The Conscience of the King Chapter Seventeen: Blood in the Boardroom "Down in the park where the chant is death, death, death 'til sun cries morning Down in the park with friends of mine We are not lovers, we are not romantics We are here to serve Different face but the words never change..." -- The Foo Fighters [ conversation picked up via cell tower tap, 5/15/985 ] "He did /what/?" "It's -- it's gone. There's nothing left. I can't even begin to tell you --" "I'll be back over as soon as I can. Dammit, I'm not hiding out in Junon with all of this shit going down. Tell Tseng to send Rude with the chopper and be damned with what the old man thinks ...Are you all right?" "I ... I'm holding together. I'm having a little trouble believing that any of this is real. He told me to take a vacation but I think he's forgotten all about it. I don't know how he could have --" "Look, don't think about it, all right? I'll be home soon. Soon enough. Don't do anything stupid until I get there, and don't let the old man do anything stupid either, all right?" "We have a board meeting in another half hour. I ... I don't think I can do it." "You've got to. We need someone there. Look, just ... keep your mouth shut and notice everything, all right? I'll be home soon." -- * -- /Just keep your mouth shut and notice everything./ Rufus's words echoed in Reeve's mind as he carefully folded his hands over each other, knuckles white with the effort to control himself. He most carefully did not look at the President; he didn't know how he could control himself, if he did. ~Thousands dead. We tried to evacuate Upper Seven as best we could, but there were so many who refused to leave. And the slums ...~ He bit his lip and cast his glance down the room, where Hojo reigned in lonely supremacy at the other end of the conference table. ~And what he's doing here, I have no idea.~ "All right," the President finally said, gathering together the last of his papers. "Does anyone have anything else they want to bring up?" Reeve cleared his throat. "We have the preliminary damage estimates for Sector 7, sir. Assuming the standard rates and plans, it will cost ten billion gil to rebuild --" "We're not rebuilding." The President fixed Reeve with a baleful stare, and then swept that stare down the table. Reeve gripped his pen so tightly that he was afraid for half a moment it would explode in his hands. "...Excuse me, sir?" "You heard me. We're not rebuilding Sector 7." The President glanced down the table, and met Hojo's eyes. Reeve suppressed a shiver; he couldn't tell what passed between the two men at that look, but it wasn't something he liked. "We're leaving it alone. And restarting the Neo-Midgar plan." It took Reeve a long moment of staring blankly at the President before he remembered a late-night conversation with Rufus, years before. /"The old man's got some kind of bug up his nose. Says that there's a way to get to the Promised Land. He's got a file all ready for it -- calls it the Neo-Midgar project. Designs, plans, everything. He wants to build a city once we get there." Rufus had snorted and reached for another slice of pizza. "I guess it's harmless enough, but really. You'd think he'd outgrow fairy tales eventually." /"The Promised Land?" Reeve had asked. /"Oh, you don't know the stories? I've got a few books, I'll lend 'em to you--"/ Now, looking at the President on one side of him and Hojo on the other, Reeve could feel his stomach dropping. ~He thinks he has a way to do it. And the way Hojo is smirking, Hojo's got something to do with it.~ "The Promised Land will soon be ours," Shinra continued. "To prepare for the transition, we're going to raise rates 15%, across the board. We'll need the cash flow to cover the expenses." Reeve bit his lip, and tried to remember to keep his mouth shut. It didn't work. "Sir, we just raised the rates last quarter. Another increase will --" Shinra's lips curved. "It's all right, Mr. Brannon. The sheep won't lose confidence. It will just make them trust Shinra even more." Palmer rubbed his palms together gleefully from the other side of the conference table. "After all, we /are/ the ones who just freed Sector 7 from the clutches of Avalanche." Reeve bit his lip again and curled his hands into fists, his fingernails biting into his palms. ~Just keep your mouth shut. Just keep your /damn/ mouth shut, we'll sort this all out tonight.~ But oh, how he ached to wipe that smirk off of Palmer's face. Shinra turned his attention down to the other end of the table. "Professor Hojo? How are things going with the girl?" Hojo waved a hand. "Experiments are proceeding. From what I can tell, her blood isn't pure. But it should be sufficient for our purposes. I've begun the tests, and preliminary research indicates that I should be able to gain the necessary information. It's a pity that we don't still have her mother; that would eliminate any of the questions." ~Keep your /mouth shut/,~ Reeve told himself. He didn't know what Hojo was talking about, but he didn't like the implications. ~They sound like they're talking about a human being. Does Rufus know what's going on here? Does /anyone/ know what's going on here?~ Shinra nodded. "All right. If no one else has any other comments, the meeting is dismissed." As they filed out of the room, Reeve caught sight of Tseng, leaning against a wall on the other side of the elevators. Tseng caught his eye and -- with the most subtle of inclinations of the chin -- indicated in the direction of the Turks lounge. Reeve nodded back, just as imperceptably, and headed for the other set of elevators. He had no particular desire to share an elevator with /anyone/ involved in the meeting. Tseng was the only person in the Turks lounge when Reeve got there; he was pacing back and forth in front of the windows, a quick, controlled motion. It reminded Reeve of Rufus for a moment, the sense of great turmoil bound up in skin and set loose to wear a hole in the floor. He turned as Reeve entered, and then turned back and kept pacing. "Rufus paged me and told me to talk to you." Reeve wasn't very happy with the Turks; he knew full well who had carried out the orders to drop the plate. He also knew that if they hadn't done it, they'd probably be dead. He wasn't quite sure whether or not "self-preservation" was enough of a motive for killing thousands. "I spoke with him just before the meeting. He wants you to send Rude and the chopper out to get him." Strangely, that seemed to cause Tseng's shoulders to ease. "He's coming home?" "That's what he said." Reeve shoved his hands in his jacket pockets and leaned against the wall. "He thinks his father has finally flipped his lid." "His father /has/," Tseng snarled, and turned back out to look out the window. In that half-second, Reeve realized that the situation was weighing on Tseng more heavily than Reeve had suspected. It didn't make him like the man's actions any more, but it eased a bit of the ache in his chest. "We've got an eighth of the city down, he's /not/ going to fix it, and the man has just totally lost any connection to reality he might have ever had." Tseng ran a hand through his hair and made another growling noise. "Hojo's got his hands on the girl." Reeve blinked. "The girl? Hojo mentioned it. In the board meeting. What the hell is he talking about?" Tseng's pacing started up again. "There's this girl," he finally said, and his tone was flat and heavy. "Woman, actually. Hojo thinks that she's an Ancient." Reeve closed his eyes. ~I could have moved to Costa del Sol and been a plumber.~ The idea sounded like a joy. "There's no such thing. It's a fairy tale." Tseng turned around, and his eyes were like ice. "Maybe. And maybe not. I've known the girl for years; there's something odd about her. That's not the point, though; the point is that Hojo /has/ her, and we all know what Hojo's capable of." Reeve surpressed a shudder. "Is there any way that you can do something?" Tseng's lips tightened. "I might consider it, except that Reno's out of commission for the forseeable future. He's over at Midgar General and they aren't going to let him out for a while. Avalanche did a number on him. We're going to have to add someone, and it takes months to make sure that a new recruit's loyalty is to /us/ and not to the company." Reeve wasn't sure if Tseng had meant to let that slip, but he let it pass without comment. "Will you be able to send Rude out tonight to get Rufus?" Tseng ran a hand through his hair again, a gesture that showed Reeve how much stress he was under; the man never let little signs like that show unless the situation was truly dire. "Yeah, I can. Having Rufus back will help a lot." He hesitated for half a second, and then made the request. "Will you help us?" "With what?" Reeve frowned; one thing he had learned was that you never agreed to anything until you knew what the cost was. Tseng made a short, sharp gesture. "With any of it. With all of it. I don't know what the hell is going on here, and I don't know what the hell we can do, but things are getting out of hand. We can't just leave things going the way they have been. I have to talk to Rufus and see what he wants, but there's no way we can let this keep going." Since that was exactly what Reeve was thinking, he nodded. "...I'll do what I can. I'm not a fighter, Tseng." "And only an idiot would try to make you into one. Don't worry on that count." Tseng paced over to the window and rested his palms on the sill, looking out over the hole in the city where Sector 7 used to be. "But we need everyone we can get our hands on. I have a feeling that this building is going to be a warzone when Rufus gets back." Reeve's fingers itched for a cigarette, but he was trying to cut back. "Do you think he's going to try and wrestle the company away from his father?" Tseng snorted. "If he doesn't, he's not the man I trained. We should have done it months ago." ~If you had, maybe Sector 7 would still be standing,~ Reeve thought, but knew better than to say. "Do you think it's even possible?" "I don't know. It's going to be ugly, that much is for sure --" Tseng's thought was interrupted by his cellphone ringing, and he frowned, fishing it out of his pocket. "Tseng. Talk." As Tseng's face grew cloudier, Reeve gave in and found his cigarettes in his pocket, lighting one and moving over to the lounge's table, where an old soda can was being used as an ashtray this week. He tried his best not to listen to Tseng's conversation, but it wasn't necessary; Tseng was listening, not talking, until he finally nodded and said "All right. I'll be right there," and flipped the phone shut, then appeared to reconsider and opened it again. "Rude. Meet me on 66 in five minutes. We've got vermin to handle." "Problems?" Reeve asked, as Tseng hung up the phone and reached for his jacket. "Looks like we won't have to worry about getting the girl out of Hojo's clutches," Tseng said grimly. "Avalanche already did it for us." "Tseng," Reeve said, as Tseng headed out the door, and the other man turned around. "Go easy on them. They're only doing what they think is right." ~And they're not exactly the worst bad guys in this situation,~ he thought, but did not say either. "I've got a man down, and you've got a sector down," Tseng said, shortly. "I'll go as easy on them as they deserve." -- * -- "Proud of yourselves?" "I could ask the same thing." Tifa glared through the bars of the cell; Tseng met her eyes calmly. "Do you have any idea how many people you killed?" "Do you have any idea how many people /you/ killed?" Tseng countered, his face expressionless. Tifa ignored the sinking feeling in the pit of her stomach and continued to stare him down. "None of this would have happened if you'd just been /patient/, woman." She could feel Cloud's eyes on her from where he was sitting on the bed, but put it out of her mind. "Been patient? While you continued to starve people and rape the planet? Do I look like an idiot?" "From where I'm standing, yes." Tseng glanced down the hallway, where he could see from his vantage point, and something in his face changed more subtly. Without missing a beat, he switched languages; Tifa had to concentrate to understand him, as he was using the most formal manner of speech she had ever heard from him. "\"This one suggests you would do well to hold yourself still and be patient, for once. By tomorrow, all things may change significantly. This one does not wish to clean up the jailbreak that this one does not doubt you are planning. Hold still, be patient, and /speak not/.".\" He turned around and walked off. Tifa blinked twice. "What was that all about?" came Barret's rumble from the cell next to them, where he had been thrown in with the odd creature that they had also rescued from Hojo's lab. "Nothing," she said, shortly, and turned around to begin pacing again. "Where were we?" "I was telling you all about the Promised Land," Aerith said, softly, from her cell on the other side of them. Tifa rubbed a hand over her eyes, which were beginning to burn from the air in the building. Shinra managed to filter the smog from most of their buildings, but it left an odd taste in the air, like lightning just before it hit. "Does it even actually exist?" Conversation was difficult with the cell walls separating them, particularly when Aerith's voice was small and quiet, unsure. "I don't know." Soft footsteps echoed from her cell. "I was very young when my mother died. She knew more. I ... I can't do much. I can hear the Planet, a little bit. Not much. All I know is that the Cetra came from the Promised Land, and can hear the Planet, and one day we will return to the Promised Land and find our happiness there." The creature they had rescued from Hojo -- Red XIII, Hojo had called him, and he had given that name to the group as well -- spoke up from the other cell. "You are a Cetra, then. They had said you were." "Half Cetra," Aerith corrected quietly. "What most people call the Ancients. My mother said that my father was a human." "And you can speak with the Planet?" Tifa tried to keep the doubt from her voice. "A little. Not much. I can hear it, but it's not very clearly." The footsteps stopped, and the bed-springs creaked as Aerith sat back down. "I could really only hear it in the church. Mother said that Midgar was too full of people for the Planet to be clear. One day I hope to leave Midgar. I'll hear it then. Mother always said that I would." "Ain't none of us gettin' out of Midgar if we don't get out of this jail," Barret grumbled. "Anybody got any ideas?" /Hold still, be patient, and speak not./ Could she trust him? "Let's sleep on it, Barret," Tifa called back, and her voice was surprisingly even. "It's late. We're tired. We've all had a /really bad day/. We'll think better in the morning." "We might not /be/ here in the morning," Barret grumbled, but settled down. "All right. I'll believe you know what you're doin'. Just tell me you got a plan." Tifa threw a glance at Cloud, who was looking back at her with an expression of only mild curiousity. "The beginnings of one, maybe," she said, slowly. "We'll see what happens, all right?" She had thought that she wouldn't sleep, that the moment she closed her eyes she'd see nothing but the horror of Sector 7 falling in on itself, but the exhaustion took her and lifted her into a deep and dreamless sleep. -- * -- "Tifa. Wake up. Wake up, Tifa." She opened her eyes to see Cloud leaning over her, looking concerned. Or as concerned as he'd managed to be, anyway. The last remnants of sleep burned away quickly as she realized that they were still in jail. "What's wrong?" Cloud jerked his chin towards the door. Tifa frowned, and sat bolt upright when she saw that the door was open. "Who opened it?" "I don't know." Cloud's voice was sober. "There's a dead guard outside. He should have the key. Come on." "Dead" was not quite the word for the guard who was lying in a pool of blood outside their cells; "eviscerated" was perhaps closer. Tifa breathed through her mouth and tried to keep her eyes averted as Cloud went through the man's pockets, finally coming back with a keycard. The hallways were dim, night-lighting in an area where few people were expected outside of regular office hours; it lent Cloud's face a surreal, almost alien turn to it, his eyes holding that faint Mako glow. "You get Aerith," Cloud said, shortly. "I'll get Barret and Red XIII." Aerith woke quickly. "What's going on?" "Jailbreak," Tifa said, quietly. "We woke up and our cell door was open. There's a dead man outside, and it's pretty ugly; don't look if you can help it." The girl -- ~odd that I think of her as a girl, when she's a year older than I am, but she seems so innocent --~ blinked back up at Tifa. "Who killed him?" Tifa shook her head. "We don't know." She remembered Tseng's words to her and wondered, but it didn't seem like the sort of thing that Tseng would do. ~Too messy. Tseng's a clean killer. When he's not following orders to drop ten million tons of steel and concrete on the heads of innocent people,~ she thought. "Come on. Whoever did it might be coming /back/, and I'd rather like to be out of here before then." Aerith nodded and stood up, taking a deep breath and gathering her dignity around her before following Tifa out of the cell. They met up just outside the cells, all of them carefully ignoring the corpse cooling mere feet away. "I don't know what the hell's goin' on here," Barret said when they found their weapons on a table just outside the cell area. "Somethin's fishy." "No human could have done that," Red XIII said, quietly. "But I think I know what did. Follow me." He shook out his mane and bounded ahead of the group on four silent paws. "I'll clean up here," Barret said, reluctantly. "We don't wanna give ourselves away before we have to. If they see this on the cameras, they're gonna send up the army. You go on ahead." Tifa looked at Cloud and Aerith, then nodded. "All right. Let's follow Red. Barret, /be careful/." The big man nodded. "Yeah. You too. Don't let Shinra get ya. We'll meet up on the 69th floor in half an hour?" Tifa nodded, and the three of them went running after Red XIII. Somehow, Tifa was unsurprised to find that Red was racing towards Hojo's labs. They'd been in there earlier, and she had found the entire experience too creepy for words; rack after rack of experiments, and that /thing/ in the large tank -- the /thing/ that had raised a tickle of uncomfortable memory in the back of her mind. Of /course/ they had to go back into the labs in the middle of the night, when the lights were all dim and the shadows seemed to be moving after them. Of /course/ the lab was covered in blood when they got there. "Over here," Cloud said, and crossed the lab to where the thing in the tank had been. The tank was twisted and broken, bits of metal lying everywhere; Cloud's boots crunched in the glass as he walked over to inspect it. "It's gone." "Jenova," Red said, calmly. "Hojo called it Jenova." Tifa must have made a noise, because Red swiveled his head and pinned his monocular gaze on her face. "Do you know the name?" "I --" /Flames rose around her feet and licked at her ankles, and she couldn't hear her breathing anymore. She was dead, and Sephiroth's silver hair floated at the edges of her vision as he climbed the stairs./ "I ... No. I don't think so." She glanced at Cloud, hoping to find some sign in his face, but his expression was that disconcerting blankness again. "There's a trail of blood," Red XIII observed. It was an understatement; the lab was nearly swimming in it, the dark smell of iron and violence redolent in the air. "Let's track it and see where it goes." Tifa nodded and followed along behind the other three; she kept her eyes on her feet, but the shadows caught her gaze and pulled at it. ~Jenova. I do know that name. I do. It was -- Nibelheim. There was a tank there, too, and Sephiroth wanted what was inside it.~ Her throat tightened, and she barely avoided jumping as something -- something that didn't exist -- caught the corner of her eye. They climbed the stairs, and she caught herself looking at Cloud again. ~Was he there? Does he remember? I don't. I don't remember any of it. But this is bringing it all back.~ Barret caught up with them just as they were about to climb the stairs on the 69th floor. "All cleaned up," he said, brusquely. "Any sign of anyone?" "No," Cloud said, his voice pitched to carry only to their ears and no further. "We haven't seen a single guard." "That's odd," Aerith said, her own voice soft as always. "There should be one or two people around." "We did see them," Tifa said, her tone clipped. "Dead. Whatever did this must have gotten them." Barret scowled. "Trail goes in here. Ain't this the old man's office?" Cloud didn't reply; he just opened the door. It was the President's office, which they had been hauled into earlier in the day. The trail of blood ended here, behind the massive desk that stretched across most of the room. Jonathan Shinra, president of Shinra, Incorporated, was dead. "Well, fuck," Barret said, unnecessarily, and stepped further into the room, squinting at the sword that protruded from the late President's back. "Old man's dead. Who the hell -- Tif', does this have anything to do with what the head babykiller said to you this afternoon?" He paused for an answer; when none was forthcoming, he turned around to look back at Tifa. "Tif'? /Tifa/." She snapped out of the trance and fought back the hysteria /hard/, trying to keep herself on her feet when all she wanted to do was turn around and run as far away as she could. "The sword," she whispered through bloodless lips. "The sword, look at the /sword/ --" She caught herself before she started gibbering. Cloud crossed the room and looked at the body. "That's Masamune," he said, dispassionately. "Sephiroth's sword." Barret frowned. "You sure?" Cloud shrugged. "Only Sephiroth can use that sword. It takes superhuman strength to even lift it, much less swing it." Tifa was sure. It was the sword that had nearly killed her. /Had/ killed her, if she remembered things correctly. Which she didn't. "You're sayin' that Sephiroth is alive?" Barret scowled and turned around to look back at the others. As he did, a shape dashed out from behind the desk, heading for the door as quickly as it could move, which wasn't very quickly at all. Cloud and Barret caught him before he could go any further. It turned out to be Palmer, quivering with terror. "Don't -- don't kill me!" he squeaked, glancing rapidly back and forth between the five Avalanche members staring him down. "I don't know anything! I didn't do it! Please d-d-don't kill me!" The man was clearly terrified; Cloud let go and frowned. "What happened here?" he demanded. "It was Se ... Sephiroth." Palmer looked as though he was about to faint. Cloud didn't blink. "Sephiroth was here?" "Yes. I s-s-saw him! He was t-t-t-talking about the Promised Land. He s-s-said we couldn't have it, that he'd make sure we didn't get it ... please don't kill me!" Palmer's eyes darted back and forth. As Cloud was about to reply, the sound of a helicopter penetrated the windows of the office. Palmer squeaked, "Rufus!" and broke free, running out of the doors that were half-hidden behind the desk. Barret and Cloud frowned at each other. "Fuck," Barret said in an undertone. "If the baby Shinra is out there, we better gear up good. He ain't gonna just let us go if we ask nicely." Aerith, surprisingly, was the first one to move. "Let's go," she said, that soft voice underlaid with steel. "I have a few things I'd like to say to Mr. Shinra." -- * -- Rufus was out of the helicopter before it had even really finished touching down; Rude nodded to him and took off, making the usual circle around the building before departing for the helicopter bay. Rufus turned to enter the building, and ran right in to four hundred pounds of terrified executive. "Palmer. What's going on?" Rufus frowned, listened to the man's garbled story, and signaled Rude with the hand signal that meant "hover, wait, I might still need you." Sorting out truth from fiction was tough enough, but Palmer's story made Rufus's blood run cold. "You're trying to tell me that Sephiroth is here? Alive? And that he /killed my father/?" He cut off Palmer's flood of protests. "No, no, don't even bother. Downstairs. Go downstairs, and don't say a word of this to anyone. /No one/." Palmer nodded and scurried off to the stairs. Rufus closed his eyes and took a deep breath. He felt as though he was trying to swim through heavy water just thinking about what Palmer had told him. ~Sephiroth, alive? And my father dead. If Seph is alive -- he couldn't have killed the old man, not without a damn good reason.~ He squared his shoulders. ~I have to go look. I have to see if Palmer was right, or if he was just hallucinating. And if he is right -- Ramuh and Ifrit, I don't know what this could possibly mean.~ He opened his eyes, and took two steps to the doors in the side of the office. As he took the third, the door opened, and five people -- four people and one creature -- spilled out. It was late, Rufus was tired, and he'd just gotten a bombshell dropped in his lap. His reaction was a little slower than it might have otherwise been. "Who the /hell/ are you people?" "We're the ones you just dropped ten million tons of metal on to try and get rid of," one of the girls, the one in the t-shirt and shorts, snapped out. She moved like a martial artist; Rufus noted this fact, dismissed it. "/Obviously/, it didn't work." Mentioning his father's idiocy simply served to get the rage -- buried for the long helicopter ride, but still perilously close to the surface -- boiling again. "Avalanche," Rufus snarled. "You're the reason part of my city is in shreds." "Don't you /dare/ try to blame this on them," the other girl rapped out. "They -- we weren't the ones to push those buttons. /You/ did that. You did that to cover up the fact that you're systematically destroying the Planet." Rufus took another step forward, which was just enough to bring him to the proper angle to see through the windows of his father's office. To see the body lying there, with the sword through its back, and to realize that his father was finally, finally dead. He couldn't count the number of times he'd wished for that to happen. "Oh, it wasn't /me/," he finally said, pulling his eyes from the blood inside the office and pinning his gaze on the motley crew assembled in front of him. "I had nothing to do with it. I've been pinned in Junon for the last year and a half. I'm afraid you're looking for the old man if you want someone to blame for that whole disaster. Looks like you're going to have an awfully hard time getting any justifications out of him, though. That /is/ him in the other room run through by a dead man, isn't it?" The intruders exchanged confused glances, but that wasn't enough to stop him. Rufus was just starting to warm up. "I'd be the first to admit that the old man was a fucking nutjob. But you irresponsible idiots were the ones who gave him the /reasons/. What did you think we'd do, just sit back and /watch/ while you blew our reactors to the Promised Land?" He could hear his voice steadily rising, and didn't particularly care; it felt good to get angry, felt good to allow himself even that small bit of relief. Rufus's skin was beginning to tingle, and he recognized the beginnings of a full-rage fit of temper. "You think that having me to deal with will be better than the old man?" he snarled. "Well, /think again/. The old man cared about money and power. I don't give a flying /fuck/ about any of that. But people who get in my way go /down/. And you are most /certainly/ in my way." "You're insane," the first girl said, quietly. Rufus fixed his gaze on her, and she flinched back. "You don't know what insane is," he hissed. "Would you like to find out? Insane is when you find someone who's standing in your way and do everything in your quite considerable power to make their lives miserable. Insane is when you take a bunch of half-educated, half-trained slum rebels and make sure that they'll never bother you again. Or maybe that's not insane at all. Maybe that's just /good business sense/." He turned to look at each of them in turn, and each one of them only made him angrier. They were the reasons that Sector 7 was in ruins; they were the ones who had started it all. The old slum rebel groups were a nuisance, but they were a /controllable/ nuisance. These were the dangerous ones, the ones who had started it all. "You think you saw systematic destruction before?" He could feel his fists clenching. "You don't know what destruction means. I am going to /serve you for lunch/. The old man ruled the world with money -- well, you can tell all your little rebel friends that what money doesn't control, fear /does/." The one who had the look of a SOLDIER turned to his companions. "Go," he said, quietly. "Get down to the street and get Aerith out of here. I'll take care of this." The other man hesitated. "You sure, Cloud?" The SOLDIER raised his voice. "I said /go/! I'll explain later, I can't take the time to explain now -- get Aerith and get /out/ of here!" His voice dropped down again. "Mr. Shinra and I need to have a little talk." In Rufus's anger, that sounded like an excellent idea. The others scattered; he was left staring down the SOLDIER. "In the mood for a fight, SOLDIER?" he snarled, reaching for the rifle that he carried with him. Over his head, Rude circled around again; Rufus gave an impatient signal, telling him to keep circling and not to interfere. "My name is Cloud," the man said, calmly, watching Rufus with those luminous eyes. Rufus looked him over, noting the ready posture, the easy vigilance. He was a SOLDIER all right, but it wouldn't be the first time Rufus had fought with a SOLDIER. "I can't let you have the Promised Land. I can't let you have /Sephiroth/. You don't understand anything that's going on here." That might have been true, but Rufus didn't need the kid to tell him that. "And you /do/?" "No," the SOLDIER said, plainly. "But I know what's important. And this is important." He unsheathed his sword, and took up a ready position. "And I'm not going to let you get in our way." -- * -- "You should be over at Midgar General," were Tseng's first words as he stepped out onto the rooftop. Rufus's answering glare could have blistered paint. "In my copious free time," he snarled, and pressed the blood-soaked rag that had once been his white overcoat more firmly to the gash in his upper arm. "For now, report." Tseng's face was unreadable. "As far as we can tell, Avalanche got out of the city. We think they used one of the old construction points. We got one of the mechanical sentries out to intercept them, but they destroyed it and kept going. Last report has them headed towards Kalm." "There are entirely too many "we think"s in that report, Tseng." Rufus flipped his cell phone shut and stowed it back in the pocket of his bloodstained slacks. He'd set up temporarily on the roof; he didn't want to go into his father's office while the cleaning crews were trying to remove the bloodsoaked rugs, and he was too restless to go inside and downstairs to his own office. "They caught us by surprise." Tseng's admission was stark. "And we have other things to worry about. Such as the fact that all of the security cameras on the top ten levels were destroyed. We still don't know what it was that killed the President." "Palmer said that he saw Sephiroth." Rufus carefully did not allow his opinion of that statement to color his words. "Palmer would say anything he thought would save his own skin." Tseng sighed. "But in this case, I believe him. Having that sword left behind was pretty conclusive." "Would you mind telling me how a dead man could walk into a heavily guarded building, kill twenty-one people, and then walk right back out again? Without setting off any alarms? Without being recorded on any of the hundreds of security cameras? Releasing five highly dangerous prisoners on his way?" Tseng's eyes flared briefly. "Would /you/ mind telling me what the hell crawled up your ass and died, Rufus? Or do you prefer 'sir' now that you're in charge? I already told you; /we don't know/. Now, if you'd like to call up the head of IntSec to stand out here and freeze his ass off, you can feel free to do that, but you're going to get the same damn answer. Now, would you like to pull your head out of your ass and hear what I have to say, or would you just like to stand there, bleed, and snipe at me for something that I have no control over?" Rufus's shoulders slumped, and he winced as that motion put strain on his wounds. "...No, you're right. Hell. It's been a pisser of a night and it's not even close to being over. Has anyone /else/ seen Sephiroth?" Tseng shook his head. "No reports. I'm quite certain that anyone who might have been a witness is currently being cleaned up by the security crews." He most carefully did not look over his shoulder; the President's body had been removed, but the room itself was still stained with the incontrovertable evidence of what had transpired. "Would you like us to send people out after Avalanche?" Rufus pondered that for a moment, and then paced out to look out over the top of the city. He winced, automatically and without noticing, when his eyes scanned over the wreckage of Sector 7. "No. Not yet, at least. If they're on foot, they can't get too far ahead, and we have more pressing matters to attend to." "Such as Sephiroth." It was not a question. "Such as Sephiroth. I want to know what the hell went on there. If it isn't Sephiroth, we have a problem -- I want to know who else could impersonate him so well as to fool Palmer. And if it /is/ Sephiroth -- well, we have an even bigger problem." Rufus's cell phone rang; he ignored it. "Are you getting someone to stand in for Reno temporarily?" Tseng clasped his hands behind his back. "I have a few candidates in mind. Chief among them is Scarlet's secretary. She's been trying to teach herself how to shoot, and I've stood in on a few of her practice sessions. She's got the drive, and she'd do well to accept the promotion." Rufus fished through his memory and turned up the image of a blonde woman, quiet and thorough and dedicated. "Elaine? Elena." He looked back at Tseng. "You think she'd be a good choice?" "I think that she would serve excellently. After the usual training period, of course." Rufus nodded. "All right. I'll approve it. Assuming that I'm in a position to approve anything after the emergency board meeting tomorrow." "Assuming that you're not passed out in a hospital bed from blood loss?" Tseng's tone was mild, his expression amused. "I'll rest when I'm done here. Which isn't going to be until I can finish making sure that everything's in place. Have you interviewed the night shift video room operator?" Tseng sighed. "Yes, Rufus. And the guards on floors 61 through 65, who didn't see anything. And I checked the logs on Reno's little experiment in frustration on 63, and the only people who have been through it since four PM were the intruders. Would you like to tell me how to do any more of my job?" Rufus had the good graces to look ashamed. "I /really/ want to figure out what the hell is going on here, Tseng." "You and me both. Now, if you don't feel the need to yell at me any more, I'll head back downstairs and keep interviewing witnesses. You'll have your report on your desk by eight AM." Tseng glanced over his shoulder back into the building, and then winced a little. "You'll have the report on the desk in your old office," he amended. "I don't think that one will be usable for quite some time." "I can't bring myself to disagree with you," Rufus said, on a sigh. "All right. Keep me posted on what you find out. And /don't/ let anyone else know. I want to keep this as quiet as we can --" The door to the building burst open, and both men turned around automatically, Tseng's hand moving to his gun, Rufus dropping back a few paces. They both stopped when they saw that it was Reeve, dressed in whatever he'd managed to pull together. Reeve stormed across the roof, stopped about five feet from Rufus, scowled, and demanded, "Were you going to bother telling me that you were back in Midgar?" Rufus sighed. "I'll assume that means that you were worried." "Damn straight I was worried. I called over when I hadn't heard from you and they said that you'd been injured." Reeve's face was pale as he took in the extent of Rufus's injuries. "Why aren't you over at the hospital?" Tseng chuckled, turned it into a cough when Rufus turned to glare at him. "Ah. There were a few difficulties this evening. Which reminds me, I should go and clean up the last of the few little details." Tseng nodded his head to Rufus, and passed a bit of a smirk to Reeve. "Reeve, see if you can at least get him to clean up, hrm? Bad for corporate morale to have the president walking around like something out of a horror film." Reeve blinked a few times and looked back at Rufus as Tseng made a graceful exit. "President?" he said, the wind having been shot out of his sails. "You're --" "Not until the board of directors confirms it," Rufus said, exhaling on a sigh. "But yes. The old man is dead." Reeve's face was pale. "What the hell happened? I saw the cleanup crews inside, but I didn't know what they were doing--" It didn't take long to produce a summary; by the time Rufus was finished filling Reeve in, Reeve's pallor was even more pronounced. "Sweet baby ducks," Reeve said on a whisper. "Are you all right?" Rufus waved the concern away with a careless hand. "I'm fine. I just need to take a shower." He carefully did not mention that his body was blazing with pain; the blood had mostly stopped flowing, and the burns from the SOLDIER's fire materia were mostly invisible in the low light. "They'll be calling a board meeting first thing Monday morning to see what we need to do next." Reeve frowned. "Don't you automatically inherit the company?" Rufus's lips twisted. "You'd think so. The old man, on the other hand, was a bastard." He fished out a cigarette and lit it; those, at least, had survived the fight unscathed. "Oh, I'll be appointed interim president, that's for sure. But I know what his will says, and it says that I only inherit enough stock to bring me up to a forty-nine percent share. And the company charter states that if the president dies and there isn't someone who has a fifty-one percent share, the matter goes up to vote. Two-thirds majority to elect a new president, and if that doesn't happen by the fifth ballot, it goes to the oldest board member." Reeve frowned. "Heidegger." Rufus nodded. "Exactly. The old man wanted to make damn sure that I didn't plant a knife in his kidneys just because I didn't agree with his policies." He snorted. "Though I was certainly tempted once or twice." Reeve ignored that comment. "Give me a pen." Rufus automatically reached for his pocket, then shook his head. "I don't have one on me. Why?" He recognized the look on Reeve's face; it was the "and you're not going to argue with me, either" look. "Because I have seven percent of preferred stock, and I will sign three percent of it over to you the minute that you get the stock from your father's will. And that will solve the problem." Rufus blinked. "I don't have enough capital liquid to buy it from you. I've been buying up company stock left and right for the past year and a half hoping that I could manage to get a voting majority." Reeve shook his head, impatiently. "I didn't ask you to buy it from me. I said I'd sign it over and that's what I meant." Twin frown lines appeared between Rufus's eyebrows; he could feel them. "Why?" Reeve gestured impatiently. "Why do you /think/?" he snapped, and Rufus blinked; he'd never seen Reeve quite that irritated, quite that confident. He had apparently learned some things about the fine art of negotiation. "Do you honestly think that you'll stand there, bleeding and scorched --" ~so much for the burns not being visible,~ Rufus thought in resignation -- "and tell me that your father's last act was to screw you out of the company that you've been busting ass for over the entire eight years I've known you, knowing all the while that I could /fix/ that, and expect me not to do something about it? Junon must have fried your common sense, because common sense should tell you that's about as likely as Scarlet growing fins and gills. You can pay me a gil for it. If you're not the president, that's about how much it'll be worth." To his utter shame, Rufus had to swallow hard; he could feel the lump in his throat that presaged tears for the first time in years. It would be enough. It would take time and arguments to secure his position, even with the additional shares of company stock, but it would be enough. "Reeve, I --" "And don't you dare say thank you, either." Reeve pointed a finger at him, and then jerked the thumb towards the building. "If you want to thank me, you'll go downstairs and over to your apartment, get out of those clothes, take a shower, and get some /sleep/. Whatever you think you have to do, it'll still be there in the morning. And if you don't sleep, you're going to /fall over/." The novelty of Reeve ordering him around outweighed Rufus's natural disinclination to agree with orders. There was a silence for a long moment, and then Rufus sighed. "Well, when you put it that way ..." "Damn straight." Reeve rocked back on his heels, and turned to lead the way. And then turned back. "And by the way." Rufus raised an eyebrow as he dropped his cigarette butt and stepped on it to put it out. "What?" Reeve nodded, a bit awkwardly. "Welcome home. I only wish it could have been under better circumstances." "Yeah," Rufus muttered, and took one last look over the city. His city, now. His city, and no one else's. "But maybe it's not as bad as it looks like at first glance." -- * -- Tifa thought that she might kill someone for the chance to sleep; they'd walked through the night, and by the time the sun was beginning to skirt the edges of the horizon, she was ready to weep with exhaustion. Apparently she wasn't the only person who felt that way; Barret's grumbling had gotten louder and steadily more off-color over the past hour. "Ain't we /there/ yet?" he finally burst out with. Cloud didn't bat an eyelash. "Kalm's about another five, six miles that way. We could stop and set up camp here, if you really wanted. But we can't be sure that Shinra isn't right behind us -- and they have vehicles." "Yeah, an' we could have had 'vehicles' too, if we hadn't blown the tranny on that truck getting out of Midgar," Barret rumbled, with a sidelong glance at Tifa. She'd been the default choice to drive the truck; neither Barret nor Aerith could drive, and Cloud had automatically taken the motorcycle to run interference for their mad dash towards the side of the plate. It had been a later model than the truck her father had taught her to drive back in Nibelheim, but the basic principle was the same. "It was either blow the transmission or get caught," she snapped back at Barret. "Which would you prefer?" "I do not mind the walk," Red XIII said, patiently. "It feels good to be out of the city." "Yeah, an' you got four legs to walk it on," Barret grumbled, and then shut his mouth at the look that Tifa gave him. ~I may kill all of them before we get to Kalm,~ she thought. ~That would solve some of our problems. And then I could just go and hide out somewhere, change my name, and /never think about any of this ever again/.~ Cloud had promised to tell them all his story when they got to Kalm; she found herself both waiting for it and dreading it. ~He's not going to tell it the way I remember it. And I'm going to have to contradict him.~ She threw a glance out of the corner of her eye at him; he was walking with purpose, looking completely composed and ready for anything. Totally unlike the gibbering, hallucinating wreck that had appeared in her bar not three weeks gone. She recognized the signs. ~He's got a purpose. Something that happened in that building gave him a reason to keep going. He thinks he knows what's going on, and he thinks that he's the only one who can do something about it. And I'm terrified that he's built all of this on some kind of fantasy -- that he took what happened and built himself into it, because I don't remember him being there --~ Or did she? She bit her lip again. ~I don't /know/. I remember him being there. I remember him not being there. And I don't know which one is the truth. Doctor Ellis told me that I might not ever remember what happened back there -- he said that the trauma might just make my brain totally block it out. And I thought it had. But what he's said so far makes me /know/ that he's wrong. Except I don't really know it at all.~ As if sensing her inner turmoil, Aerith turned her head and offered up a bit of an uncertain smile. Tifa returned it, absently, and then looked back down at her feet. ~And I don't know where /she/ came from, and I don't know if I trust her. And I don't know what /any/ of us are doing here. Dammit, I haven't been out of Midgar in five years.~ She bit her lip again. ~I can't say anything to Cloud. I just can't. Whatever he's built up in his head to keep him going through all of this -- I can't tear it down. Not without /knowing/. I'll say something -- I have to. But not until I know.~ Lost in thought, she didn't notice Aerith stopping until the rest of the party stopped too, and turned around to look at her. "I can hear it," Aerith said, both voice and face full of wonder. "Right here. We're far enough. I can hear it." A smile broke out over her face, and she tipped her face back and laughed. "I can hear the Planet again. And it says thank you." The others shared a long look, and finally Barret nodded. "Okay," he said. "Let's do it. Let's keep doin' it. Guess we'll figure out what we still gotta do when we get there." Tifa nodded back. "When we get there," she echoed. ~When we get there. When we get there, I'll figure out what to do about all of this. Soon. But not now. Not yet.~ ~Not until I know what's going on.~ She ignored the shivers running down her spine and started walking again.