Facing Changes
After the first day of having the trainees in the VR room for training, Tseng had also spent the next day there with Neirine. When he woke the morning after that, however, he was torn between panic and anger. Panic, because he had a sudden realization of something the Turks had to react to or they would lose both one of their targets and one of their useful employees. Anger, because his immediate response to dress and go to the source of the problem was waylaid by him having no weapons and no uniforms. Then, his anger morphed into angry frustration at the realization of how few casual, civilian clothes he had. Before he got further than that, he remembered the reason for the panic and found his new, temporary PHS to call Veld.
"What's the matter, Tseng?" the older man's tired voice asked after a few rings.
"I remembered something you need to react to or we're going to lose a useful engineer and one of our current targets," Tseng answered.
"What's the situation?" Veld asked, his voice clearly more awake and aware.
"Lakis has been working on the unapproved drug trafficking case, without realizing the actual mastermind behind it—and the reason it took us so long to realize there was an issue in the first place—is Jovin Barkan (1) in Weapons. Barkan has a 'friend' in Urban Development, who has unintentionally been helping him solve logistic issues, but who would never knowingly help drug smugglers. If Lakis tails his current lead to the breakfast meeting Barkan and the Urban Development woman, Reva Mitter (2), are having, he'll get caught, sparking a shoot-out which will end in Barkan getting away for another three years and Mitter's death," Tseng explained as succinctly as he could while still providing the needed data.
"I see. Do you have any knowledge of what Lakis should be assigned to do instead, or is this completely unknown?" the Turk Director questioned.
"I have a guess that as long as Lakis doesn't go near enough to the coffee shop—Lariss Pavilion (3)—to be seen, he should be able to watch for his target, or better yet, Barkan, to emerge, then resume tailing him. You may want to send another Turk to keep an eye on Mitter and warn her of what Barkan is doing and to stay away from him so she doesn't get caught in the mess, though. Otherwise, we have no knowledge of what else may happen, or not happen," the Wutain replied after a short moment.
"I'll get in touch with Lakis, then. Why is it you say Mitter is so important?"
"Ask her Department Head what they're working on right now, and I think you'll see for yourself why Mitter is actually important."
"Fine. I'll let you know the results of the incident once I have them," Veld told him, then hung up.
Tseng hung up his own phone with a sigh, then began flipping through the numbers he had in it. Other people couldn't really shop for clothes for him—music had been hard enough—so he had to do that part himself. How was he going to be able to do that, though? He was just the right build to be just wrong for every pre-made size other than a very few instances, and those required him going to unusual shops most of even the Turks wouldn't be able to find. Or, he had to go to a personal tailor—
A moment later, his lips formed a smirk and he decided to pay the company tailor a visit. If Veld was going to lock him in the building, he was going to make Veld pay his tab for getting tailored clothes he'd also be able to use for their occasional plainclothes cases. The reason would be enough for the tailor, even though Tseng was actually just getting some other casual clothes he could wear while he had no uniforms. Maybe if the bill ran high enough, Veld would start to regret his decision, though he wasn't holding out hope for that. It was more likely he'd get a reprimand for making the Department of Administrative Research (the formal name for the Turks was far too long for practicality) foot the bill for his personal clothing.
Still, that was his only viable option, so he dressed, took his ID, and went down to the floor the tailor was on. That floor was effectively its own department, with the head tailor, several other tailors working under her, and several secretaries, each one who took clothing orders for a different department. Usually, those were for their uniforms—doctors' lab coats and protective gear, engineers' and mechanics' work clothes, Academy, Infantry, SOLDIER, and Turk uniforms, and so on—but some individuals and departments could order more than their uniforms. Due to the nature of their work, the Turks were one of those.
Stopping at the desk for the Turks, he met the blond woman's gaze as she blinked and said, "You're not in your uniform, Sir."
He smiled and replied, "I'm preparing for a plainclothes mission. I'll need some outfits to work with. Mind if I go talk with our tailor about the details?"
"Sure. Our work has been slow for the last two weeks—all we've needed to do was replace a few of the Turks' damaged uniforms. You lot have been being less reckless than usual," she teased, getting up to open the door to the back room where the tailors took measurements and did stitching. Each secretarial desk's attached door led to a separate room specialized to the department.
"Reckless? Who, us?" he teased back with a straight face. Both of them laughed as he stepped into the back room.
"Who—oh, Tseng!" a familiar voice grinned as a woman stepped out from behind one of the uniform racks. She actually had a co-worker, her older brother, and both of them worked with the Turks at times, though her brother often also took orders for other departments or people like the President. Both siblings had dusty black hair kept short with nearly white skin and brilliant blue eyes—people often mistook them as twins.
"How are you, Maya (4)?" he asked her with a faint smile.
"Fine—brilliant, actually, with the lack of work the last two weeks. I've been able to work on some of my designs. Have a look at this one," she said as she moved over to pick up a large sketch book which was sitting open to one set of pages where some material scraps had been pinned on one edge and the rest of the papers were taken up with the sketches of an outfit. "I have two versions because this one can easily be modified to suit either a woman or a man—though I think a lot of people in these parts wouldn't recognize the difference as anything more than a bit of a different cut."
Dutifully, Tseng examined the color swatches and the sketches, seeing largely deep green and blue with gold hemming embroidery, and the full outfits showed a full design across the back and looping over the shoulders and sides in a mix of blue, white, and gold. The design was obviously of Leviathan, with most of the body on the back of the top, one front leg reaching over the left shoulder, and the tail curling around the right side of the body to trail up the chest to the shoulder. The basic design was a modified Wutain regal robe, which had loose pants and shirt under a robe with loophole buttons just to the left of center and which was closed only to just past the waist on a man, and closed down to the knee on a woman. The robe was green, the pants and shirt blue.
"I admit, I'm impressed," he told her, and she grinned. "I don't normally see modifications to Wutain clothing which would actually work, in or outside of Wutai, but I believe this would. That you only designed the hems and were so careful with Leviathan's positioning goes a long way towards that. Where did you get this idea?"
"You comment on Leviathan a lot," she told him with an amused look. "Instead of using Shiva, Ifrit, Bahamut, or some other Summon, you swear on the tidal dragon Leviathan. I decided to do some research on him, and found out some interesting things in the process, like how much meaning color has to your people and things like that. I always thought color was color, but Wutains loathe Seconds for wearing dark purple into combat, and I suddenly have a reason for why Wutains seem to go out of their way to kill Seconds when they should be focused on the Firsts. I chose the colors of this almost as a whim to take into account some of those 'color meanings' they have."
Tseng gave her a nod and a small, wry smile as he said, "Well, it will be functional and I'm sure people will wear it, particularly as a novelty at various formal affairs."
"Great!" she grinned. "Now, what did you come here for? Uniforms?"
"No, not at the moment," he replied, shaking his head slightly. He didn't want her to go looking through records which might show her he wasn't supposed to have uniforms for the next few days. "I'm setting up for a plainclothes mission and need things I can use on short order with little modification. The basic premise is to present an image of someone coming into wealth, but not overly wealthy, either—the in-between phase typical of a new business owner who has a good market but is still getting used to the role and wealth distribution. As this is also intended as said businessman taking time away from work, I need some casual clothes and a suit presentable for, say, a formal dinner. What have you got?"
"Mmm..." Maya murmured as she looked off into the distance thoughtfully, then turned to the racks across the room which had various plainclothes styles. "Are you supposed to look like a Wutain supporting Shinra, or a Shinra-raised Wutain?"
"...They would differ?" he asked in confusion. He'd been raised in Shinra from the age of ten, so he had no idea how he'd dress if he'd been an adult and come to Shinra only then.
"Oh, right, you've been here so long you wouldn't know," she said, sounding a bit amused. "You dress—and mostly act—like a Shinra-raised Wutain, which means like any other Shinra man, with only a few quirks, like your hair. 'Wutains supporting Shinra' are a lot more attached to their roots and tend to make a general effort to look like one of Shinra's at formal events, but often still dress in traditional clothing otherwise, just with a shorter robe which looks more like a tunic, though if they find something in our style which is especially comfortable, they'll wear that on occasion when meeting Shinra friends or at informal events. Whoever you're trying to bait will react better to one or the other, so which is it?"
Thinking quickly, Tseng went with, "Being that I was chosen due to obviously being Wutain, I think it may be the latter I'd be looking for. Let's keep away from the very costly materials, like silk, though."
"Why's that? Wutains tend to like it—a lot," Maya blinked.
Tseng reached up to touch the stone on his forehead and explained, "But the only people in Wutai who have these are a simple people who intrinsically loathe the waste which comes from very expensive fabrics. I've never heard of anyone who bore one of these who actually would go beyond fine quality cotton, wool, or leather, regardless of their rank in society, Wutain or otherwise. They don't even go before the Emperor in anything beyond what I listed, when that would have been the one time it would have been 'acceptable' to wear something like silk."
"I see," she said, then moved over to the far side of the rack. "We'll find something."
About an hour later, Tseng left with a bag which had an equivalent to five outfits all wrapped up, waving at Maya and the secretary as he went. Given what he'd chosen, it was safe to say Veld's retaliation would be to get him to work on exactly the same kind of mission he'd cited for Maya, so he knew the clothes would get actual use on a mission, too. The only question then would be 'when'. In the meantime, he still had some days of nothing he needed to get out of the way, and after spending the day before with Neirine, he was now wondering what he'd do today.
Well, he knew Rufus was put out by being refused yesterday, and he'd never gotten to talk with Genesis, either. After all, with Zack, Kunzel, and Neirine running training practices for awhile yesterday once they'd gotten the three together in the VR room, the three had decided to completely appropriate the room for the rest of the day to train. Once the initial sparring and first training scenario were done, they had started getting along great, and the three kids had wanted to put a lot of work into what they were doing, all of them showing improvement quickly. As such, other than Sephiroth leaving to take a mission Lazard had called him for, that had left Genesis and Tseng there in full 'teacher mode'.
Come to think of it, he'd never gotten to talk with Kariya again, either, after running the four-Turk scenario against the older man's younger self.
As he turned a corner, red and black met his vision, causing him to come to an abrupt halt. "Tseng?" Genesis asked in mild confusion as the two took a step back to see who they had just about run into.
"Genesis," Tseng acknowledged as he met the other man's Mako-blue eyes. "Where's Kunzel?"
"He asked to do some training on his own this morning, so I got him started in the VR room and told him I'd come check on him in a couple hours," Genesis explained. "I also told him not to go outside the range of the three scenarios we worked with them on yesterday, because if he did, there was a good chance he'd really get hurt. Since I think he took it to heart, I'm letting him do some of the work alone. There's a recording feed going on now so I can watch it later and give him pointers, but I have some free time. And I notice you're still not in your uniform." The red haired man looked amused as he said it.
"I have to put some things in my room. I'll explain there," Tseng sighed. "And you haven't yet told me why you had Zack out of his classes yesterday."
"Let's go somewhere more private, then," Genesis agreed.
They kept going to Tseng's room, the Wutain asking on the way, "Why were you on the tailors' floor? You usually get your uniforms delivered, like we do."
"Yeah. I was going to make sure to request Kunzel's Third Class uniforms be prepared before he was going to have to use them. Obviously, I'll do that later now."
Tseng opened his apartment door and let Genesis in, noting how the man looked around curiously as he closed the door and put the bag away in his room. When he got back to the main room, the red haired man had gone to the balcony door and was leaning against the jamb, though he hadn't opened it.
"How have you been dealing with Zack, by the way?" Genesis asked suddenly.
"I've been trying not to think about it. Better than I dealt with my first meeting with Sephiroth, though," the Wutain answered, sitting in one of his plush chairs.
"I thought you dealt with Seph fine?" the red haired man asked, turning his head to gaze at him with one curious eye.
"During the meeting, yes. I fainted afterwards."
"...Why?"
"While he was in his state as 'the Nightmare', he stabbed me and left me for dead. Later, his 'Remnants' tortured me. It was all I could do to just not react with terror when he walked in there with you."
"Ouch...Sorry about that. I had no idea it had gone so badly. And Zack?"
"...I knew he was in Nibelheim for those four years after Sephiroth destroyed the town, in Shinra Manor. Him and Cloud both, for that matter. I had no power to free them then, not with Veld still in command of the Turks and my required position being obedient to him and the President. When they escaped, I tried to get to them first, to save them and get them away from Shinra...but I failed and the SOLDIERs caught up to them on the ridge in the wastes around Midgar. Zack was killed, and Cloud..." Tseng sighed.
"I see..." Genesis sighed in response. "But your reaction to him was better than to Sephiroth?"
"It was. I suppose it's in his intrinsic nature to draw you in, and you just feel...comfortable with him. It becomes, in very short order, like all of that past never happened."
"I noticed that, too. Maybe it's because this Zack really hasn't experienced that future yet, and he doesn't have any of the memories of it, either. It shows in everything he is and does, unlike with Reno."
"Possibly. Now, speaking of Zack, why wasn't he in class?"
"...Kunzel was assaulted in a way I'm sure never happened last time. He needed Zack to help him cope, and I think the VR training with your little Turk helped him out a lot. Your turn—why aren't you in uniform?"
"I've been taken off-duty until we go to Nibelheim so I can forcibly learn not to react to the sense of urgency Leviathan's Blessing causes. Why didn't you end up with the same?"
"Because Sephiroth has known someone else with it and pretty much forced me to sit down and jog my memory back into place the next day, the same day we went to your office. Because he did that, whatever I may have wanted to react to, I couldn't since I was already overloaded with information. I think you're the only one of us who no one forcibly broke out of the urgency even before it really took hold."
"...That makes more sense than I'd like to admit..."
There was a knock on the door before it opened—and Kariya walked in, then stopped and blinked in surprise. He shut the door behind himself after a moment, then commented to Tseng, "Veld almost had a heart attack when he found out what Mitter was working on with Tuesti. He told me to tell you he'd be by with the report after supper, but didn't go into any further details. Am I interrupting?"
"Who's Mitter?" Genesis asked, turning to face Tseng in confusion.
"An engineer working with the Reactors and energy distribution," the Wutain Turk replied in amusement. "In short, at the very least, she and Reeve are going to make the Reactors ten times more efficient with negligible waste. Anything beyond that, I don't know, but this project won't get done without Mitter because Reeve doesn't have the time and no one else especially cares."
"Ohhh..." Genesis murmured. "Okay, then. By the way, I met your little flower girl the other day. So did Reno, but he seemed fine with leaving her be once I called up your name. Was that the best way to handle things?"
"At the moment, probably," Tseng agreed. "I'll go see her as soon as I can, but Reno should have no issue leaving her where she is for the moment, especially if part of him remembers her, too."
"Fine. Anything else we needed to talk about?"
"Not that I know of."
The SOLDIER Commander pushed away from the jamb and said, "Okay, if that's it, I'll head back to what I was doing, then back to Kunzel. See you later." He was gone moments later.
A silence followed his departure until Kariya took off his sunglasses and looked at Tseng with a raised brow as he asked, "What did he mean, 'your little flower girl'?"
Heaving a small sigh, the younger man leaned back in his seat and said, "She's the younger version of Airmed, while she was still human in that other timeline. Mainly, the girl was dubbed 'flower girl' because she grew flowers in the tainted soil in the Slums, both around her house and in the..."
Moving over to a seat across from the younger man, the orange haired Turk commented, "I'd hazard a guess and say she's a target for you to give so little on her. How does that apply to her being 'yours'? She your girlfriend?"
Tseng leveled a glare and him as Airmed giggled into his head, and told the older man, "She was in love with someone else, and as I told you, people never stopped being just 'conquests' to me. No..." He then paused and sighed dejectedly. "She's more like my sister, and I was assigned to find her and return her to Hojo because Veld knew I was the reason she escaped in the first place."
For a long moment, the older man just gaped at him, then asked tentatively, "How long ago did you do that?"
"Maybe around...five years, I think?" the Wutain murmured, thinking back on it. "She was seven, I was around twelve. Veld isn't holding me 'responsible' in that sense, but he sort of knows I'm the only one she may trust enough to show herself to. Of course, that also gives me license to pretend I never saw her."
Kariya snorted, then started chuckling. After a few minutes, he stopped and gave his head a shake before looking up at the younger Turk to ask, "I actually only saw my former self leave rather than fighting you in the VR scenario, so what happened to apparently make him decide to hightail it?"
"We had a bit of a discussion—a very embarrassing one about me wearing Shinra's collar and me stupidly retorting that he'd rather I wear his instead," Tseng answered, blushing faintly at the memory, which had been truly just as embarrassing as he'd said. The words made Kariya chuckle, but the man motioned for him to go on. "Knowing your skills the way I do, I was more than prepared when he threw bombs at me, and used Demi 2 on them to cause an implosion and a lot of smoke with very little damage, then bolted into the main warehouse.
"He decided to light the whole place on fire, which threw me into flashbacks of my first meeting with you—only that time, the parts I'd been missing from the memory were intact. I started using Demi 2 in an unconventional way to crush the crates in my path towards the wall, where I made an exit and moved to sit against the wall across the way. He got pissed off and followed me, but then stopped for some reason, as he got to the hole in the wall and could see me through it. He stayed there for a minute, then walked away, just like you did two years ago, and not long after, the whole warehouse collapsed. In the final incident, it wasn't just my presence which caused him to run, there was something about Neirine, too."
"Hmmm..." the man mused, leaning back thoughtfully. He then nodded and said, "That scenario is so demanding and difficult because I helped make it, the development of my past self especially. My past self in that scenario actually has a functioning A.I. and can suddenly change his decisions or actions, all based on how I would actually have behaved then. I didn't program him to let enemies, especially Turks, get away, but he obviously has enough of my personality for his A.I. to assess you the same way I did—to think you were worth saving. Or, well, sparing. It wouldn't surprise me if your verbal sparring helped in that, but largely, he would have respected you for being able to get out of there. Not everyone knows you can cast spells on inanimate targets, after all. You basically outsmarted him at his own game, the only one who ever has."
"...And Neirine?"
"I had a soft spot for kids, always have. It's obvious she's still a kid, whether she's thirteen or fourteen, and he wouldn't have wanted to fight her. The battle was already lost, anyway, so he just decided to cut his losses and get out while he still could. In the end, that was how the scenario ended anyway—the real version just did more damage to Junon and the people in the Junon Shinra Headquarters. I killed two Turks of the four who were trying to track me down back then."
Tseng released a deep sigh and gave a wry smile as he commented, "You know, no matter how long I knew you for in that other timeline, I never knew as much about you as I do now, as I've learned in the last few days."
"That a good thing or a bad one?"
"...Good, I think. Thank you for helping me...for insisting you were going to, rather than letting me hide from what happened the first night."
"It's good for you to realize running away and hiding because something doesn't go your way won't help you fix what went wrong. If you want to change things for the better—you need to start facing it all. I aim to stand by you while you do, to help you do it."
For a long moment, the Wutain gazed at him evenly, then gave a nod. "For the first time, I actually believe that."
Kariya smiled at him in reply and the two settled into companionable silence.
Notes:
(1) This is a random name which I don't think shows up again. Ever. So, you can forget it, and if something changes and he reappears, I'll just refer you back to this chapter then.
(2) Reva Mitter (a random name with no particular meaning or purpose) will likely appear later, but I'm undecided as to whether that will be in a minor way or a major way. Since she'll be working with Reeve, and Reeve will have to show up, you may want to remember this one.
(3) Sorry, got to make the note on this one, because even though I 'created' it in the moment, there's actually a place by this name in the 'Warcraft' games/books/comics/etc, namely a...well, it's not really a ruin because it's still standing properly...in the Feralas zone in World of Warcraft. The difference is that the one in Midgar is a restaurant café.
(4) You definitely want to remember Maya! She's an OC whose name I randomly chose, and who suddenly became bigger than I'd first intended as I developed the story. Yes, she has a family name assigned somewhere, but I don't think it ever comes up in-story for reasons...