After he left the trio to their own devices in the combat simulator, he arranged a date with Aerith in the afternoon. He continued to walk around listlessly in the Shinra headquarters to kill some time until lunch until he found himself in the exhibition hall on the second floor. He had not been to the exhibition for several months and was surprised to find some new exhibits, including a model of the Shinra 26 rocket, which was due to launch in less than two weeks. During his recent stay in Rocket Town, he only saw the rocket from afar, but he thought that the model did not quite do the scale of the actual thing justice. It was almost unimaginable that something so big could fly, but the model, detailed as it was, did not correctly capture the perspective of a person standing on the ground looking up at the rocket. Nevertheless, Zack leaned forward to study the minutiae of the construction and read some of the notes explaining what each of the parts did. He had little understanding of how a rocket worked, but the exhibit gave him enough of an idea about accelerators, boosters and rocket stages to want to watch the launch. It was not the first time Shinra would launch a rocket, but this would be the first manned space flight, which was so sensational that Zack had no doubt that the whole world would be watching it on TV.
Next to the rocket exhibit was mounted a panel with information and a photo of the pilot, a brownish-blonde man in his late twenties named Cid Highwind. In the picture, he was wearing some kind of aviation uniform, which Zack had seen before on airport staff, full of oil stains, a clean white scarf and goggles. The picture was taken from an unusual upwards angle, with the pilot standing on the wing of a small plane in front of a very blue sky, which gave the impression that the pilot was looking down upon the viewer.
Having already seen all the other exhibits, Zack moved on to have an underwhelming lunch in the cafeteria on the 23rd floor. As he wolfed down his food, he thought about the training session again, trying to recall exactly what happened and how. The trio had driven him into a corner repeatedly to strike very effectively and little to no risk to themselves. It must have been their near-perfect coordination and strategy that ultimately defeated him, because neither Venus, nor Locke looked very physically buff, and even Theo's spells by themselves did not even hurt that much. But the injuries accumulated, especially whenever he was struck from behind. But their strategy was not a quick one, but rather one that used attrition. He doubted that Sephiroth's solution would work on them again, but if there was a way to mess up their tactics, that could be the way to overcome this challenge.
Having finished his lunch, he folded his hands behind his neck and leaned back. Sephiroth had used confusion, but there were other options. He pulled out his phone and scrolled over his materia inventory. He had to scroll quite far to get past the low-level materias, which he was too lazy to clear out and sell or recycle. He stopped the quickly scrolling screen when he got to the debuff group. He had accumulated all sorts, although he hardly ever used these types of materia because it seemed way too much of a hassle to add extra steps to a battle if he could simply go straight to striking his enemies down. He assumed that Theo would be protected from mute, and Venus and Locke would probably have taken precautions against blind. Poison and death were a common hazards, which would be negligent if they were not protected against it. Death was out of the picture anyway because it was too risky to use on allies in a training session. And poison would not be so useful either unless he were able to evade their attacks for prolonged time for the poison to wear them down. Confusion was what Sephiroth had used today. This would not work again. That left Zack with sleep, frenzy, slow and stone. He put down his phone for a second, folded his arms and looked at the ceiling, trying to remember all the battle tactics he had learned.
As he debated about options, the outline of a plan began to take shape in his head. He finally picked up his tray and returned it to the kitchen via a conveyor belt, feeling a little more motivated. He made his way to the train station and finally to the Sector 5 slums, to pick up Aerith at her part-time job.