It took Tseng only a few moments to find out that Cissnei was currently the closest to Lazard's home and called her as walked along the hallway as quickly as he could in his present physical state. It took her only a few seconds to pick up, and without delay, he instructed her to go to Lazard's house as quickly and inconspicuously as possible and keep him there until he arrived. Assuming that he was actually there. As Tseng came into the lounge, his eyes fell on Rufus, who was still sitting on the couch, looking tired, but on high alert. Reno had just passed through on his way to the helipad, so Tseng had no doubt that both the vice president and Rude had noticed that something was going on.
Rufus looked up when Tseng entered and a hint of concern passed over his face. Tseng raised a hand in a defensive gesture. He would manage somehow. "I'm sorry, something came up. I'll be back soon." Rufus waved at him and said: "Have fun!" Tseng was very sorry for leaving him there with nothing to do, but the situation was volatile and he had no time to lose. And so, he forced himself to walk on until he reached the helipad, where a helicopter was waiting with Reno in the pilot's seat. Tseng dragged himself to the vehicle and clumsily climbed into the co-pilot's seat. Reno watched him climb in with an expression of concern on his face, but he said nothing and took off as soon as Tseng was seated and the door was closed.
Exhausted just from walking the few steps from his office to the helicopter, Tseng closed his eyes for a few seconds. "Hey, what do you think?", Reno broke the silence. Tseng opened his eyes again and said hesitantly: "I hope I'm wrong." Reno shook his head. "He didn't file the reports, man. Not one report. ReportS. With a capital s. That didn't happen by accident." Tseng knew that, and that was a problem. The question was whether or not this would have further implications. "The question is why he's trying to hide information about Wutai. Information he knows we've been looking for, for a long time", he contemplated. "What could he possibly gain from it?", he added. Reno growled: "What did Rufus have to gain from working with Avalanche?" He shook his head. "Really, who understands these people?" Tseng knew exactly what Reno was trying to say. It was an open secret that Lazard was another one of President Shinra's sons, and an ambitious one. Although the president had chosen to adopt Rufus as his only legal son, making him his appointed successor, Lazard, on the contrary, had made up his mind to try and work up his way through the company the regular way to somehow gain their father's favor and displace Rufus Shinra. Tseng could imagine that perhaps he had had seen a chance when Rufus mysteriously disappeared, but if he had been hiding information for months or possibly even longer, he must have had played a much longer game, unrelated to recent events. What that game was, was now up to the Turks to figure out.
"So, you and the Vice President, huh?", Reno's voice dragged him out of his thoughts again. Tseng turned his head toward the redhead in surprise, who was not looking at him, but had his eyes fixed on a point somewhere along their flight path. Tseng had known that he would have to explain himself at some point, but this was not really the time. Reno took his silence as admission and continued: "Are you fucking serious? Did you forget what he did?" Tseng looked away, hoping that Reno would shut up, but he went on: "It's his fault that Avalanche attacked us back in Junon and all the stuff they managed to do is just because he gave them all the information. It's a miracle none of us died. If Sephiroth hadn't been there-" – "I know!", Tseng interrupted him defensively.
He did know all that. Although he did not see it quite the way Reno did, he understood where he was coming from. But the redhead was still not satisfied and continued: "Man, you know how these people are. Remember how he told these Avalanche goons to dispose of us? If the chief hadn't been so quick in his thinking, we'd be a goner. He will send you to your death without even a moment's hesitation if that gets him to where he wants to be!" Tseng had nowhere else to direct his gaze, other than his own hands, fully realizing that Reno was right. But he got it all wrong at the same time. "I'd be more worried if he didn't", he responded flatly. Startled by the sudden noise of Reno stomping his foot on the metal floor of the cockpit, his head jerked around to find him clenching the controls tightly with a desperate expression on his face. "I won't stop you from running into your doom if you have a death wish, but don't you dare drag everyone else into it!" Tseng was at a loss for words for a moment. Just how did Reno get some of these ideas into his head? "I don't want to die any more than you", he responded curtly, but added after a few seconds: "And I have no intention dragging anyone into it with me." As the designated successor to Chief Veld, he would take command of the Turks once Veld became unable to do so, and thereby, his own decisions would guide them in the future. But as Turks, they had to be ready to sacrifice their lives at any time anyway, be it for the current president or for the future president. And so, Reno was completely wrong in his idea that Tseng was somehow putting the Turks in mortal peril by fraternizing with their future boss. They were in mortal peril one way or another, as was their job. "Which one is it?", Reno followed up. Tseng shook his head, his brows furrowed. "What do you mean?" Reno rolled his eyes. "You don't have a death wish, or you don't want to drag anyone into it. Which one is it?" Tseng did not see how these two statements were in conflict, but he still tried to appease Reno: "I won't drag you into it." Reno shook his head, but said nothing more for a moment.
"So you're over little Aerith then?", he changed the topic out of the blue. Tseng suppressed the urge to glare at the nosy redhead and turned his head the other way to look out of the side window and hide his facial expression. That question had caught him completely off guard. Warranted as it was, he had no answer for his comrade. His affair with Rufus Shinra to him was mostly just that: an affair. Neither could he say with confidence that he was in love with him, nor that his feelings for Aerith had changed substantially. He knew rationally that he had to give up on her, no, that he should never have been interested in her in the first place. And he knew just as well in his head that whatever he expected to get out of his entanglement with Rufus Shinra was possibly not worth the cost. Naturally, a romantic like Reno would assume that a new love would take Aerith's spot in his heart, but that was not really the case, because he was attracted to them in completely different ways.
"You're full of bullshit", his comrade interrupted his deliberations again when Tseng did not react to his interrogation. Tseng, suddenly feeling heat rise in his neck from anger, retorted bitterly: "You're one to talk." Knowing there was nothing to gain from fighting with Reno, he immediately regretted his words. "I don't lust after a 17-year-old", the redhead pushed the issue further instead of leaving it to rest. Put in the defensive by this harsh wording (although it could not be denied that there was some truth to it), Tseng clapped back: "You lust after a straight man", causing Reno to groan in response. He had never even touched Aerith, not even once, and he was staying away from her as much as he possibly could. Reno should know as well as he did, that sometimes, the heart fell in unfitting places, and people did not always have control over their own emotions. He kept his eyes fixed on the side window as he further justified himself: "At least I leave her in peace." He knew he was being unfair, seeing as Rude clung to Reno, just as much as Reno was unable to let go of Rude. Perhaps he was jealous because whatever they had was clearly on a mutual basis and they were making it work somehow, even though Rude could not possibly give Reno everything the latter desired. And the same could not be said about Tseng and Aerith. Or, if he was completely honest with himself, even about him and Rufus.
The rest of the short flight was spent in complete silence as neither of the two wanted to risk saying anything more they could not take back and would regret forever. When they finally reached the apartment complex where Lazard lived, they found the door broken open and Cissnei inside, searching for clues about his whereabouts in a nondescript and impersonal living space, that gave little away as to what may have been his motivations or goals. His office had been found equally deserted, but with clear indication of documents having been removed from one of the closets. Lazard himself was nowhere to be found, though a witness testified to him having left the office in a rush some time mid-afternoon, carrying two large bags. At this point, Tseng had all Turks mobilize, even those who had already completed their duty for the day. They managed to trace him through security feeds along a few blocks of buildings close to the Shinra HQ, but lost his trace after that. His ID had not shown up since after he left the Shinra Building either, which meant that he was either using a fake ID, or evading security checkpoints some other way. An investigation of the area where he last showed up on the security feed yielded only the location of one of those maintenance shafts through which one could access the inside and then the underside of the plate. Its lock having been broken open gave them a strong indication that Lazard had most likely fled down into the maze of shafts and tunnels, where there was little surveillance, and the few cameras that were there would be easy to evade. All of this had happened several hours before, and at this point he could have made it pretty much anywhere in the undercity.
Whatever he had done, his flight was as good as an admission of guilt, and so Chief Veld had an arrest warrant placed on him, and he was stripped of his position as the director or the SOLDIER division with immediate effect. When Tseng was finally able to call it a day, after it had been concluded that his trace had been lost and the crime scenes had been secured and placed under guard, it was already 3 am, and more than four hours past the point where was able to stand on his own two feet. Even to the text message Rufus had sent him around 10 pm, asking if he was ok, he could only reply with a short line to let him know that he could not make it today because the situation required his full attention. He had been sitting in the helicopter for the past couple of hours, giving directions and gathering information about the situation from all sites at once, but finally reached the point where he could barely lift his arm because his whole body felt numb and his head felt as if it was splitting apart.
After the operation came to a close for the day, Cissnei, Reno and Rude returned to the helicopter, all three of them looking equally exhausted. Reno, back to his usual nasty self, or even worse now after several hours of unsuccessful search, threatened to throw Tseng out of the helicopter in mid-flight if he did not move to the back immediately, and Tseng, too weary to debate and knowing fully well that Reno was right, struggled to get into one of the back seats with the help of Cissnei, who sat down next to him. "Hey Rude, let's go to my place!", Reno suggested after they had taken the front seats as usual, and Rude only nodded in response. After his earlier altercation with Reno, this exchange irritated Tseng to the point where he felt as if he needed to remind them that other people were present and called to the front: "Could you take us both home first?" Reno turned around in his seat and said: "You're not going home. You're going to the hospital!" Although he was taken aback at being so patronized, he did not object because he knew Reno was right. Rude nodded in agreement, yet again, and started the helicopter, which took them up into the night sky toward the brightly illuminated Shinra Building.