, and the Lifestream will generate Omega so it can leave this world. Basically, it's an end-of-the-world self-destruct button, and the trigger is torture, mass murder, and large-scale destruction—all things Shinra is prone to with its current leadership."
The others paled (even Veld) and Kariya put in, "That would explain why you went so far back and needed so much time to try to fix it."
"Partly, yes," Tseng agreed, going back to his files.
"Hold on—what do you know about the reason the world broke apart?" Genesis asked with a frown of confusion.
"What Ae—rmed told me as things began falling apart," the Wutain answered, making a few notes on the top file. "Basically, our planet is too small to support life of its own accord, and life only exists here because Minerva, or the Lifestream, is both sentient and so focused into such a small area she's capable of terra-forming it. That means she's artificially creating gravity and atmosphere for us, as well as generating everything in existence out of pure energy which she solidified, much like Mako and Materia. If there's too little energy left to sustain it, it all breaks apart because the rock itself doesn't remember how to exist without her energy holding it in the form she's given it. And to top that off, we signed her death warrant when we actually let Chaos destroy Omega, which meant she no longer had her way to leave the world—it takes time to reform the Omega 'body', thousands of years at the very least—so this was the only option left—for all of us, spirit and human alike."
A long silence followed the words, then Genesis sighed. "So that's what happened, and we really have no choice but to stop the Reactors as soon as possible. But is that really the whole of it?"
"In what way?" Veld asked of the red haired SOLDIER.
"Stopping the Reactors is one thing, but isn't that only half the problem?" Genesis asked quietly, and all eyes focused on him. "Don't we also have to try to find a way to put energy back into the Planet, the Lifestream, to replenish what we took? How can we possibly do that when everything here came from her energy in the first place?"
"Maybe, maybe not," Tseng agreed. "We'll have to look further into things, but you've made a valid point. The thing which comes to mind is how there are natural Mako Spings and naturally developing Materia—those are legitimate and natural functions of the Lifestream, so there must be a reason for them."
"We'll have to get people to look into that quietly, then," Veld said. "In the meantime, we have cases to continue working on, unless there was something else you needed, General, Commanders?"
"I need another Turk contact—Sephiroth and Angeal have theirs, but after mine died last year, none of the others have been a good fit," Genesis put in. "And having an established Turk contact again will make trading off information a lot easier."
"There are two options I can see, and that's assuming we want to bring Ansha in on the full scope of what's going on," Tseng said. "Otherwise, it would have to be Reno."
"...Why Reno?" Angeal asked after a startled pause. "I'd have thought he and Genesis would be—basically lighting a fuse on a powder keg."
"You'd think, right?" the Wutain asked in amusement as he tossed a couple more folders on Veld's desk. "But no—Reno does have an uncanny ability to keep to the task at hand when he's working, and when he's in 'work mode', it takes a—fuck of a lot—to get him riled. Really, the only thing I ever saw accomplish the task was if some idiot tried to hurt someone he saw as 'his' rookie—that is, if they tried to hurt a new Turk he took under his wing."
"Elena?" Genesis asked in amusement. "What happened?"
Tseng lifted his shoulders in a shrug and said, "Corneo thought it would be a good idea to try to take Elena and Princess Yufi—she was sixteen by that point—to bed with him. Needless to say, that didn't go over well with Reno."
"No, don't think I'd take well to a girl under my wing bein' treated like a Slum whore," Reno commented wryly. "But who's Elena?"
"Currently a twelve-year-old Academy student," Tseng answered. "She was twenty-one when the Turks took her, and Corneo got to her while she was still just a brand new trainee—she'd been with us for less than a month."
"Is that part of why you want Corneo taken down?" Kariya asked suddenly in mild amusement. "Since I don't think you would have been happy with that, either."
"No, but that's a factor in the decision," the Wutain Turk chuckled. "Point of fact is that Corneo is Shinra's dog, and if we don't obey our 'Masters', Shinra will turn to him and get him to do it. And he'll do it, even if his orders are to destroy the Plate support pillars."
"The—what?" Sephiroth and Angeal asked harshly as Veld, Kariya, and Reno stared at him in something like horror.
But Reno's expression twisted into pain and he asked, "Why do I suddenly feel this—ache, pain, sorrow?"
Tseng's eyes went to him sadly as he said in a quiet voice, "Airmed is very talkative, and explained to me some things about who was 'sent back', because while only five of us got the Blessing, the Lifestream itself caught the remains of as many of the dying souls as it could and threw them all back to random points in time. Your hair, the marks below your eyes—those indicate you've gotten more of your future self's essence than most others would have. You're probably getting phantom pains from having been the one to carry out the orders to drop the Sector Seven Plate—without evacuating it first."
Reno swallowed hard as everyone in the room paled at the words.
"Why—why would—why did—?" To everyone's surprise, it was Angeal who asked the question, but then...maybe it wasn't so surprising with his strong sense of honor.
After a long silence, Genesis said, "I was sleeping in Deepground then, so you're the only one who can tell us, Tseng."
Another silence followed, then the Wutain sighed and said, "AVALANCHE ended up with two incarnations, one which is much more dangerous than the other. The first incarnation is the worse one. However, the second incarnation was the only one which managed to blow up a Midgar Reactor, and President Shinra was not happy about that. He'd recently gotten intel that they were hiding out in the Sector Seven Slums, so felt the most expedient way to crush them was to—literally—crush them, and who cared about all the people above and below who would die?
"Unfortunately, if we didn't obey, we'd have been executed, too, and we had another Nightmare we had to try to stop already. Reno had the option of backing out, but he chose to fulfill it. I never asked for or knew his reason, but I know he wept over it after it was done and he was safe with us again. In the end, the operation turned out to be a failure because AVALANCHE's members weren't even there when the Plate came down—they had been either trying to rescue two of their own from Corneo or had been trying to clear people out of the Sector Seven Slums."
"Is there a way to prevent that?" Angeal asked harshly.
"There is, which involves stopping the first incarnation of AVALANCHE, because some of their actions caused Corel to be firebombed, and it was one of the survivors of the incident who led the second incarnation of AVALANCHE. If we can save Corel, there won't be a second incarnation," Tseng answered, gaze and voice absent.
Angeal took a few steps forward, closing the distance between him and Tseng, then pulled the folders from the younger man's hands. Tseng looked up at him in surprise, but the older man could also read pain there, so he said, "Count me in with anything you need help with. If that's the sort of thing you want to stop, need to stop, I'll help you do it, because there's nothing honorable about actions like those. Let's set aside even the Plate being dropped—Corel should never have been firebombed over AVALANCHE's actions. Those things, if what you said about Chaos and Omega is true, have to be stopped, regardless."
That time, Tseng had to swallow hard, but he nodded and said in a subdued voice, "Thank you, Commander. We all made a lot of mistakes last time, not realizing what those would compound into...but we don't want to repeat them this time. Any help you're willing to give would be appreciated."
"Then call me Angeal," the older, black haired man answered with a faint smile. "Between you, Genesis, and Reno all being so messed up and so hurt over the things you went through in that future, it sounds like you could all use more friends and more support than you had last time. After all, the Turks should never have been in danger of being executed if one of them didn't do a task like the one you were ordered to do."
If the situation hadn't been so serious, Angeal would have been amused by how surprised Tseng looked at the words, the offer of friendship, but as things stood, he was really beginning to understand how Genesis could have been so screwed up when the Blessing first took him. How the Wutain was dealing so well with things, Angeal wasn't sure, but there was a good chance he hadn't been in much better shape than Genesis...but had been without someone to comfort him last night. For the first time, Angeal began to wonder if Tseng was 'dealing well with it,' or if he was just a master at hiding his true feelings.
At that point, Genesis said, "Sounds like the three years I missed were a real mess. In a way, I'm glad I slept through them. Either way, I'll start with Reno and see how that goes—having five people besides us already know about all these details is a lot, and we probably don't want too many more to know." He felt bad about how much the people who had lived during those three years had suffered while he'd been spared all that. To know what Reno, especially, had been through—and that Reno remembered it in any capacity...It was enough to make him shudder with sympathy pain. "Anyway, for now, we're done here, right?"
"We are," Tseng agreed quietly.
"You'll arrange for me to go with you to Nibelheim, yes?" Angeal asked.
"Of course," Veld answered that time. "You can expect the mission to reach Lazard in a few more days—the day after tomorrow, we'll get another report on the situation around Nibelheim so we'll have more justification in asking for an escort."
"Good, thank you," Angeal agreed.
As the two older SOLDIERs were turning to the door, Sephiroth said, "Request my assistance as you need it, as well." When Tseng looked at the General in surprise, the silver haired man elaborated, "I have also heard enough here to realize these are things which must be stopped. Even should that mean going against the monster who is Hojo, who is my father."
"Don't worry—Vincent will kill Hojo, so you won't have to face that conflict," Tseng answered in some amusement. "In other things, though, your assistance is welcome."
There was a pause, then with a regal nod, Sephiroth turned to the door and left, followed by a surprised Genesis and Angeal. It didn't take long for the three to return to Genesis' place.
"A Nightmare...apt way to describe a future where those sorts of things were commonplace," Angeal sighed, reaching up to grip Genesis' shoulder. "How are any of you still sane?"
"Because we were warped by it," Genesis answered with a shudder. "We—had times we weren't sane, but—we mostly just...went along with it and didn't think too much about it. We disconnected from it, cut ourselves off...and only realized when it was all over that we had been fools. By then, without us even knowing it, we were too late to save anything. Now, we have to try to fix ourselves as well as...the Planet...or we'll just end up right back where we were."
"We will help you," Sephiroth said simply, and Genesis had to smile at the irony of 'the Nightmare' willingly supporting them to stop the very thing he had become.