Chapter Text

“The quarterly projections demonstrate that we can expect to see another 3.2% rise in profits, attributable to the number of people moving to Midgar from elsewhere…”

Rufus swallowed a yawn. Reeve’s presentation was the last, and the least exciting, being comprised entirely of dense graphs and blueprints. It was long past the time his nanny normally put him to bed, but his father had insisted he was old enough to start attending the board meetings.

“… It could be argued therefore that investing some of that surplus back into urban development, allowing us to house more people — or rate payers if you prefer — will be beneficial to the overall economic viability of the city. If you look at my proposed housing scheme…”

This time Rufus couldn’t stifle the yawn. His father, Heidegger and Scarlet all looked toward him. His father frowned.

“Heidegger, take Rufus to my office.” His father glanced at his watch. “It is, in fact, rather late. Reeve, hurry it along please.”

“Can Scarlet take me instead?” Rufus blurted out. He knew it was a mistake as soon as the words left his mouth. Heidegger glowered at him from across the table.

“Whoever,” his father said. Impatience in his voice. 

Scarlet rolled her eyes but slid to her feet.

Rufus jumped up and followed the blonde out of the room. Behind him, Reeve resumed his talk.

Rufus rubbed one hand across his eyes with a sigh. In front of him, Scarlet’s heels clicked sharply against the floor as she strode down the hall. She walked fast, and Rufus struggled to keep pace.

“So.” Scarlet said after they turned a corner and left the board room behind them. “What did Heidegger do to you?”

“Nothing,” Rufus said.

Scarlet paused, and Rufus shifted his gaze from the spikes of her shoes up to her face. She was looking down at him, a crease between her eyebrows. Then, to Rufus’ shock, she knelt down beside him and placed one hand on his shoulder. From here, he could smell her perfume, exotic, with some sharp scent he couldn’t identify.

“Rufus,” she said. “What did that stupid oaf do to you?”

Rufus considered this. He didn’t know Scarlet well. She spent as little time with him as she could, despite him being the son of the President. What little he knew came from the board meetings he attended and the gossip his nanny indulged in. His nanny had an extremely low opinion of the board’s only female executive. But then his nanny had a very high opinion of Heidegger, so her opinion was of little worth.

“He hits me,” he said. And for a moment a flash of fear pulsed across him. Heidegger had told him to take the beatings like a man. Complaining about it didn’t feel manly. But he still carried the bruises from the last one, the dark purples having slowly faded to yellow.

Scarlet studied him. Her eyes were blue, but pale, as though the colour had been bleached in the sun. Then she smiled, red lips parting to show even white teeth.

“Ah. Well. Even Heidegger is not so stupid as to beat the President’s son except at the behest of the President.”

Rufus felt his stomach lurch. Of course. He had been stupid.

“How old are you now?” Scarlet ran her eyes up and down him, calculating. “Six?”

“Seven.”

“I see. Well, here is my advice to you, Rufus. Heidegger may be larger and stronger than you, but that’s no excuse.” She smiled again. “You’re old enough now to start building your power base. Make Heidegger fear you. Make him sweat every time he lays eyes on you. Make him remember each beating he has administered to you, and leave him quaking as he wonders what punishment awaits him.”

In a single movement, she rose back to her feet and began walking again. Rufus ran to catch her up. He reached the lift just as it slid open.

“Ah, Tseng.” Scarlet sounded pleased. “Perfect timing. Take Rufus to his father’s office. I’m no nursemaid, and I have things to do.”

Rufus looked past Scarlet and fascination caught him.

“Are you from Wutai?”

The boy in the lift frowned. “I will take him to the President’s office.”

Scarlet put a hand on Rufus’ shoulder and gave him a little push into the lift. Rufus heard her heels clattering away as the lift door slid closed.

He stared at the boy in the lift with unabashed curiosity. He had only seen Wutaians in films, and this boy did not look much like the ones in those — they all wore strange robes and had long fingernails and odd accents. And yet he did not look much like the people Rufus was surrounded with each day either.

Tseng was about fifteen or so, Rufus guessed. He wore a dark suit, and a tie with a tie clip. His hair had been pulled back into a sleek ponytail.

“Are you from Wutai?” Rufus pushed.

“I’m from Midgar.” Tseng shot Rufus a black look. “I have never been to Wutai.”

“You haven’t?” Disappointment curdled in Rufus. “You look a bit like one.”

The boy slid his keycard into the slot on the elevator and pushed the button for the top floor.

“Where in Midgar are you from?”

A pause. Then. “Sector two.”

Rufus nodded. Sector two was mainly commercial. Small shops, tailors, upmarket bakeries, restaurants, and here and there a strip mall. Most of the shopkeepers lived in flats above their shops.

Rufus tried to remember the lessons his father had given him about talking to new people. Ask them about themselves, his father had said. Pretend to be interested. Have sympathy with their problems. They’ll love you, if you just listen to them whine for thirty seconds.

“Do you like working for Shinra?” Rufus asked.

The boy looked at him again. He had a strange, wary air to him, unlike any Shinra manager Rufus had met before.

“Not particularly,” he said, after a moment. “But it’s better than the alternative.”

“Most people love working for Shinra,” Rufus said, a little annoyed.

“No, they don’t. They just tell you they do, because you’re Rufus Shinra.”

Rufus blinked. “My father says everyone loves working for Shinra. Before the company provided jobs, people had to work much harder for far less.”

Tseng shrugged and didn’t reply.

“Who are you?”

“Tseng.”

“I know that. I mean, what department do you work for?”

Tseng’s expression turned blank. “You don’t know?”

“How would I know? I just met you!”

Tseng tipped his head to one side, considering. “Administrative Research.”

“Oh.” Rufus watched the lights on each floor flicker as they passed it. “I thought you might work on something interesting, like the space program.”

“My job is very boring,” Tseng said. He sounded amused, though Rufus couldn’t work out why.

There were three Shinra guards outside the President’s office. None of them challenged Rufus or Tseng as they passed inside. Rufus headed straight for the back wall, where a small door led to a side room in which his father occasionally slept. He paused when he realised Tseng was looking around, scanning the windows and desk.

“You can go now,” Rufus said. Belatedly, he wondered how someone like Tseng could have a keycard that gave him access to the 70^th floor. Only the board executives and a few members of the military had access to the top floors. Not fifteen year olds who worked in administrative research.

“Good night, Rufus Shinra.” Tseng gave him a nod and headed for the exit.

Rufus stood on tip toes to reach the handle of the door to the side room. He thought longingly of the cool sheets of the bed inside.

The door flew open, sending him staggering backwards. Behind it, a black-clad shadow launched itself at him. Rufus caught a few words of some clipped language, and then a ball of fire roared around him.

Rufus screamed, the heat scorching the back of his throat, as the flames ran across his clothes and skin.

He fell backwards as the fire winked out of existence. A shot rang out and then a second.

Rufus forced his eyes open, blinking away the tears. The shadowy figure standing over him was bleeding from one shoulder, the arm now limp and useless. The other arm held some curved, double-bladed weapon that flashed and glittered as the man flung it through the air. Rufus tracked it’s movement, saw Tseng on the other side of the office, gun raised. One shot. Two shots. The bladed weapon changed direction and buried itself into the floor with a screech of tortured metal.

And then the black-clad man leaped most of the distance of the office in a single spring, throwing himself upon the fifteen year old, his good arm knocking away the gun.

Where are the Guards? Rufus wondered. Fear seized him. The guards had been wearing their helmets. They could be anyone. That an intruder had been able to gain access to the President’s office meant some kind of internal conspiracy. The Guards must have been in on it.

Rufus pulled himself to his knees and scanned the room quickly. Tseng had driven a swift kick into the intruder’s stomach, sending him reeling back. Rufus made a dive for his fathers desk, yanked open the bottom right drawer. The sleek shape of the pistol lay atop a pile of paperwork. Rufus lifted it with both hands and aimed it at the intruder. His hands were shaking, and the gun was heavy. Impossible to aim properly.

The intruder threw himself on Tseng and drove the fifteen year old to the ground. Rufus saw Tseng bare his teeth and then suddenly the intruder went limp. Tseng’s hand came away from the man’s neck and Rufus saw the thin blade it held. Blood gushed, bright red, covering Tseng and soaking into the carpet.

Tseng pushed the intruder off him and rolled to his feet. He glanced towards Rufus, noted the gun, and sharply jerked his hand downwards. Hide. Rufus ducked behind the desk.

He heard the office door open, and three gunshots punctuated the air. Bang. Bang. Bang. He lifted his head cautiously, and saw Tseng closing the office door behind him.

“You’re burned,” the boy said. His expression calm, despite the blood soaked into his shirt and jacket. “Veld is on his way. He’ll have potions.”

Rufus didn’t know who Veld was, but he was reminded of the burns. He looked down at his hands, noted the angry red blisters that had sprung up. Pain and shock sucked the strength from his legs, and he found himself sitting on the floor.

“Careful now,” Tseng appeared beside him and took his father’s gun. One hand supporting Rufus, stopping him from collapsing completely.

“Who was that?” Rufus asked. His voice hoarse.

“I don’t know.” A shadow passed over Tseng’s features. “We’ll find out.”

“Who are you?” Rufus coughed. “Not administrative research.”

The office door opened and a man Rufus vaguely recognised from official functions appeared. Dark hair. Strong chin.

Then his head was being lifted and some bitter liquid forced into his mouth. He spluttered and then drank. Numbness flowed down his throat and the pain receded in waves. He closed his eyes.

“We’re Turks,” he heard Tseng say, as if from a great distance. “It’s our job to keep you safe.”

Oblivion took him.

“Sloppy work, Tseng.” Veld knelt by the crumpled body of the intruder, methodically going through every fold of clothing. “We could really have done with at least one of them left alive.”

“Yes sir.” Tseng had pulled the three bodies of the Shinra Guards inside the President’s office and was doing the same efficient body search.

“A mastered fire materia.” Veld held up the green orb to the light. “It’s a wonder the boy wasn’t killed. You do realise, Tseng, what would have happened if Rufus Shinra had died on your watch?”

“Yes sir.”

“You would have been executed. With great fanfare. What were you doing on the upper floors anyway?”

“I… I was visiting Ifalna.”

“By Shiva’s frozen tit.” Veld pinched the bridge of his nose. “So you were visiting our Ancients. And what… you ran into Scarlet?”

“Yes.” Tseng flicked through the Shinra Guard’s wallet. A keycard, money, an ID that proclaimed him to be Huey Gandarra, thirty two, 165 pounds.

“And Scarlet asked you to bring Rufus up here?”

“Yes.” There was something hard in the seam of the wallet. Tseng used his thumb to worry it. Something small, that had been stitched into the lining. Tseng took his knife and carefully slit the leather spine.

A tiny gold pin fell into his hand. A coiled snakelike dragon with glittering red eyes and a ball of red flame coming from its sharp-fanged mouth

“What’s that?” Veld leaned forward. Tseng held his hand out, the dragon cupped in his palm.

“Looks like one of those blasted Wute gods to me.” Veld’s shoulders slumped. “This will mean war, boy.”

War. Tseng looked down at the tiny pin he held. An assassination attempt on the President’s son. The Company would retaliate. It had to.

But something about it didn’t sit right. He had watched the diplomatic talks with the Kisaragi family. It was true, they didn’t like Shinra nor the mako reactors the Company wanted to build on their land. But they had been treated to a tour of Shinra’s military facilities. They knew that the mako refinement process allowed Shinra to manufacture materia, whereas before it could only be stumbled upon if you were lucky. They had seen the SOLDIERs in combat training: stronger, faster, more powerful than any non-enhanced human.

Wutai had to know they were outmatched.

Unless…

“I think the man that attacked Rufus and me… he may have been enhanced.” Tseng looked up at Veld. “He was fast. Faster than me. And he jumped halfway across the office.”

“A renegade SOLDIER?” Veld reached to the black ski mask the intruder had worn and pulled it over his head.

The two of them looked down into a Wutaian face. Veld shot Tseng a troubled look and then pulled up one eyelid.

The dark iris was overlaid with a greenish slick of colour that gleamed softly in the gloom of the office.

“Shit,” Veld said, quietly.

Chapter Text

Rufus woke up in his own bed. He lay there for a few minutes, staring up at the ceiling, and then slowly raised his hands to look at them.

The skin was unblemished. No sign of the blistered burns from yesterday. He examined the rest of his body. The bruises Heidegger had given him had vanished. Even the scraped knee he had got two days ago had disappeared.

Like a magic eye picture coming into focus, he suddenly understood what his father had built.

His history tutor had told him about the time before the Shinra corporation existed. Before they had worked out the process of extracting Mako, potions had been as rare as chocobo teeth. Only in Mideel did enough raw Mako rise to the surface to be collected. The little town had guarded their recipe fiercely.

And then Shinra had come along.

Once Mako was on tap, everything was on tap. Materia. Magic.

Potions.

Rufus considered that for a while, curled up under the covers. He had known he was rich. But the other children he knew were also rich. He had known the Shinra corporation was powerful. But his school was filled with the sons and daughters of business magnates, politicians and nobility.

Everyone had always told him that the Shinra corporation had changed the world. And now he finally understood what they meant.

Rufus sighed and sat up, rubbing one hand across his eyes. Clean clothes were folded on a chair nearby, suggesting that his nanny was around somewhere. He pulled them on and then hurried out of the bedroom. He stopped short when he saw the man sitting on the chair in the hallway outside.

Veld. At first glance you might dismiss him as just another man in a suit, but look again and you saw the thin scar on his face, the callouses on his knuckles, and the way the suit stretched across his shoulders and tapered to a slim waist. No sign of a businessman’s paunch.    

“Good morning,” Rufus said.

“Good morning.” Veld considered him for a moment, and then a faint smile crooked the man’s face. “You survived your first assassination attempt. Congratulations are in order.”

Rufus narrowed his eyes. “Surely they were trying to kill my father?”

“Actually, all the evidence suggests it was aimed at you.”

“At me?”

“I’m afraid so.” Veld still wore that faint smile.

“Who was it?”

Veld tilted his head. “The Wutaians, it appears. Probably the Kisaragi family, they rule the roost. Though they’ll deny it, of course.”

“Why would they attack me?” Rufus shook his head. “I’ve never even met someone from Wutai.”

“A threat, perhaps. They keep themselves to themselves, the Wutes, but they must’ve seen how the world beyond their island is changing.” Veld rubbed his chin thoughtfully. “We’re about to resume trade negotiations with them. They may have been trying to make us afraid.”

“What did my father say?” Rufus asked.

“That it’s time my team started keeping a better eye on you.” Veld stood then, and extended one hand. “I don’t believe we’ve been properly introduced. I’m Veld. Head of the Department of Administrative Research.”

“The Turks,” Rufus said, as he shook Veld’s hand. 

Veld smiled. “You don’t miss much, do you? Yes, we’re known as the Turks to some. You’ll be getting to know us a little better over the coming months.”

Rufus didn’t know what to say to that.

“Well.” Veld looked up and down the hallway. “I think your nanny went to sort out breakfast. Let’s go join her, shall we?”

It took a few days before Rufus got used to having a dark-suited shadow. Veld did not return after that first meeting, but another of his Turks was never far away.

A young man with blonde hair, his face marked with smile lines, who, when Rufus asked his name, laughed and said “Just call me Ifrit’s gift to women.” An older woman, who spoke little and spent her downtime taking her two pistols apart and cleaning them out. When Rufus asked her what the previous Turk had meant she just rolled her eyes. A man with thin-framed glasses who wore a long sword slung across his back. Tseng appeared once, to accompany Rufus to school, but refused to be drawn on questions about the assassin he had killed.

None of them looked much like a bodyguard, which led to the other children at Rufus’ school teasing him. “What’s the matter, Ruffie, your old man can’t afford anyone to protect you except teenagers and old women? He just scrape the first homeless people he saw off the street and put them in a suit?”

One of his fellow school attendees, a daughter of one of the many Midgarian families who had gotten rich from selling land to Shinra, also gained a bodyguard; a broad shouldered, muscular man with a tattoo on his face. Rufus knew that he was meant to feel slighted, embarrassed by the far less dangerous looking people who shadowed him.

But he didn’t. If anything he felt vaguely smug, knowing that his bodyguards were not just for show.

It changed some things though. His nanny stopped gossiping about the executives. She didn’t stop talking — she’d never been able to be quiet for long — but she studiously avoided mentioning anything to do with Shinra, and instead told Rufus about her family back in Gongaga. She had a sprawling array of siblings, cousins, in-laws, nephews, nieces and grandparents, far more than Rufus thought feasible, and they seemed to be continuously falling out with each other.

The other change was more welcome. Heidegger stopped coming to ‘babysit’ on nights when his father worked late. It meant Rufus no longer had to endure the systematic beatings that, Heidegger had assured him, were meant to ensure he didn’t ‘grow up into some spoiled Nancy boy who would fall over if he got hit by a strong breeze’.

By the end of the first week they settled into routine. Rufus no longer felt a jolt each time he emerged in the morning to see the figure in the chair outside his room, and his school mates forgot about the quiet people that sat in the back of the room each day.

In the second week, Veld returned to tell him that Wutai had received Shinra’s missive requesting a meeting, and had agreed. The date was set for a month hence, at Junon. “The President wants you there,” Veld said. “He thinks it will lend the meeting a certain… pathos.”

After that, Rufus set himself to learning as much about Wutai as he could.

It turned out there wasn’t a lot to learn.

Wutai had been officially discovered some three hundred years ago by an explorer from Cosmo Canyon, but since then they had refused to let any foreigners enter the country. The Kisaragi family conducted all the negotiations, usually from the deck of their boats, but claimed it was on behalf of someone they referred to as Tsar. They worshipped a snake-like dragon called Leviathan. They launched no trade routes of their own, although occasionally a Wutaian ship would be spotted some distance off a coastline. They allowed trade ships into their waters, though refused to let any crew come to land. Main exports included rice, tea, spices, timber, steel, and silk. Main imports included chocolate, coffee, and, more recently, scientific equipment, rare breeds of chocobos, and some mako-powered electronics.

Other than that, everything was speculation. A pilot claimed to have flown across the country and seen a number of towns and cities built in a style unlike any other, a mix of sharply pointed layered roofs, onion-like domes, delicate towers, columns and bright colours. Someone else claimed to have landed on a distant beach and walked around, seeing mountains linked together with great suspension bridges painted gold, and people working in fields that stacked up the sides of mountains like stairs.

A few Wutaian people moved to the Western Continent to set up shops or restaurants which introduced the world to their sharply spiced, seafood dominated cuisine. But they were all reticent on the story of their home country and Wutai remained a mysterious, foreign place, surrounded by a swirl of rumours.

Godo Kisaragi sat in the crows nest, watching the horizon. The sea breeze carried a tang of salt and, more faintly, the sharp smell of mako. He could see dark tendrils of silt and rock dust beginning to swirl through the water as the ship pulled closer to the Shinra city.

A city? More of a monstrosity.

Junon hulked into view. A chaotic collection of scaffolding, hastily thrown together metal walkways, and, dominating it, the giant mako-powered mechanical drill that was grinding its way into the sea bed. Semi-permanent housing for the engineers and military personnel clung to the rocky cliffs.

“Leviathan guide me,” Godo murmured to himself, and then came to his feet and over the edge of the nest in one smooth motion. He bounced from rope to rope and somersaulted the last ten feet to land, cat-like, on the deck.

“Show off,” Chekov said from where he leaned against the side of the ship, and grinned to take the sting out of it.

Godo grinned back. The sea voyage had been good for him. A chance to meditate with nothing but the sound of the sea and the call of the gulls to distract him. He loved his new wife — Kasumi was beautiful, elegant and charming — but it had been nice to get away from the endless parties and soirees that she insisted on throwing.

They had taken the scenic route to Junon, taking their time sailing around the islands to the south, gawking from the safety of their ship at the ancient forests and jungles that had grown up on land still untouched by humans.

The crew shouted to each other, clipping the sails and slowing the ship until it came gently to rest by one of the metal latticework docks. A few people came out of their houses to watch, staring up at the great ship with its snarling serpentine figurehead.

“I think there are even more soldiers than last year,” Chekov said.

Godo had to agree. Blue uniforms were everywhere. Helicopters rumbled overhead, circling the ship and the city.

“Why do they persist in this sham?” Chekov stood straighter. “They can’t threaten us. They can’t buy us. Why don’t they realise that? Yet every year they insist on bringing us here and asking us if they can sell us their ridiculous machines or buy our land.”

“They don’t think like we do,” Godo said softly. A platoon of soldiers was marching towards them, faces hidden by the identical helmets they wore.

Chekov shook his head as the soldiers came to a halt in front of the ship and raised one eyebrow at Godo. “Do they think we’ll attack them from a single ship?”

“It is a display of power.” Godo’s lip curled. “They are immodest.”

“As if these soldiers could offer a match for the Dragon of Wutai.” Chekov laughed as he vaulted the railing and landed on the gangway. “Come, let’s get this over with.”

They were taken by the soldiers to the same building they had met with the President before. A more permanent structure than the canvas-and-sheet-metal dwellings that surrounded it, the Shinra headquarters was built from a bronzed metal. At four stories high it dwarfed the surrounding village, but still felt unimpressive, as it was in-turn dwarfed by the cliffs. The Shinra logo had been painted across the front of it, interrupted by a bank of wide windows that looked out across the bay. On the roof Godo could see three helicopters, two of a military style that bristled with guns.

“I would rather look upon Da Chao,” Chekov said quietly. “Than look out at that drill all day.”

The soldiers marched them through the front doors, and Godo noted the two red uniformed men standing across from each other in the hallway. These were two of the so called ‘SOLDIERS’, Shinra apparently having decided that capitalising the name made them more of a threat. He had watched them drill the last he was here. Six humans moving slightly faster than they might otherwise have done.

A display intended to strike fear into him. Godo resisted the urge to roll his eyes as he was hurried through a further set of doors and up a wide staircase. As though Wutaian warriors had not long ago learned the art of meditating in a sacred place and in turn receiving the gifts of speed and strength. A ritual kept for the most dedicated of warriors, those who had mastered all four styles of combat.

Finally, they were led into the meeting room. A large conference table, set up with jugs of water and glasses. A deep red carpet. The Shinra logo on one wall. And to their side the windows, with the mako drill beyond. Even here you could feel the faint reverberations as the drill worked.

“The President will be with you shortly,” one of the soldiers said, in the Midgarian language. Godo and Chekov took their seats, and the soldiers retreated to line the walls, rifles at the ready.

Shinra kept them waiting for over half an hour, and by the time they finally showed up Godo was quietly fuming.

The President entered first, wearing the dark red suit that had become his trademark. To his side strode a young boy. Behind the President were Scarlet and Heidegger. Godo had no idea why they showed up to every meeting. They rarely contributed anything useful.

“Godo Kisaragi. Chekov Aya. Allow me to introduce my son, Rufus.” The President placed his hand on the boy’s shoulder and pushed him forward.

Godo looked down at the little boy who held out one hand in the way of these people. Rufus did not look much like the half wild children Godo knew from Wutai, who spent most of their time clambering around Da Chao statue or swimming in the streams that cut through the city. He wore a tailored suit, spotlessly clean, and his gaze was direct and clear — oddly disconcerting in a boy so young.

“Rufus Shinra.” Godo took the boys hand and shook it.

“Do you have children, Kisaragi?” The President sank into his seat at the head of the table. Rufus took the chair to his right, Scarlet and Heidegger moved to his left. Behind him, Godo noted the two dark suited men who had silently taken up residence on each side of the door.

“I’m afraid I do not.” Godo resisted the urge to drum his fingers on the table. He hated this pompous man who sat opposite him, acting as though he ruled the world.

“Ah. Well, you won’t have experienced that moment of pride and joy when your son in brought into the world. As any father would no doubt tell you, it sharpens you up. You become determined to let nothing threaten that vulnerable little creature. And when something does…” the President trailed off.

Godo looked toward Chekov, baffled.

“When something does your instinct is to crush it.” The President said finally, after it became clear that Godo was not going to break the silence.

“I can imagine,” Godo said. “Now, perhaps we could turn to the subject of trade tariffs, I’d like to—”

“Rufus was attacked two weeks ago. An assassin. One of your men, I believe, Godo Kisaragi.”

Godo felt the words die in his throat. He stared at the President in complete astonishment.

“You accuse us of attempted murder?” Chekov said, sounding as surprised as Godo felt.

“The evidence is quite damning, Mr. Chekov.” It was Scarlet who spoke next, leaning forward, her eyes gleaming. “He carried a marker of your snake God… what do you call him, Lev-than? And you are quite a distinctive looking race, wouldn’t you say?”

The President suddenly threw something onto the table. “This very pin, Kisaragi! Found on the body of the man who tried to murder my seven year old son! And you stand there and deny this perfidy to my face?”

Godo looked at the pin, and felt a cold hand clench around his heart. Itsumade. The fire dragon. He looked at Chekov and saw the same consternation reflected in his face.

“Now. I would be well within my rights to have you shot on the spot,” The President leaned back in his chair. “However, instead you and your man will be detained here, and we will send message to-”

“You will do no such thing!” Godo exclaimed. “I am a prince of the House of Kisaragi, and I will not be detained by the likes of you.”

“We appreciate your anger, President Shinra,” Chekov said, shooting Godo a warning glance. “But I can assure you that we had nothing to do with this crime.”

“It’s as likely you set this up to frame us!” Godo found himself standing, unable to lower his voice. Around the room the soldiers had lowered their rifles to point at him. “You want to use as bargaining chips don’t you? Have you not realised that Shinra will never get Wutaian land? We will not sell it to you and we will not be threatened into giving it to you!”

“Oh please!” Scarlet was on her feet as well. “As though your backwater tribe could stop us from coming in and taking it!”

“You know nothing of Wutai or our defences,” Godo snarled.

“I know you travelled here on a sailing ship,” Scarlet laughed derisively. “Have you learned nothing from your time here? We could crush you in a matter of days.”

A stillness passed through Godo. “You put great faith in your military,” he said quietly.

“Well, and why not? You’ve seen it.” Scarlet smiled and put a purr into her voice. “I know it’s never easy to admit when you’ve been outmatched before you even start, but you’re a smart man Kisaragi. Even you must see how quaint you look to us.”

Godo turned his back on them and walked to the window. He could feel the Shinra soldiers following his movement with their rifles.

Outside, the sea was choppy, spun into crazed waves by the motion of the giant drill that chopped at the sea bed. Godo let his eyes close and the silent prayer fill him.

Rufus watched Godo Kisaragi walk to the window. For a moment he seemed to stare at his reflection in the glass, then Rufus saw his eyes drift close.

His body became as insubstantial as smoke, before winking out of existence.

“What the—!” Scarlet exclaimed. A few of the Shinra Guards ran forward to where the man had been.

“The other one’s gone too,” his father said. Rufus could hear the anger in his voice. He glanced at him out of the corner of his eye, noting the flush of rage that had spread across his face.

“Sir! Ma’am!” One of the Shinra Guards gestured at the window. “The water!”

All of them were on their feet now. Rufus scrambled onto his chair to see where the Guard pointed. For a moment he couldn’t see anything wrong, and then suddenly he understood.

The sea was rising into the air.

Dragging higher and higher, impossibly high, as though pulled upwards by an invisible hook. A giant wave that cast a shadow across the city below, poised to break. Rufus could see the surf churning at its tip.

An inhuman shriek pierced the air. Rufus felt his heart hammering in his chest.

“What in Ifrit’s name is going on?” his father bellowed.

“Magic.” Scarlet said. “They… they must have some kind of materia.”

“We have to get you away from here.” Veld had come to his father’s side, and now he took his elbow. “We need to get you to the helicopter.”

“It’s just water,” his father said, pulling his elbow away. “They’re putting on a silly show.”

Again the shriek. Rufus clambered onto the table to get a better view of the window. For a moment he saw a shadow flickering in the wall of water, dark and twisting.

Then the creature thrust its head through the wage. A giant serpent, covered in iridescent scales that caught the light and flashed a thousand points of light.

It’s maw gaped wide to reveal row after row of serrated teeth.

“We move now.” Veld grabbed his father again and hustled him toward the door. This time he didn’t resist, and Scarlet and Heidegger were tight on his heels.

“Time to go, Rufus.” Tseng had appeared behind Rufus, and now he lifted him bodily off the chair on which he stood. Rufus twisted in his arms to continue to watch the window as Tseng ran toward the door, and so he saw the great serpent dive forward and seize the mako drill in one coil of its immense, twisting body.

Then they were running through the corridors and out onto the roof. The helicopter blades already roaring. His father clambering aboard. Rufus’ hair whipped around his face as he looked over Tseng’s shoulder at the panorama behind him.

The creature gazed down at them from a pair of flat, yellow, alien eyes.

At the same moment that Tseng’s hand closed around the ladder, the creature flung the drill straight at the building they stood on.

The helicopter jerked into the air. Tseng clung to the ladder with one hand and gripped Rufus tightly in his other arm. Rufus gaped as he watched the drill plough into the building below, glass and metal crashing together and ripping apart.

The wave broke.

“Hold tight!” Tseng yelled, his voice almost lost in the thunderous noise. The helicopter was climbing fast. Rufus clutched him, his hands gripping the rough fabric of Tseng’s suit. The wave passed mere inches below them, Rufus felt the whoosh of its movement, he blinked salt spray from his eyes.

The place he had been standing moments ago vanished beneath the swirling vortex of water.

The great serpent coiled over and under itself and faded from view.

Far below, Rufus noted the white sails of the Wutaian ship unfurl, somehow unharmed despite the destruction that raged around it.

The ladder was being hauled up into the helicopter, and Tseng thrust Rufus upwards into the waiting hands of Veld. Veld pulled him inside, and Tseng followed him in, dragging the last of the ladder after him and slamming the door.

“I want a tail on that ship,” Scarlet was hunched over the helicopter controls, in the seat next to the pilot, her voice shrill with anger. “Anyone gets a shot at them, you take it, you hear me?”

The radio crackled in response. Rufus thought of the group of Shinra Guards who had remained in the meeting room and had, presumably, been crushed or swept away. He twisted in Veld’s grip. “Put me down!”

Veld set him down, and Rufus straightened his suit whilst he took in the scene. They stood in an open space, lined with two padded benches. Straps swung from the ceiling. At the front of the helicopter, two padded yellow seats held the pilot and Scarlet.

Next to him, Heidegger was pale, darting sideways glances at his father. His father sat on one of the padded benches. He had a slightly dazed look, as though he had just woken up from a bad dream.

Veld moved past Rufus to look down at the sea below.

“What was that, Veld?” his father rasped, sudden and loud.

Veld glanced back at them. His face was a perfectly composed mask, unreadable, inscrutable. Rufus wondered what it took to hide your emotions like that. He himself was flushed, and he could hear his own breath, ragged and fast. Deliberately, he tried to slow it, counting each breath in and out.

“It would appear to be the Wutaian water god, Leviathan.” Veld said.

“That’s not what I asked, and you know it.”

“A powerful magic. Of a type we haven’t seen before.”

“Does that mean our gods are real?” Scarlet turned away from the helicopter control panel, glared at them all. “That these myths about Ifrit, Shiva and the like aren’t just old stories?”

“No a clue,” Veld said. “But I suppose it’s a possibility.”

“Who knew the bastards had a trick like that up their sleeve.” His father fell silent, frowning.

“We’ll wipe them out!” Scarlet jumped up from her seat and strode towards them. She had lost or discarded her heels at some point, and walked now in stocking feet. “We’ll burn their cities and string up their children.”

“No.” His father said quietly.

“They tried to kill us! They tried to kill Rufus-”

“We don’t know enough about them. They could have dozens of these blasted ‘gods’ for all we know. And who knows what other kinds of magic? No. We don’t risk going to war with them. Not until we know more. And not until we see how the results of the Jenova Project turn out.”

“The Jenova Project,” Scarlet said bitterly. “You put far too much faith in those children.”

“You’ve not managed to invent something yet that can so much as touch them,” his father replied. He leaned back against the helicopter wall, drumming his fingers on one knee. “No. They have… surprised us. We need to surprise them.”

Everyone fell silent. Rufus perched himself on the padded bench. This helicopter was very different to the one that had taken them to Junon. That had been smaller, containing 8 padded seats that faced each other. The floor carpeted, the lighting gentle, everything designed to lull you into forgetting that you were trapped in a machine flying miles above the ground.

This helicopter made no such attempts to disguise itself. You could feel the mechanical vibrations of the helicopter through every bare metal surface. The strap that swayed above his head was there to be grabbed in case the helicopter banked or climbed sharply. Rucksacks were clipped at intervals around the walls. Parachutes, Rufus guessed. This was a helicopter for the Shinra army, in case they needed to be dropped into enemy territory.

“So, we’re just going to let them get away with it.” Scarlet said, finally. She spun on her heel and marched back to the seat next to the pilot. Rufus half expected his father to lose his temper, but instead he leaned back against the wall behind him and closed his eyes.

“We need spies,” Heidegger said. He had regained some of his colour. “Veld, get some people into the capital.”

“Yes sir,” Veld said.

“I want that magic, Veld.” His father said. “Whatever it is, some new kind of materia perhaps, I want it.”

“Sir.”

Rufus narrowed his eyes as he considered the task that had been placed before Veld. Sneak spies into a closed country, infiltrate a foreign capital, and steal a powerful magic.

He couldn’t imagine how the man might go about accomplishing such a thing.

Chapter Text

Tseng flipped swiftly through the newspaper. Typical Shinra propaganda, filled with gushing articles about the good work the company was doing. Puff pieces about sponsored orphanages, affordable housing, and the record breaking amount of investment Shinra was ploughing into ‘medical research’.

The articles weren’t what he was interested in, though he did pause briefly to scan the article about the recent ‘industrial accident’ at Junon. The journalist wrote that it had been caused by unusual weather patterns interfering with the drill electronics. Tseng wondered how that was better than admitting they had been attacked by Wutai. It made Shinra sound incompetent.

He took a sip from the cup of the watered down coffee they served in the staff canteen. He could have got a better coffee in the Turk break room, but he didn’t want the other Turks to see what he was doing. Not that it was a secret, exactly, but his feelings about the situation had become complicated. 

An advert for Costa del Sol caught his eye. All golden sands and blue skies. He tore it carefully out of the newspaper and put it to one side.

A few pages later he found a piece about the natural longevity of people who lived in Mideel. The spin on it was that Shinra were researching the benefits of Mako therapy in order to recreate the effects for ‘luxury Spas in Midgar’, but the article itself was illustrated with a picture of an older couple hiking through the verdant forests that surrounded the area. Tseng tore that picture out as well.

The rest of the paper had nothing else he wanted, comprising almost entirely of gossip about various well known celebrities.

Tseng scooped up his two photographs and headed for the elevator. He paused as a group of Shinra Guards poured out of the lift, laughing and giving each other high-fives. Shaking his head, he slipped past them and took the elevator they had vacated.

The labs were empty at this time of the evening, only the odd whimper of some poor creature left overnight to disturb the silence. Tseng went through the security door and into the cells beyond.

“Sir,” the Guard at the end of the hallway saluted. Only three Guards got assigned duty up here, and all three knew him well.

“At ease, Alaric.” Tseng said. “I’m here to see the Ancients.”

“Of course, sir.” Alaric waited patiently as Tseng used the security comm to swiftly switch the security camera in the far cell over to pre-recorded footage, and then led the way down the hallway.

They had knocked through the wall between two cells to create a larger space for Ifalna and her daughter and some effort had been made to make it habitable. A screen had been set up to hide the toilet, and someone had added shelves to one wall, that had slowly filled with second hand children’s books. The small niceties could not disguise the nature of where they lived however. The walls bare metal, the two narrow beds covered in only a thin grey blanket.

Ifalna sat on one bed, watching her daughter, who was running in circles around the cell with her arms outstretched.

The guard unlocked the door and Tseng went inside.

“Tseng!” the little girl exclaimed and bounced over. “I’m a phoenix! See?” She made a cawing noise and flapped her arms.

“And there was me expecting to see Aerith.” Tseng smiled down at the little girl. She was small and pale, her brown hair pulled into two plaits that framed the narrowness of her face. But despite that, she gave off a radiant glow.

“I wasn’t expecting to see you again so soon, Tseng.” Ifalna didn’t stand up. She too was pale and thin, and her head had been shaved close to the scalp. She had bruises along the inside of one arm, which worried Tseng. She normally healed faster than that. “It’s only been… a few weeks hasn’t it?”

“I brought some pictures for your wall,” Tseng said. He indicated the far wall, opposite the bed on which Ifalna sat slumped.

It had been Aerith’s idea originally. Ifalna had been curled up under the covers that day, barely able to move. Tseng had sat with her for hours, his hand in hers, as she trembled and twitched.

When Ifalna had finally spoken, it had been in a hoarse and broken voice. “She’ll never see the sun.”

Tseng had looked to where Aerith sat, watching them both with wide eyes. When she heard what her mother said she had come over timidly.

“Tseng can bring me a picture,” she had said.

So Tseng had brought her a postcard of a shining sun above the town of Kalm, along with tac to stick it to the wall. Aerith had put it above her bed. And every visit after that he brought another picture.

Now the entire wall above that bed was awash with colour. Postcards and clippings showed fields of wheat, mountain ranges, colourful chocobo running across grassy plains.

Tseng held out the two new pictures he had brought and Aerith seized them happily and ran to add them to the collage.

Ifalna watched her, her eyes slightly glazed. Tseng sat next to her.

“Do you remember the first time you came here?” Ifalna said suddenly.

Tseng glanced at her. “Yes.”

“You were so young.” Ifalna shook her head. “I felt sorry for you.”

“It was only a year ago.” Tseng refrained from pointing out she had been in no position to feel sorry for anyone.

“Only a year. I suppose you’re still young.” Ifalna heaved a sigh. “But I don’t feel sorry for you anymore.”

“Why not?”

Before Ifalna could reply, Aerith ran back to Tseng. “Who are the people in the forest? Are they your parents?”

Tseng laughed. “No. No, they are… just some people who live nearby and enjoy walking I suppose.”

“Do you know their names?”

“I don’t.”

“What do you think they are called?” Ifalna asked Aerith.

Aerith considered this for a moment. “Um.”

“Go look at the picture. Open your heart. Maybe they’ll tell you.”

Aerith nodded and ran back to her bed to study the picture.

“You could get her out of here,” Ifalna said softly.

“No. I can’t.”

“Shinra doesn’t need both of us.” Ifalna turned her head to him, her eyes wide. Tseng looked away. “She’s only four, Tseng. She’s a little girl. She deserves a chance.”

“It won’t be any better for her out there.”

“Are you sure?” Ifalna kept her voice low, but Tseng heard the anger in it. “You’ve seen what they do. Would you carry her to the specimen table, Tseng? Would you hold her down while they cut into her?”

“They won’t do that.” Tseng said, without much conviction.

“They’re keeping her in reserve for when I die.” Ifalna’s voice broke on a sob. “My little girl.”

“I have to go.” Tseng jumped to his feet, and headed for the door. He rapped sharply on it.

“Tseng?” Aerith turned to look at him and her face crumpled. “You’re leaving?”

“Sorry,” Tseng muttered. The door swung open and he stepped out into the cooler air of the hallway.

“Everything alright, sir?” Alaric let the door slam shut on Aerith’s pleading face.

“Yes.” Tseng straightened his tie. “Thank you.”

Rufus ate his breakfast while his nanny clattered around him, telling him about the letter she had received from her cousin Gertrude and how she had told her that boyfriend of hers was no good and just look at how things had turned out there.

Leota sat at the other end of the table, frowning over a notebook. Rufus knew what she was doing. She was doing what all the Turks had started to do; attempt to learn Wutaian.

It was not, apparently, an easy language to learn.

“Gods,” Leota muttered as she stared at her notebook. “Guns are so much easier than this.”

“Can I see?” Rufus asked her, during one of his nanny’s brief pauses in conversation.

She pushed the notebook over. Rufus looked with interest at the foreign shapes of the letters. Someone had written the Midgarian phonemes next to them. No word for ‘the’ had been written at the top in Leota’s spiky handwriting. She had circled it, added exclamation marks, and underlined it twice.

Rufus flipped a page. Leota had painstakingly copied a sentence of Wutaian and was engaged in a slow process of translating it, first to phonetic Wutaian and then to Midgarian. There was a lot of crossing out. Rufus looked at the translation and flipped back to the letters on the first page. “These letters don’t match up?”

“No,” Leota said with a sigh. “Apparently each letter can represent a sound, a concept or can be combined with another letter to mean something completely different. How in Ifrit’s name anyone could be expected to learn this…”

“My language tutor says you need to hear a language to learn it properly.” Rufus pushed the notebook back across the table.

“Yeah, I get that. I mean, I know some Costan, some Icelandi, even a bit of that language they speak around Gongaga that sounds like someone swallowed a bag of marbles. All from going there and just, y’know, talking to people.” Leota grimaced. “But there’s nobody that speaks Wutaian.”

“There’s a Wutaian restaurant in Cosmo Canyon,” Rufus offered, as he turned back to his toast.

“Is there?” Leota looked at him for a moment. “Shinra doesn’t have much of a presence in Cosmo Canyon. How did you know that?”

“Must’ve heard it somewhere,” Rufus said. He tore the crust off the toast and then tore it in half.

“I’ve been to Cosmo Canyon,” his nanny said. “I didn’t care for it myself. All that hippy nonsense. I was only passing through, mind.”

“Mm,” Rufus relapsed into silence as his nanny began telling him all the rumours about the elders of Cosmo Canyon and the Planet-worshipping cult they had set up.

Finally, she talked herself dry and took herself off to the other room to start on the housekeeping. Rufus looked towards at Leota again. She was studying her notebook, sucking the end of her pen, her forehead creased.

“Who’s Veld sending to Wutai?” Rufus asked as casually as he could. “Tseng?”

“No,” Leota said around her pen. “We don’t know enough about Wutai, anyone trying to pretend to be Wutaian would give themselves away instantly. Eat your breakfast, your father wants to see you at ten.”

“So… who then?”

Leota looked up. “Why are you so interested?”

“I saw the sea-serpent too,” Rufus said. “I want to know how it was done.”

“Hmm. Well, it’s Terel who’s going.”

“Terel?” Rufus thought of the lanky, laid-back, blonde Turk with the smattering of freckles across his nose. “He’s… very noticeable.”

“Yeah. That’s the point really. Why would we send such an obvious foreigner to be a spy?”

“Wouldn’t they just kill him?”

“Are you worried about him?” Leota raised an eyebrow. “He’ll love that. And we’ve got a plan. Don’t worry.”

“I’m not worried,” Rufus said. “And I can’t imagine what plan would save such an obvious foreigner who tries to enter an isolationist country like Wutai.”

“What’s this restaurant in Cosmo Canyon called, anyhow?” Leota changed the subject.

“Vkusno,” Rufus said. “Thomas, at school, went there for the summer.”

“To Cosmo Canyon? Why?”

“His mother’s an astronomer. I think they’re building an observatory out there. What is the plan to stop Terel getting killed?”

“Classified,” Leota said. “An observatory at Cosmo Canyon? I wonder where they got the money for that…”

“Obviously it’s classified,” Rufus sat up straighter. “But I’m the son of the President, shouldn’t I be able to override that?”

Leota laughed. “Nice try. You can ask your father when you see him later.”

“Hmm.” Rufus slouched back down in his chair. “Will you teach me Wutaian?”

“Me? Sure. Once I learn it.”

“Show me how you’re translating the letters. I can help. I’m good at languages.”

Leota rolled her eyes. “Come over here then. But be warned, I barely understand what I’m doing.”

Nanhupai was a northern coastal town comprised mainly of fisherfolk and pearl divers, and the arrival of a Kisaragi ship into its small harbour caused quite a stir.

Godo found himself scanning the crowd as he made his way down the gangway. This was not a well defended town. He could see the pointed helmets of a few bogatyr that had settled here, but no samurai and no military. And the bogatyr looked on the older side, as though they had sought a peaceful retirement rather than a place to hone their fighting skills.

“Welcome Lord Godo.” The town registrar pushed through the crowd and swept into a deep bow as he approached. “Has your journey been prosperous?”

“I’m afraid not.” Godo returned the bow with a nod. “And I’m sorry to ask this of you, but can you loan me a messenger? I need to send a message to my father.”

“Of course.” The registrar straightened, his smile fading. “Come to my office, we have several messengers, and scrolls and ink. You must fill me in on the news.”

The registrar’s office was a one story, red wood building with a sharply angled tiled roof. It was built some way up one of the hills that sloped away from the sea, and commanded a good view of the harbour.

A gaggle of children sat around the entrance to the building, flipping through trading cards. Two of them wore the yellow sash of a messenger. They looked up as Godo passed them, but to them he was just another sailor.

Inside, the registrar showed him to a writing desk lined with paper and pens.

Godo hesitated before he wrote, trying to work out how to communicate the urgency of his message. Finally, he opted for simplicity.

Father. We must prepare for war. It comes, if not today, then tomorrow.

He folded the letter and sealed it with a blob of wax. Then he returned to the front door and handed it to one of the messengers outside. “This must be delivered to my father, Hayate Kisaragi, first servant to the Tsar. He lives in the palace in Derev. Tell him it is from his son. Run fast.”

The boy’s eyes widened as he heard the name, but he took the scroll and sped off through the town.

“What happened?” The registrar had lost his polite overtones now. His grey eyes were narrowed.

“I…” Godo hesitated. How could he tell this town official that he had attacked the President of Shinra and summoned Leviathan himself to damage one of his towns? But if he had triggered an invasion, the coastal towns needed to be ready. “The negotiations with Shinra went poorly. There is the possibility they may send a military force… to ah, underscore their words.”

The registrar considered this silently.

Godo looked towards the town. Wide streets, gaily painted buildings, the clean smell of the sea. Shame curled in his stomach. He had acted impulsively. Chekov had said as much, on the journey back. And because of his impulsiveness, Nanhupai could find itself under attack.

Finally, the registrar cleared his throat. “You wrote to Derev to warn them of the war. Will they send warriors to the coastal towns?”

“I hope so,” Godo ran a hand through his hair. “But I do not know how long it will take.”

“No foreigner will set foot on Nanhupai soil.” The registrar’s voice was hard. “I pledge this to you, Godo Kisaragi, son of the first servant to the Tsar. May my life be forfeit should I fail.”

Godo turned to look at the registrar again. He had read him as a small-town official. On the shorter side, his black hair shot through with grey. His clothes were simple robes, worn at the elbows. Looking more closely, however, Godo noted the straight back and sharp grey eyes. The clothes were worn, but every seam had been pressed to a clean line. 

“I am grateful,” Godo said. “And I may be over cautious. It may not come to anything.”

“But if it does, we will be ready.”

He had underestimated this official, Godo thought. And he had lacked empathy in his dealings with the President. Yes, President Shinra had insulted him, but if the man had truly believed that they were behind an attack on his son, he was justified in his anger.

And that reminded Godo of the other piece of this mystery. Itsumade. The dragon pin that had been supposedly found on the assassin.

“I must make a journey to Da Chao, registrar. Is there anywhere in town where I can buy or rent a chocobo?”

“I will give you my own,” the registrar said without hesitation. “I ask only that you think gladly of Nanhupai in the future.”

Godo bowed his head. “Wutai is lucky to have servants such as yourself. I will remember your aid.”

“Let me prepare provisions for the journey. It is three days ride from here. Take yourself to the bathhouse, Lord Godo, and be refreshed. I will personally make sure you have everything you need.”

“You are too kind,” Godo said. “I will accept your offer.”

On the winter sea

Sea gulls float

Like fallen leaves

Leota and Rufus considered the translation in silence.

“Well. That was a waste of time.” Leota flipped the notebook closed and tucked it away somewhere in her suit. “Enough of this. Your father is expecting you at ten.”

Rufus grimaced, but slid down from his seat obediently.

His father had sent a car for him. Leota slid into the front passenger seat, leaving Rufus to take the back seat by himself. He stared through the tinted windows - bullet proof - and watched the buildings of Midgar flicker past.

The greatest city in the world. Or so they said.

They passed the new theatre that had been built to showcase the latest production of Loveless. It was rumoured that production costs had reached the hundreds of thousands, but the gamble had paid off, and the show was sold out for months. A queue of people lined up outside the door, their faces alight with anticipation.

All along the street flyers advertised other performances. You could see anything here; comedy, tragedy, satire, drama. Tucked in between the theatre buildings were restaurants serving everything from Nibelian dragon ribs to the spicy curries of Cosmo Canyon.

Somewhere below them, hidden away by the metal foundations and crawling tunnels, lay the slums. Rufus had never been there, and try as he might he had never been able to imagine what they might look like. 

They passed through the plazas and shopping centres that dominated the centre of the city before the car pulled to a halt outside the front entrance of the Shinra building. Leota was out of the car in moments. She opened the door for Rufus, her eyes scanning the street.

Inside, a bright eyed secretary greeted them and swept them towards the elevators at the rear of the building. Floor 59 had been turned into a security checkpoint following the assassination attempt, but Rufus and Leota were recognised on sight and waved through to the elevators on the far side of the room.

Here, the secretary pressed the button for floor 68. Rufus steeled himself. He had never been to the science department, but he had seen Professor Hojo’s slides and knew roughly what to expect.

He wasn’t prepared for the smell. Like rotten meat and sweat, undercut by the smell of Mako. Rufus almost gagged until he saw his father, standing near the elevator door, hands clasped behind his back, waiting.

This is a test.

Rufus swallowed his nausea and forced a smile to his face.

“Good morning, father.”

“Rufus.” His father nodded. “Thank you for joining me. Leota, you can wait here.”

Leota nodded, her own face expressionless.

His father turned and began to walk down the lab. Rufus fell into step behind him, his gaze drawn despite himself to the cages they passed. Animals of all shapes and sizes, huddled and miserable, shaved, scarred, some missing limbs, others half-starved, some retching, some scratching themselves, their skin scored with bloody claw marks. The stench of urine made his eyes burn. Rufus refused the shudder that threatened to run through him, forced himself to keep his smile fixed in place.

Professor Hojo waited for them in the main area of the labs, his arms folded. He looked over Rufus with a faintly disgusted air.

“This is a laboratory, not a playground.”

“He’s my son, and it’s time he saw a bit more of what this company does.” His father stood with his hands in his pockets, relaxed and expansive. 

“Just make sure he doesn’t touch anything. If he loses a finger, I’m keeping it.” Hojo turned his back on Rufus and gestured to the centre tank. “In the tank you can see a zenene that I am constructing.”

Rufus looked into the specimen tank and saw a skinny, almost skeletal, creature with heavy spikes pushed up from its spine and a mane of red fur that hung lankly around a snarling, bestial face. Two glowing yellow eyes were fixed upon them. The thing moved restlessly, pacing from one side of the tank to the other, its gaze never leaving theirs. Muscles twitched beneath pallid skin.

“It requires little in the way of maintenance,” Hojo said. “It’s body mass has been successfully reduced so it needs a smaller amount of calories to sustain it. A number of mako induced mutations has made it a more capable fighter, and it has an excellent sense of smell. I expect it will replace dogs as the preferred guard animal.”

“Hojo has systemised genetic editing techniques,” his father said. “He can take any animal and change its DNA. What do you think of that, Rufus?”

Rufus looked into the eyes of the zenene. Black pupils, slitted like a cats, almost lost in the flat yellow iris that surrounded them, glowing with some strange inner light. They had learned about DNA at school, his teacher explaining how the genes for his blonde hair had been handed down to him. “You can change the way an animal looks?”

“So much for the private education system.” Hojo expelled an irritated sigh through his nose. “I can change everything about an animal, boy. I can make a venomous snake harmless, or make a harmless rodent venomous. I can turn a heart into a brain and a brain into a weapon. I can rewrite a creature, piece by piece, until it becomes something entirely different.”

“Think that through, Rufus,” his father said, still genial. “What does it mean? For the company.”

“I guess… you could make creatures fit for a specific purpose. You could make chocobos stronger, for farmers. Or faster, for jockeys. You could make creatures that are good at tracking, or fighting, or… make animals that are better for food. And then you could sell them.”

“Spot on,” his father said, ignoring Hojo’s dismissive snort. “And how might we use this to get the upper hand with Wutai?”

“You could make fighting monsters.” Rufus said promptly.

“And what would a fighting monster look like?”

“Like that?” Rufus pointed at the zenene. It snarled, revealing razor sharp teeth.

“Are you deaf? I said that it would become a guard dog.” Hojo shuffled away from them, shaking his head.

“It’s not a bad guess,” his father said. “But wars require more than just teeth and claws. They require… well. Look around you, Rufus. Who is the top predator in this room?”

Rufus looked back at the cages behind him. None of the creatures were ones he recognised. There were strange white rabbit things, huddled together in the centre of their cage. Definitely not a top predator. In the cage next to that was a wolf, its fur coming out in patches, its teeth long, sharp and yellow. The next cage held an immense dragonfly like creature with iridescent wings, fluttering in a panicked way from corner to corner. Every now and then it spat flame, which flickered away into nothing when it hit the bars of the cage.

None of those were the right answer. Rufus looked the other way, to where Hojo stood next to the specimen tank, the zenene cowering away on the other side. Hojo pushed a button, and gas hissed. The zenene collapsed, its yellow eyes rolling back in its head.

“He is,” Rufus said.

His father nodded. “Him, me and you. Human beings, my boy. Ingenious, strategic, capable of considering both the distant goal and the immediate problem. We can out fight anything on this planet, given the right tools. And indeed, fighting isn’t the only thing we can do. We can threaten, negotiate, bribe, and lie. No creature, however strong, however poisonous, can match us.”

A robotic arm had emerged from the side of the tank and had rolled the zenene over to expose its belly. As Rufus watched, the robot arm unpacked itself like a pocket knife, exposing a scalpel, a syringe, and a butterfly needle attached to a hose that ran back along the inside of its metal arm.

“Only the Ancients had greater power than us,” his father’s voice had grown soft. “And they are on the verge of going extinct. Now we use their DNA to improve our own. We’re building the people of the future. Stronger, faster, smarter. People who…” his father tailed off, frowning. “People capable of going to places we couldn’t. Other worlds. Lands we know only from legend and myth.”

“We’re changing people? Like we change the animals?”

“People are animals,” his father said, pulling a cigar from his pocket. “And we are not changing them, Rufus. We’re improving them.”

“Don’t smoke in here,” Hojo said, with some irritation. He stabbed a button. The robot arm descended on the creature and the scalpel made a neat incision into its belly. A winch pulled apart the flesh, revealing a confused muddle of purplish organs tinged here and there with green. There was, Rufus thought, a surprising lack of blood. He was aware that his stomach had rolled at the sight of the operation, but somehow — having dedicated himself to maintaining that faint, calm, distant smile — he was able to stand and watch.

“Have a look around,” his father said. “Ask Hojo any questions you have and tell Leota when you’re ready to leave. Remember, if you want to run this business some day, you have to understand every branch of it.”

His father headed for the exit, the cigar in one hand, his other fumbling for the lighter. Rufus watched him go and then looked back at the operation in progress. Without his father there, his smile slipped, and he felt the suffocating smell of blood press down on him.

He turned his back on Hojo and moved slowly through the room. The lab was big, with benches lining one wall and strange, complex machinery against another. Tall tubes that almost reached the ceiling were collected at one end of the lab, and Rufus paused to look at them. Big enough for a person, he thought. He wondered how you changed someone’s DNA. It existed in every cell in the body, or so his teacher had said.

He looked again towards Hojo, but the scientist had become completely absorbed in unravelling the zenene’s intestines, pulling them apart like some macabre bunting. Rufus felt his gorge rise, and headed swiftly back to the elevator. Leota stood with her hands in her pockets, watching Hojo. Her face was carefully blank, and Rufus wondered if behind the mask she felt the same revulsion he did.

“I want to go,” Rufus said.

Leota nodded and pressed the button for the elevator. If Hojo noticed them leave, he made no sign of it.

Chapter Text

Refreshed, dressed, and with the reins of a chocobo in his hands, Godo set off towards Da Chao. The northern tip of Wutai was flatter and grassier than the rest of the island, and the yellow chocobo settled into an easy, mile devouring gait. The three days passed with little incident, and on the afternoon of the third day Godo saw the small village that had formed at the foot of Da Chao. 

The village was nameless - it existed mostly to accommodate the travellers that came to the sacred mountains. There was an inn and a few shops that sold travel necessities and so called ‘spiritual souvenirs’. It had, as far as Godo could remember, no registrar, or indeed much of any organised structure.

Da Chao rose behind it, the faces of the four original masters of power, speed, magic and war carved into it. Master all four branches, and you became a true warrior and could enter the mountain to experience the trial of fire.

Godo left his chocobo at the inn, after booking a room for that night, and then went to the foot of the mountain. A well trodden path led up its steep side, and people had tied prayer paper into the trees either side. Two children fought with sticks, shouting and leaping as they swung at each other. They stopped when they caught sight of Godo and began shouting at him instead. “You facing the trial junrei-sha? Want to buy a good luck charm? Blessed by the Tsar himself?”

“Where did you come by such a charm?” Godo asked, looking ahead towards the steep path.

“The last junrei-sha gave it to us when he came back down the mountain.” One of the children grinned. “Said it had brought him no luck at all.”

“But it’s bound to work for a fine warrior like you!” The other child added hastily.

“I shall pass on your offer, though I thank you for thinking of my luck. Tell me, how many warriors have faced the trial recently?”

One of the children stood on one foot to think. “Two last week.”

“And did either of them pass?”

“Nope!” The child laughed and swung their stick around their head. “They didn’t get anything.”

“I’m going to pass the trial,” the other child said seriously. “As soon as I’m old enough.”

“Nin is a really good fighter!” the first child hopped excitedly from one door to the other. “She’s the best in the village!”

“And how many other junrei-sha have gone up the mountains? To visit or pay homage to the gods?”

“Oh…” the child stopped hopping. “I don’t know. Lots.”

“There’s one woman who’s gone up every day for a week.” The more serious child, Nin, leaned on her stick. “She is really beautiful.”

“And do you two go to visit the gods? It must be easy when they are right on your doorstep.”

The two children side-eyed each other. “Yeah, we go up.”

“Sometimes we climb the statu—” The bouncing child said, before being elbowed heavily in the ribs by Nin.

“Very good,” Godo nodded to each of them, and then began to climb the mountain path. It started as a gradual slope, worn down by many thousands of feet over the centuries, but soon rose sharply into the rocks. Godo climbed until he reached a carved belt buckle. From here the stony warriors were mere details, a giant hand floating above his head, a face that was all distorted perspective disappearing into the mist that clung to the crags. Below him, the grassy plains stretched out, the tiny village that clung to the foot of Da Chao hidden in the mountain’s shadow. In the distance he could see the start of the midland mountains. Derev lay beyond those peaks. His father would have received his message by now, and would spread the warning to all the coastal towns. 

He climbed for the rest of the day, not pausing to eat. The entrance to the warren of caves that held the eternal fire of Itsumade was beyond the carved head of the tallest master warrior. Prayers had been carved into the rocks around the entrance; pleas for health, money, love. Some were worn away by years of rain and wind, but others were clean and sharp, having been carved only in the last weeks.

A recent carving caught his eye, scratched in tiny letters near his elbow. 

Bring us your fire.

Godo raised his fingers to touch the curling words. Rough rock beneath his fingers, the characters chipped precisely. 

He entered the cave slowly. The great caverns were as he remembered them, the vaulted ceilings visible through the dancing curtain of flame, each winding tunnel clearly lit by the unnatural glow of the smokeless flames that burned within each. He took himself down to one knee and bowed his head.

Itsumade, brother of Leviathan. Cast out of the house of Gods by his betrayal of the Wutaian people. The Kisaragi family traced their line back to those warriors of Leviathan who had fought and killed the fire-worshipping warriors of Itsumade. With their God lost, their magic had died; fire refusing to be conjured. Leviathan's warriors had defeated them, taking control of the whole of Wutai and ushering in a thousand years of peace.

Or so the legend went. 

“Do you seek revenge upon us?” Godo asked the flickering fire.

If any answer came from the flames, Godo could not recognise it. But that was to be expected. Itsumade would not speak to a Kisaragi. Godo crossed his legs and sat in front of the silent flames, watching them dance.

Some of the Shinra-made processed materia had made it into the country. Shinra itself refused to sell them anything that fell under what they referred to as ‘military equipment, including but not limited to, firearms, combat drugs, mechs and materia’ but plenty of other traders did. Most was weak compared to the natural materia that grew in such abundance in Wutai, but the bogatyr in particular enjoyed mastering the various basic elemental magics the stones could conjure. But the materia described and demonstrated as fire stayed annoyingly inert, nothing more than a pretty green stone whose energy lay beyond the ken of even the most skilled of samurai or ninja. 

He had successfully completed the trial of fire, of course. Stepping through the curtain of flames took you to the dark caves that Itsumade stalked, his fury all-consuming. Even fallen Gods could not be killed, but they could be fought. Every child who wanted to become a warrior had to fight and defeat the fire dragon. 

I would be resentful too, thought Godo, if I had to spend a thousand years being defeated by teenagers over and over again.

I might whisper into the ears of some of the teenagers that came to fight me. Carefully, subtly.

I might listen to the news they brought. Of trading ships and a thousand years of dominating the sea whilst watching the Eastern civilisations war amongst themselves.

Until I hear of a rising power. A power that unifies the Eastern continent and starts to look across the sea. Of the rising tensions as this foreign power seeks to control and dominate.

Godo lifted his thumb and rubbed the space between his eyebrows. He could feel the world re-arranging itself around him. The Kisaragi had been arrogant. Arrogant enough to believe they had ushered in a thousand years of peace. Arrogant enough to believe that their country was completely united against the outside world. Arrogant enough to believe that they had built the greatest civilisation in the world and that none who had the good fortune to be born Wutaian would… could be anything other than happy. Arrogant enough to believe they could trap an aeons old fallen God in a cave and use him for sparring practice.

From his cave, Itsumade had been able to coordinate an attack on President Shinra’s son. An act of aggression, carefully calculated.

War would be inevitable now. That was the steel blade of truth, unable to be denied.

Not straight away, perhaps, his summoning of Leviathan might give Shinra pause. But it wouldn’t last. The Kisaragi had lived with the threat of Itsumade on their doorstep because, in their arrogance, they had believed themselves invincible. President Shinra, Godo realised, had never made that mistake. He believed in quashing threats. He would not rest until anything that had the power to hurt him was utterly destroyed.

Godo rose carefully to his feet and bowed to the wall of fire. “Thank you for this lesson, Itsumade. You may not have meant to teach, but I have learned today.”

Did the sparks dance a little higher or was it his imagination? Godo shook his head and left the cave. It was a long ride to Derev.

Derev was the greatest city in the world, though only those born and raised in Wutai knew this to be the case. Built into the steep mountain ranges, the multilayered city rose with colourful gaiety, the roofs clad in metallic tiles that caught the sun and glowed with vibrant colours. Streets were cut into the rocks, joined to each other with beautifully carved wooden bridges that flung outstretched fingers across the rocky caverns and fluttered with red and gold ribbons. Whole rooms and buildings had been carved into the sides of the mountains, cool and dark sanctuaries away from the hustle of the streets. Bells rang out on the hour, carefully tuned to separate notes, the total combining into a harmonious jangle. Atop one great peak the palace of the Tsar reached silver spires toward the sky. 

Godo made it home late in the evening, when the sun hung low in the sky and lanterns cast their warm glow in yellow puddles across the smooth wooden walkways. Godo, as a Kisaragi, lived in a fine house near to the palace, the steep garden overgrown with sweet osmanthus that his wife had planted—not flowering yet, but in the summer their orange blossoms would fill the air with a sweet and heady fragrance.

“Kasumi!” Godo shouted as he bounded up the steps and flung open the screen door. “Your warrior has returned!”

“And two weeks after everyone else he set sail with!” Kasumi emerged from the back patio and a teasing smile came to her face as she surveyed Godo. “I was ready to declare myself a widow, I’ll have you know. And you know that means a year of mourning, what an utter bore.”

“So little trust, so little patience,” Godo swept Kasumi into his arms and lifted her off the floor despite her laughing protestations. “But here I am to disappoint your plans.”

Kasumi flung her arms around his neck and kissed him with gusto. Godo kissed her back and carried her with one arm while he used the other to fling open the door to the bedroom. 

Later, they lay lazily amongst the blankets, curled comfortably into each other. Godo buried his face in Kasumi’s hair and breathed in the smell of her. For a moment she lay there and let him relax and then she sat up abruptly, letting the covers fall away from her slim body. 

“Notice anything different?” she asked him, extending her arms above her head.

Godo cast an admiring glance over her. “Only that you grow more beautiful every day.”

She snorted. “Ah, such a charmer, trotting out hackneyed lines and batting his eyelashes like some edgehead transfixed by the moon. No, you idiot.” She dropped her hands to her stomach and her face became more serious. “I’m pregnant.”

Godo blinked and then looked at his wife more closely. Yes, perhaps there was a slight glow to her skin, though otherwise she looked much as she ever had.

“You are?” For a moment he felt only confusion. Then a slow grin spread over his face. “That’s… that’s amazing.”

“Is it?” Kasumi looked down at him, her brows furrowed. “Your father got your message. Every day these past two weeks we have watched our warriors sent away to fortify the coastal towns. All the craftsmen are focused on making weapons and armour, and the elders spend their days searching the caves for materia.”

“It is amazing,” Godo sat up, pulled Kasumi to him and stroked her hair. “Pregnant… by Leviathan. It’s a sign. A sign that we will prevail. The Kisaragi will survive and continue.”

Kasumi sighed. “Babies are not signs, Godo.”

“This one is,” Godo cupped her face and lifted it to meet her eyes. They were large and dark and he gazed into them. “You think I’ll let my child grow up in a world ruled by Shinra? I’ll die first.”

Kasumi’s eyes dropped. “That’s what I’m afraid of.”

“Don’t be afraid, my love, my light, my fierce thunderbird. We have never been stronger. Our warriors are powerful, our magics are strong and Leviathan is with us.” Godo closed his eyes, and for a second he thought he saw Itsumade’s wall of flames, sparks flying and a shiver ran through him. “We will defeat them,” he said, but now an uncertain note had entered his voice. 

Kasumi pushed him away and reached for her robe. She tied it around herself and went to the window that overlooked their garden and the glittering lights of Derev. She rested her hands on her hips, frowning, gazing out at the buildings below. “A thousand years of peace,’ she said, her voice low. “It has a nice ring to it, doesn’t it? I wonder how many years it’s really been.”

Godo rose and went to stand with her, resting his hand on the crook of her back.

Kasumi studied the city below them before looking up at Godo. “We’ve never fought a war. Not us. We live on the tales of our ancestors. And I wonder… I wonder how it will really be.” Kasumi closed her eyes. “We tell stories of glory and victory, but I wonder how we will find glory fighting the Shinra machines.”

“Listen to me Kasumi,” Godo took her arms gently. “You know I went to meet with President Shinra. We sailed right into their latest city, filled with their soldiers… we met with their top people. Chekov and I attacked them and they fled, all of them. They are cowards, and they have nothing that is a match for our Gods. If they attack us we will drive them away. And here in Derev you will be safe. Our child will be safe.”

Kasumi shook her head. “You are such a fool,” but there was a lightness in her voice. “Come now, you jumped on me so fast that you didn’t even get to eat your welcome feast. That I made days ago, I might add. If you get food poisoning don’t come running to me.”

Godo smiled and stepped away. “I’m sure it’s still better than anything the ship’s cook managed. Come, let us feast! And you can tell me all about what you’ve been up to while I’ve been away.”

Terel left on his mission to Wutai in the middle of March. None of the Turks talked to Rufus about it, but that was to be expected. They were, however, happy to help him learn Wutaian. It was a rare day when one or other of them didn’t bring along an out-of-date newspaper, a flyer, or an old book. Rufus found himself fascinated by the language. It was complicated, true, but once you got to grips with the complexity the language blossomed and became beautiful. You could change the whole meaning of something by subtly changing the placement of a single stroke. It was a language built for allegory, for implication, for puns, wordplay, double entendre. 

His father initially approved of this activity, or as he said, “Always good to have a handle on languages! Gives you insight into how the fuckers think.” But as Rufus became more fluent and was still reading the Wutaian books the Turks procured he grew less enthusiastic. “It’s a bunch of pompous poetry, son,” he said on one of the rare evenings he made it home to eat dinner with his son and discovered Rufus immersed in an epic Wutaian poem that depicted the varied adventures of Lord Nikita Kisaragi, who by all accounts had explored half the Planet some five hundred years ago, fighting ghosts and monsters as he went. “It’s got no weight, no value. Read something sensible. Economics, engineering, science. That’s the stuff.” 

By May the Turks were anxious. Veld didn’t show it, of course, and neither did Tseng who seemed to have learned his bosses ability to broadcast quiet confidence at all times. But the other Turks were twitchy and argued more, mostly about small things. Leota was the worst, fidgeting impatiently anytime she had to sit still. When Rufus slipped Terel’s name into a conversation with her, reminiscing about a time the lanky Turk had fallen asleep in the back of his classroom, Leota turned on him with a snarl. “He’s a good Turk! He knew nobody was going to attack you at that damn school, we all know that, the security on it is tighter than at bloody Nibelheim!”

“I didn’t say he wasn’t a good Turk,” Rufus said, unable to stop a sullen note creeping into his voice. 

“No, I know, I just…” Leota closed her eyes, huffed her breath out. “I’m sorry Rufus, I shouldn’t have snapped at you. But he’s out there alone, you know? No back-up, not even a partner.”

In June, they celebrated Rufus’ eighth birthday. Heidegger organised a military parade that filled the streets of Sector Three. His father threw a lavish dinner party at their house, attended by all of Midgar’s most prominent families. The gifts were expensive and exclusive. A specially commissioned sculpture by Rosalind, the current darling of the art scene, an abstract set of entwined circles of gold and mythril. His own box at the Loveless theatre. Custom suits by Milano, all in the jewel-tones beloved of his father. One family gave him a villa in Costa Del Sol, a blatant attempt to curry favour with their tourism business. 

His Aunt Gladys sent him a handmade birthday card with a fifty gil note tucked inside and a note: Buy yourself something nice! 

“Gladys always had a few screws loose,” his father said, noticing the money. “Give it to one of the servants, boy, they’ll be glad enough of it.”

Rufus nodded obediently and tucked the card into his blazer. 

The dinner dragged on for hours, the chef determined to make an impression with each finely constructed course, one for each of the eight years Rufus had been alive. By the time the final course arrived — a scale model of Midgar constructed out of strawberries and chocolate, each guest receiving a carefully sliced cut containing a recognisable landmark; the Loveless theatre, a reactor, a well known plaza — Rufus could feel his smile beginning to slip into exhaustion. All of the other children had disappeared, swept away by nannies and babysitters. Around him, the talk turned to politics and business and Rufus allowed himself to lean back in his chair and let the hum of voices drift into background noise. Until Veld appeared by his right shoulder and spoke quietly, his eyes fixed on some distant point. “Pay attention. Many of these people are observing you. Few will hesitate to exploit anything they see as a weakness.” 

Rufus breathed out slowly through his nose, allowed his frustration to rise and ebb and then sat up straight and turned to listen to the conversation his father was having with Dogus, a businessman who owned a chain of cheap inns and had, Rufus was vaguely aware, invested in Shinra many years ago. “Yes, the SOLDIER program is going from success to success,” his father was saying. “In fact we’re hoping to demonstrate our new prototypes soon, we think people will be impressed.”

“I don’t understand why you’re sinking so much resource into that program,” Dogus said, shaking his head. “Are you hoping to sell the process? What’s the purpose of it?”

“We’re redefining what it means to be human,” his father jabbed the air with his cigar. “It’s not about profit, Dogus, the profit is just the means to an end.”

“If you say so. I can’t say I would want my children to be ‘enhanced’.”

“You only say that because the process is still experimental,” his father leaned back in his chair and puffed thoughtfully on his cigar. “Right now it’s an unknown, and most people fear it. It’s the same as mako reactors… when we first introduced the idea people were afraid. Said there would be consequences. But then we showed how much better things could be with reliable power on tap. The ability to extract and refine mako allowed us to make materia and potions an everyday fact of life instead of a rare commodity reserved for the wealthy or powerful. We made these things accessible, and improved everyone’s quality of life. The SOLDIER program will be the same.”

“But there are consequences to the building of mako reactors, everybody knows that.” Dogus poked a fork at the collapsing chocolate buildings on his plate. “It’s true, I can’t imagine life now without easy access to healing materia—my own daughter would not have survived her chocobo riding accident without it. But we all know the land dies around a reactor. And the high failure rate of the SOLDIER program is an open secret.”

“The consequences are ones we can live with. The weak die, and the strong get stronger. It’s just natural selection, but sped up a little. We already have some people born with a genetic advantage… a little taller, a little stronger, a littler faster. This program just magnifies that. Speeds up the process. Allows us to evolve in leaps and bounds instead of inch by inch.”

“Hmm,” Dogus sounded unconvinced.

“Once people see these new prototypes… they’ll be lining up around the block to get into SOLDIER. You’ll see. Choosing to not be enhanced will be like choosing to live without electricity, without materia, without medicine. Sure, some hippy kooks will resist. But they’ll be the weaker for it.”

“And would you put your son through it?”

His father laughed and turned to look at Rufus. “No. Not yet, anyway. But only because, as I say, it’s experimental. Once it’s commonplace? You don’t stay at the front of the race by slowing down. Isn’t that right, boy?”

Rufus didn’t lose his pleasant smile, even as an image of the zenene’s stomach slit open with a scalpel flashed through his mind. “I hadn’t noticed much running of races in the board room, father, but I’m sure there’s always a first time.”

“Hmph,” his father said and went back to Dogus. “Speaking of races, I hear your new blue chocobo has been setting some records?” 

The conversation drifted through the minutiae of breeding chocobo for racing. Rufus smiled and nodded for another hour, until the last guest had finally departed, laughing gaily as they went. His father glanced over at him and gave a nod. “Happy birthday, son,” he said, and disappeared up the stairs towards his own suite of rooms.

As he undressed for bed, Rufus found the birthday card in his blazer pocket. He pulled the fifty gil note out of it and looked at it. On the front a famous chocobo jockey, on the back the current Mayor of Midgar in profile, looking stern.

There was a kind of kid out there, Rufus thought, who would know exactly what to do with this. Would go and buy a toy or a game, maybe a bag of sweets for good measure. 

Rufus sighed, tucked the money back inside the card and dropped it into a drawer. 

In July, Terel returned. 

Chapter Text

Tseng was at home when the message came. Home was a bedsit on the third story of a redbrick building in Upper 2. It was a neighbourhood that had been solidly middle-class when first constructed, and the area still clung grimly to a veneer of respectability—but the decline was evident in the metal shutters installed on shop windows and the graffiti sprayed on alley walls.

There was an art shop on the ground floor of the building, which stayed afloat by selling bland paintings of landscapes to hotels and small businesses. However, whilst pragmatic about what kept her bills paid, the owner occasionally ran envelope-pushing shows featuring young artists that she had spotted. Tseng did not think of himself as someone who appreciated art, but he had been stopped more than once by a canvas in the front window. A painting of Midgar; white paint layered over white paint, a city bleached of colour and life. A flat portrait of a man, his watercolour body indistinct and bleeding softly into the canvas, clutching a baby made out of brittle yellow lines, fracturing in the man’s hands. A vast canvas filled with abstracted yearning sprays of colour shadowed with black.

The second floor of the building was the office of a security firm that specialised in providing cover for events. They appreciated having a Turk—even a fifteen year old rookie Turk—in the building. It gave them a certain cachet in the security world. In turn, Tseng appreciated that their presence meant the building had reliable 24/7 security without him having to pay an extortionate rate for one of the luxury apartments downtown.

The third floor of the building had originally been one large apartment. But, as demand for upper-plate properties soared, landlords had rushed to profit from the influx. Spacious apartments, built less than a decade ago and intended to house families, were divided, and then divided again. It didn’t matter how small the rooms got, there were tens of thousands of people desperate to gain a foothold on the upper-plate and leave behind the increasingly impoverished towns that had been swallowed up by Midgar’s shadow.

As a result, the room Tseng occupied was barely big enough to turn around in.

The bed that he sat on was narrower than a standard single, and took up most of one wall. On the opposite wall, an arm span away, was a tiny kitchen. It consisted of an electric stovetop with two burners, a cupboard with a peeling veneer, a small fridge, and a sink unit. The front wall had a sash window which overlooked the street. Mounted on the back wall was the electric meter, stamped with the Shinra logo, and a red door that led out to the communal hallway.

Truthfully, Tseng could have afforded somewhere better. If he was extremely honest with himself, he would even admit that he could afford one of the luxury downtown apartments with the 24/7 security and obsequious doormen.

But it was a new experience for Tseng to have money in the bank and he didn’t trust it.

It had been two years since Veld had pulled him out of prison, cutting short the lawyerly argument over whether he should be tried as a child or an adult. Two years since he had accepted Veld’s blunt offer of salvation.

A year since the disastrous mission in Costa del Sol, where, to Veld’s disgust, he had chosen to save a soldier’s life instead of recover company secrets. A year of waiting for Veld to turn around and say you know what Tseng, I was wrong. You’re too soft for this job.

Six months since he had paid off Skathi’s debt. He hadn’t needed to pay it; all records pertaining to his past had been erased when he accepted Veld’s offer. There was nothing to link him back to the money owed. But it would have nagged at him, like a rotten tooth, and so he went to the clinic. 70,000 gil flowed through his hands like water.

He had other reasons for not moving out. It wasn’t like he was home often enough to need somewhere nicer. Being a Turk was not a 9-5 job. He didn’t clock out and come home to sit and watch TV with a beer. He’d never used the shared bathroom facilities at the end of the communal hallway, preferring to shower at the Shinra building. He’d not befriended the other tenants, they kept their heads down when they saw him in the hallway, avoiding eye contact. What did it matter? He had the Turks, and he was happy to let his life be engulfed by them.

Even Turks got the occasional day off though. And this morning Tseng was at home.

He sat cross-legged on the narrow bed and turned a tiny Leviathan figure over between his fingers.

The serpent he held was made of iron, and coated in an enamel that had started to chip away, allowing a spray of rust to crawl up the sinewy coils. It was a poor relation to the gold-and-ruby serpent pin he had found on the Wutaian assassin. That one sat on Veld’s desk, a silent admonishment to the Turks of the threat they had almost failed to stop.

The Leviathan Tseng held was worthless. If they could’ve got anything for it, he or Skathi would’ve sold it long ago. As it was, it held only sentimental value, and that dubious. A link to a faceless and nameless father; a memento with no memories attached. Until recently, it had lived forgotten in a box underneath Tseng’s bed, along with a stuffed chocobo that had lost most of its fuzz, a couple of well-worn adventure novels, and a broken water pistol.

Now though, having seen the God of the Sea in the serpentine flesh, Tseng couldn’t help but take an interest in the tiny devotional object he had inherited. He had dug it out from the box and put it on his window sill. And every now and then, on those odd occasions he ended up at home, he caught himself picking the iron snake up and rolling it between his fingers.

Truthfully, the figurine did not bear much resemblance to the Leviathan that Godo had summoned. The serrated rows of dagger-sharp teeth were conspicuously missing, and so were the baleful yellow eyes, burning with alien rage. Someone had meticulously painted a thousand tiny blue scales onto the enamel, but they lacked the dragonfly-shimmer of the living serpent.

And yet the craftsmen had managed to give the outspread fins the impression of airy translucence despite being made of iron. Tseng held the snake up to the green-tinged light falling through the window and wondered what the figurine had meant to the person who had made it.

Wutai was less mysterious than it had been. The Turks had been busy. They had tracked down migrants across the continent; spoken to restaurant owners, weapon makers, poets and merchants, had raided libraries, and even reached out to Bugenhagen. Anybody with a connection to Wutai, however slim, had found themselves a person of interest.

Detail-by-detail the island nation revealed itself. A recipe for Pisken Balyk handed down from a great-great-grandmother who had supposedly worked in the kitchens of the Tzar himself. A tossed off comment about how steel had replaced the traditional edgehead horn when fashioning a katakama yari style spear. A family photo taken in the mountains, with a blurry but expansive glimpse of a city behind. Fables for children about the giants known as the Vajradhara and their prodigious feats of strength.

Tseng idly threw the iron serpent into the air and caught it.

Getting somebody into Wutai had been a different challenge. But, as Veld had said to them back in March: You really think nobody’s set foot in Wutai? You think it’s that damn easy to control eleven thousand miles of coastline? Sure, it’s a nice fucking story, but we’re Turks. We know better. Go talk to the dope slingers, the traffickers, the arms dealers. I guarantee they’re doing brisk trade.

It hadn’t taken long for Terel to identify La Madrina, an influential Gongagaian businesswoman who ran a wholesale flower business that also happened to be a front for a cocaine operation. She did business across the Western continent and had expanded into Wutai. Just as Veld had said.

Who would have guessed that Wutai had its share of coke-heads and criminals? People were people the planet over, Tseng supposed. Naive to believe that Wutaians were somehow different, somehow better.

Terel’s natural charm and easy-going nature had been honed to a gilded point in a slum cartel prior to his recruitment to the Turks. He had the connections and the experience and it had been plausible enough for him to reach out to La Madrina to offer himself up as a drug mule.

La Madrina had jumped at the chance to recruit what she believed was a disgruntled ex-Turk and put one over Veld. Terel had left in March, his orders simple. Steal the Wutaian magic that allowed them to summon Gods.

Terel had run three deliveries by the books, connecting with La Madrina’s Wutaian buyers, who called themselves the House of Feng, before vanishing into the Wutaian mountains and out of contact. For weeks.

Tseng pushed the thought out of his mind. That was the trouble with downtime, there were always a hundred thoughts waiting in the wings of his mind, ready to leap. Tseng threw the serpent into the air again and caught it. His phone buzzed. Tseng tossed the serpent back onto the window sill and looked down at the message in one movement. The message was from Leota.

Terel’s alive!!! :) :) But La M has him :( She wants to talk to V. V says she can talk to us. Lucky us! Meet you at the helipad. L

Tseng felt a surge of relief. Terel was alive!

That the Turk was with La Madrina though? That did not bode well.

La Madrina was unlikely to be thrilled about Terel’s deception, Tseng thought. And she had a reputation for viciousness that was undoubtedly well-earned.

But then, Tseng reflected, as he shrugged his suit jacket into place, so do we.

It took Tseng and Leota nearly three days to reach La Madrina’s compound. A chopper to Junon, a plane across the sea, and then another plane south to the jungle. They took turns piloting, not stopping at night, both conscious of Terel waiting for them.

“So, here’s the deal with Gongaga,” Leota said, as she sat at the controls. “Officially, Shinra only deals with the Republic. They’re the ones who run Gongaga itself, and we need to play nice.”

“Because of the negotiations to build a reactor there,” Tseng said.

“Yep, it’s taken a fucking year of ‘diplomatic discussions’,” Leota rolled her eyes. “But they reckon the Republic are like, this close to signing.”

“Where does La Madrina come into this?”

“Officially, she’s not recognised. We don’t negotiate with her. Unofficially?” Leota sighed. “She’s one of Shinra’s best customers. Her cartel are the defacto military in Gongaga. She holds a lot of influence with the Republic because they know that, without her, there’s nothing stopping Shinra from just rolling in and taking over the place. She’s smart, she never comes out against us directly, but she loves to make things difficult for us.”

“Why do Shinra sell weapons to her then?” Tseng asked.

“Because of the Titan Alliance,” Leota said. “Terrorists, basically. Kind of a loose group of what remains of the former Gongaga tribes and fiefdoms. Bunch of disgruntled anarchists as far as I can tell. They’re against… well, everything. The Republic, democracy, progress. They’re mad about losing their ‘traditional way of life’. The usual bullshit.” Leota shrugged. “So, again unofficially, La Madrina handles the security in the region which means Shinra don’t have to fight an expensive guerrilla war.”

“Sounds messy,” Tseng said.

“It is messy,” Leota said. “And we need to tread carefully, because everyone is looking for an excuse to get trigger-happy.”

From the air, La Madrina’s compound looked small. Four watchtowers had been built at each corner, looking out at the jungle. Within the borders were neat lines of coca bushes. A patch of cleared jungle had been tarmacked in order to function as a short runway. There were three large wooden barns, two glass greenhouses, a square concrete building with no windows, and a smaller, adobe-brick house that Tseng guessed housed the farm labourers. Some distance away was what looked like an old-fashioned generator, power-lines running to the various buildings.

“Crazy, right? That thing runs on actual coal,” Leota said, seeing what he was looking at.

A square of bare earth separated everything from La Madrina’s mansion; an imposing two story building made of white stone that stood out cleanly against the deep greens and browns around it. There was a B1-A helicopter parked on the roof, marked with the logo of La Madrina’s flower business; five orange petals.

“Nowhere to land but right where she wants you to land,” Leota observed, as they circled the runway.

“We could come in from Gongaga, through the jungle?”

“Spoken like a real city boy. Jungle is a pain in the ass.” Leota gestured out at the miles of lush greenery. “Besides… she’s expecting us.”

“Right.” Tseng let his gaze drift across the compound. He was a long way from Midgar. “What do you think she wants?”

“Don’t know… she doesn’t really need money. Maybe better weaponry?” Leota dipped the plane towards the runway. “I guess we’re about to find out. Stay sharp.”

They left a couple of Slug Rays to guard the plane, and climbed out into the jungle air. Tseng paused as the humid warmth hit him; dense, heavy, oppressive. The air was wet as he breathed it in, and he grimaced despite himself.

A pale, heavyset man dressed in combat fatigues stood at the end of the runway. He had a Shinra type-B assault rifle slung over his shoulders and a scowl on his face.

“Hi,” Leota said.

He looked them over, spat into the dirt, and then indicated for them to follow him.

“Friendly,” Leota muttered under her breath, but she fell into step behind him.

The man led them along a rough track cut through the rows of coca plants towards the main house. As they walked, Tseng saw children moving swiftly amongst the bushes, plucking the leaves and dropping them into sacks. A boy, not quite a teenager, skin tanned from working in the sun, darted them a curious glance from wide brown eyes as they passed.

La Madrina was waiting for them on the porch of the white-stone house. She sat on an ornate white metal chair amongst a riot of colourful jungle flowers and tropical plants.

In front of her was a table with an ashtray, an ornate gold cigar case, and a handgun. Behind her were two hitmen in combat fatigues, each holding a rifle. The porch was framed by elegant white columns that supported a wide balcony above, and three more hitmen stood on the balcony, holding rifles and looking down at the Turks with expressions that ranged from contemptuous to amused.

La Madrina was a short, well-muscled woman with weathered skin and a mass of carefully braided grey hair. She wore a bright yellow top and an orange skirt, a knife sheath hanging casually from a silk belt.

A thick gold choker with three materia slots circled her neck. Two of those slots held green materia, but the centre slot was filled with something new, and Tseng felt a prickle of adrenaline as his eyes fell on a stone the colour of arterial blood, pulsing like a heartbeat.

Leota’s face was fixed in a polite smile, but Tseng didn’t miss the tension in her shoulders as her gaze swept across the unidentifiable red materia.

“And here I thought Veld might deign to come himself,” La Madrina looked the two of them over, lip curling. “Instead of sending his… fledglings.”

“A pleasure to meet you, La Madrina,” Leota’s smile didn’t flicker. “We’re simply here to take Terel off your hands.”

“Hmph.” La Madrina leaned forward. “Your colleague has caused me a lot of trouble as it happens, and I believe I’m owed… let’s say due recompense.”

“If he’s caused you so much trouble, you’ll be glad to get rid of him.” Leota said.

“He killed the son of my only Wutaian buyer.” La Madrina picked up the cigar case, clicked it open and withdrew a thin dark cigar. “That’s an expensive loss.”

“Well, you know what they say.” Leota’s smile didn’t falter. “One door closes, another opens, isn’t that right?”

“Wutai does not have many doors. I do not appreciate Shinra shutting mine. It took many years to cultivate that particular relationship with the House of Feng. Then your Turk comes through, and-” In a single smooth movement La Madrina unsheathed the thin blade at her hip, and sliced through the tip of the cigar. “Gone.”

Silence fell between them, stretched out. Tseng could hear the insects buzzing amongst the plants, feel the sweat trickling down his spine.

There were entirely too many unknowns in this situation. The number of La Madrina’s hitmen inside the house, the condition that Terel was in, what the red materia hanging around La Madrina’s throat might do—and where it had come from, though on that last point Tseng could make an educated guess at least.

“How much?” Leota asked, finally.

“Ha! How much, she asks, as if the loss of such an important business relationship could be measured in gil.” La Madrina sheathed the blade with a flourish. “They say Shinra is building a reactor at Junon.”

Leota narrowed her eyes at the change of subject. “That’s hardly a secret.”

“And that the town grows bigger by the day.” La Madrina pulled a gold lighter from the pocket of her skirt. “Well. Less a town now. You might even call it a city.” She rolled her cigar across the flame, her face settling into a slightly more thoughtful expression. “Rumour has it that the Don is thinking of expanding his operations. Where Shinra’s star goes, so does his… is that not what he thinks?” She paused, held the flame to the end of the cigar. “But he’s not the only one giving favours to Shinra, is he?”

“You call this a favour?” Leota said, too sharply.

“As a matter of fact, I do.” La Madrina took an experimental puff of the cigar. The smell of tobacco mingled with the heavy perfume of the flowers. Behind her, one of the hitmen shifted his weight, drawing attention to the rifle he held.

“I could have left Terel to die.” La Madrina jabbed the cigar at Leota. “Better, I could have returned him to the House of Feng, in the hope that such a gesture of contrition might go some way to repairing the relationship with my former partner. But I didn’t. I called Shinra.” La Madrina leaned forward. “And now, Shinra will make me whole.”

“I want to see Terel,” Leota said. “All we have is your word that he’s okay.”

“How like a Turk to lack trust.” La Madrina waved a hand, and one of the hitmen moved quietly towards the house.

They waited, watching La Madrina smoke her cigar.

And then the hitman reappeared, followed by Terel. Tseng suppressed the shock he felt at the sight of the Turk. Terel’s lankiness had become skeletal, there was a feverish sheen to his skin, his face was whittled down to the bone and twisted with pain. He held one arm awkwardly, the angle of the bone all wrong. Tseng could see what looked like a poorly healed burn running from above his collar bone and down his chest, disappearing beneath a stained green shirt. The smile he gave them was a hollow ghost of the grin Tseng remembered.

“Terel,” Leota said, and the anguish in her voice was clear for all to hear.

“Hey, Leo,” Terel said.

“So,” La Madrina waved her cigar towards Terel. You see that he is, in fact, alive. I am a woman of my word, unlike a Turk. You will return to Veld, and you will let him know that my people will be establishing themselves in Junon over the next few weeks, and that they will expect Shinra’s co-operation as they do so.”

Leota took her eyes away from Terel and back to the woman. “Fine. We’ll take Terel and—”

La Madrina held up her hand. “No. I’ve seen what a Turk’s word is worth.” Her eyes flashed. “Terel remains here. As collateral.”

Leota did not try and hide her fury. “What kind of shitty deal—”

La Madrina nodded to the hitman standing with Terel, who jabbed his rifle into Terel’s injured arm, causing Terel to hiss between gritted teeth.

“The deal is that he stays alive. That’s what on offer. There is no room for negotiation.”

Leota’s jaw worked silently, her eyes scanning the hitmen standing on the porch. “Fine,” she said, finally.

La Madrina brought the cigar to her lips, gave them a sardonic smile. “I’m glad you see the benefits of working with me.” She jerked her hand down, dismissing them. “My men will contact you in Junon.”

“I look forward to it,” Leota said, and then spun on her heel and marched away. Tseng hastened after her.

“Are we really…?” he started, but she frowned at him and he fell silent.

They marched back along the rough-cut track through the bushes, trailed by the hitman who had been their guide on the way down.

The air inside their plane was still cold. The whole conversation had taken less than twenty minutes, Tseng thought, as he pulled the door shut, the hitman standing at a distance, watching them with unfriendly eyes.

“That bitch thinks she can blackmail us?” Leota hissed the second the door closed. “Thinks she can just waltz into Junon and we’ll just lie down and take it?”

“That red materia she had,” Tseng said. “That’s not native to Gongaga, I take it?”

“Highly unlikely,” Leota closed her eyes, heaved out a sigh. “We’ve been to this area enough times that Shinra would’ve heard about it if La Madrina or anybody had some unique materia like that. I mean, she wasn’t exactly hiding it, was she? Odds are Terel took it from the Wutes.”

He killed the son of my only Wutaian buyer.

“Do you think it summons a God?”

Leota rolled one shoulder, a half-shrug. “I’m not a scientist, but Terel’s a good Turk. That’s what he was sent there to get.”

“So Terel took the red materia from the Wutaians and fled, got into trouble and La Madrina picked him up,” Tseng said.

“Stole the materia, and thought she’d use Terel to carry out a little blackmail.” Leota nodded. “Seems about the size of it.”

“What’s the plan?”

Leota drummed her fingers on the dashboard. “Well, I’m not returning to Veld empty-handed, that’s for sure. Hmm.” She narrowed her eyes in thought. “They’ll think that if we do decide to retaliate, that we’ll go to Gongaga and call for reinforcements. But I don’t want to involve the military if I can help it… this is a Turk matter, it needs to stay with us.” Leota looked over at Tseng appraisingly. “I could drop you a few clicks north, and you could run an extraction. Catch her off-guard. Recover the red materia and Terel.”

Tseng felt the familiar surge of excitement and adrenaline. “I can do that.”

“You’ve not spent any time in the jungle, or you wouldn’t be so eager.” Leota slid into the pilot’s seat and began flicking the switches that started the engines, the plane rumbling into life. “Run me through your equipment.”

“Sleep, cure, ice,” Tseng said. “Gun, grenades, knife, ethers.”

“You’ll want a machete. Oh, and take a handful of maiden’s kisses, this area is fucking rife with touch me’s.”

“It’s not the wildlife I’m worried about,” Tseng said.

“Mm, here’s a tip from me, city boy. You should always be worried about the wildlife.” Leota laughed. “But I know what you mean. La Madrina… yeah. Those hitmen we saw, that’s the tip of the iceberg… Keep it fast and quiet. You need to be in and on her before she knows what’s happening.”

“I understand,” Tseng said, drawing a long machete from the crate and strapping it to his back.

Leota hadn’t been kidding about how the difficulty of traversing the jungle. It took Tseng a while to figure out the most efficient way to move through the choking undergrowth, to look through the trees and find the natural breaks in the thick vegetation, and to make use of the game trails that criss-crossed each other and left the way relatively clear.

After a few minutes of swinging the machete he had to stop to remove his suit jacket and tie it around his waist. A few more minutes, and he paused to loosen his tie and roll up his shirt sleeves. After a while, he stopped trying to hack through every curling curtain of vines and instead started to use the machete like a stick to guide things out of the way. Even so, he was soon soaked in sweat and covered in scratches. Did every plant in the jungle have thorns?

Leota also hadn’t been kidding about the touch me’s, and it only took one frustrating encounter before Tseng started giving them a wide berth when he spotted them sat on a log or floating in a swampy puddle.

Night was falling by the time he reached his destination. The edge of La Madrina’s compound was marked by a few feet of cleared jungle—though the greenery was already creeping back in—and then a ragged fence topped with razor wire. Tseng grimaced as he pushed sweaty hair out of his eyes. He was uncomfortably aware of the way his shirt clung to him, and the mud that had tracked its way across his shoes and up his trousers. There wasn’t a lot he could do about it—although…

Holding out one hand, he reached for the ice materia and pulled a sliver of an ice shard into existence in his palm. It glinted there for a minute before starting to melt. He splashed the cold water onto his face, and combed wet fingers back through his hair, trying to restore some semblance of normality, before fixing his tie and jacket.

Feeling slightly less rumpled, he surveyed the compound from the safety of the shadowy tree line. A flood lamp cast an unforgiving light across the bare earth that separated the main house from the rest of the plantation, and beyond that he could see torches bobbing as people patrolled. More flood lights shone from the watchtower, but Tseng guessed they were on the watch for military groups rather than a single intruder.

More of concern were the cameras dotted along the top of the fence. They were compact surveillance cameras, each marked with a tiny red light that showed they were transmitting—probably to a security room inside the compound somewhere. Tseng had done enough stints staring at screens in a windowless room to know that the guards were probably not giving every camera their undivided attention. But movement—movement caught the eye. Any dash to the fence would catch the eye of a guard unless he was extremely lucky.

Tseng considered the camera closest to him. Movement caught the eye, but a camera that malfunctioned… those happened often enough to be annoying, often enough that it wouldn’t excite much attention.

Tseng reached for the ice materia again. Sent a sliver of cold around the body of the camera, careful not to let the screen frost up, keeping the spell tiny and contained, but letting the ice crackle around the metal housing; pushing the temperature down down down… warping and contracting the metal, opening up tiny gaps around the weather proofing. And then letting go and watching the ice melt, imagining the water seeping into the camera.

A few seconds later the red light went out.

Tseng didn’t wait. As soon as the light went out he darted out from the trees, swiftly climbed the fence, tossed his jacket over the razor wire at the top, straddled it, recovered his jacket, and then dropped soundlessly to the soil.

The house itself was lit with strings of tiny lights wound through the plants, casting a diffuse glow across leaves and flowers. A few windows were lit up, casting their own glow across the plants.

A trellis had been erected against the rear of the house, with a climbing plant curling its way halfway up the wall, heavy white blossoms bobbing here and there. Tseng considered it for a moment, before dismissing it as too risky—there was no guarantee it would hold his weight.

There were several unlit windows on the ground floor, but without knowing the layout of the house, there was no point in worrying about which entry was best. Moving swiftly, he headed for the nearest unlit window and gave it a cursory examination before jimmying it open with his knife. He was through the window and had slid it closed long before the patrolling hitmen made it back to the rear of the house.

Moving out of the window’s sight-line, he looked around the room. A study, based on the bookcases filled with a mix of ring-binders and leather bound books. There was a writing desk made out of polished wood in the centre of the room, with a vase of flowers on one side, books and papers scattered across the surface. Habit made Tseng look through them.

A list of flower shops and markets with addresses, phone numbers and short notes about flower preferences. A ledger notebook filled with handwritten columns of numbers. And a book that looked new, the binding freshly cracked, title written in Wutaian. It looked familiar, and Tseng puzzled over it for a moment before it clicked. It was one of the Wutaian books Rufus had taken to reading, he recognised it by the stylised picture on the cover; a man dressed in armour and an ornate robe, clutching a spear and standing in front of a flat representation of a ship with great white sails that stretched beyond the confines of the cover. Tseng traced his finger over the characters that made up the title, sounding it out. The —Seagoing? no—The Voyage of Nikita.

Tseng shook his head, dismissed the odd coincidence, and opened the drawers in the writing desk. The chances La Madrina had left the red materia in a random drawer was pretty slim, but stranger things had happened. Finding the desk full of only the usual clutter of pens, calculators, empty notebooks and paperclips, Tseng headed for the door, pausing to listen before opening it a crack and peering out. The door opened into a wide hallway that led to a foyer. The foyer climbed the full height of the building, and was edged with a curving staircase that led to the upper story. Tseng could see a landing that wrapped around the second floor foyer. It would have a good view of the ground floor below.

One of La Madrina’s hitmen, the pale, heavy-set man that had met them at the plane earlier in the day, stood in the centre of the foyer. His back to Tseng. Beyond him, Tseng could see tall doors that presumably led out onto the porch.

Tseng watched him for a few minutes, but it soon became clear that he wasn’t going to move on. Every now and then he would shift his weight onto one leg and rotate the ankle of the other. Tseng knew that kind of movement—the stretch that someone who was stood for long hours did to relieve the ache in tired legs.

Tseng waited for the man to shift his weight again; stepped through the door and cast sleep in the a fraction of second fit took for the man to recover his balance. The man staggered and then slumped downward, first to his knees and then face-first onto the floor.

Tseng waited just long to make sure nobody was coming, and then sprinted for the stairs. He ran up them noiselessly, knowing it was only a matter of time now before someone discovered the downed guard.

He came out onto the first floor landing, and looked around. To his left an arched double door, centrally located with one door standing slightly ajar. Directly ahead of him a narrow closed door. To his right were two doors, angled into the corners of the house, both shut.

He tried the door closest to him on the right, and it opened into an empty bedroom. He didn’t waste time exploring, but moved on to the second door on that side, one eye on the slightly open doorway facing him across the open foyer. Below him he could see the crumpled figure of the hitman.

The second door was locked, and with a far better mechanism than had been on the window. A room to keep people detained. Tseng drew out his picks and worked at the lock carefully. Listening to the movement of the tumblers, he soon had the door open.

Terel was sat on a bed facing the door. He looked even worse than when he’d been presented to them earlier; his face sallow and sweaty, his body shaking. There were, to Tseng’s surprise, a row of potions lined up on the bedside table, each one stamped with the Shinra logo, along with a vase of flowers that gave off a cloying perfume that couldn’t cover up the smell of sickness and sweat that lingered in the room.

“Tseng,” Terel said. His voice sounded hoarse. “Thank Shiva.”

“What happened to you?” Tseng said.

“She keeps casting bio on me,” Terel said. He closed his eyes briefly as a shudder ran through his body. “Left me these potions so I can dose myself up enough not to die. Don’t know why. Would’ve been easier to just keep me handcuffed.”

“I don’t have any antidotes,” Tseng said, with some frustration. “Can you walk?”

“Yeah.” Terel stood up. “I’m guessing by the lack of general chaos that you didn’t get the summon materia back yet.”

“No”

“Gonna be tricky. She doesn’t take the necklace off. Ever.” Terel grabbed the potions from the nightstand and paused as another shudder ran through him. “I’m so sick of feeling like shit.”

“Does it summon Leviathan?”

“Heh. No. The Kisaragi move in rarified circles. No way I could’ve gotten close to them.” Terel moved, slowly, towards Tseng. His arm was still crooked, Tseng noted. That the potions hadn’t helped—it must have been damaged a while back, and left untreated, the bone would have began to knit back together in the broken position. Too late for curative magic, the arm would need to be re-broken by a doctor before it could heal properly.

“Got a weapon I can borrow?” Terel indicated himself. “Something I can use in my current state, so not that fuck-off machete you’ve got strapped to your back.”

Tseng offered Terel his gun. Terel accepted it.

“Alright. Listen. I’ll secure the chopper on the roof. You go after the materia. Okay?”

Tseng nodded and they ducked back out of the room and into onto the landing. Terel disappeared through the narrow closed door, gun drawn and face tight. Tseng watched him go, then turned his attention to the arched doorway across the foyer.

He moved quietly, shoes making no sound on the tiled floor, knife in hand.

He looked through the gap in the door at a sitting room, furnished with vintage wooden seats upholstered in plush green fabric. Plants were everywhere, growing in ceramic pots small and large. La Madrina sat in one of the chairs, cigar in one hand and phone in the other, speaking fast Gongagaian to someone on the other end, her attention on a nearby plant with bright white flowers. She was still wearing the gold necklace, the materia glinting in soft yellow lamp light.

Tseng placed the palm of his hand on the door and eased it ever-so-gently open enough that he could step through. Practiced, fluid steps took him right up to La Madrina before she realised he was there. Her voice died in her throat as he pressed one hand over her mouth and the cold steel of the knife against her throat. The phone clattered to the floor.

He should slit her throat right then. But he doesn’t.

“Don’t move,” Tseng said. There was a bead of blood welling up where the blade pressed against her skin. “If you make a sound, I will kill you.”

He felt her swallow, her movement transmitted through him, his every nerve ending attuned to the rasp of her breath.

Slowly he removed his hand from her mouth. La Madrina was silent, her breath the only sound she made. Tseng started to work the clasp of the necklace.

“He’s our God,” she said, softly, in Gongagaian. “Stolen from us many years ago. He does not belong to Shinra.”

Tseng did not bother to reply. The necklace uncoiled into his hand, and his fingers closed around it —

— Sickness and terror, the putrid smell of decay overlaid with antiseptic, a rattling cough, bile in his mouth —

— His whole body recoiled.

La Madrina was waiting. One hand came up to seize his right wrist, forcing away the knife at her throat. The other hand to her hip, pulling her knife. She stabbed it backwards, fast as a striking kyuvilduns, aiming just below his groin.

Tseng reacted on pure instinct, twisting away, the blade landing in the flesh of his thigh instead of the femoral artery. He grabbed her arm, the necklace clattering to the floor, stopping her from carving deeper.

They were locked together in a fractional battle. Each struggling to control the other’s knife, each trying not to lose their own knife. Tseng could feel the rigid strain of La Madrina’s arm muscles pressing against his hand as she strove to drag the blade through his thigh. Could feel the sweat running down her fingers into the fabric of his sleeve as she put her full weight into trying to push his knife further from her throat.

She was strong, Tseng realised, but he was stronger. Realisation dawned in her face as he began to push the knife back towards her throat. Helpless horror. The killing unfolded in slow motion. Steel biting into her skin. Blood welling up. Her pupils dilating.

She let go of her knife too late. His knife had cut too deep. Left carotid artery severed.

Blood gushed over his hand. He jerked it away. La Madrina choked, clawed at her neck. A terrible gurgling noise came from her. She sank backwards, going limp against him.

Tseng held her as she bled out, her body jerking spasmodically, before turning heavy and loose. Somewhere outside the room, there was distant shouting.

He sucked in a ragged breath, and slowly lowered her body onto the floor. He turned his attention to the necklace, now sat in a pool of blood that had soaked the carpet. The red materia glittering. He picked it up apprehensively, braced himself against the surge of nausea and disquiet. The necklace in one hand, his knife in the other, he limped to the door of the room.

He paused in the doorway, briefly, to look back at the still body in its bright clothes.

Then he stepped out onto the landing. Down on the ground floor of the foyer a woman in combat fatigues was standing over the sleeping figure of the pale man, shouting into a radio. She looked up at him, her eyes going wide.

“Stop!” she yelled, her rifle swinging towards him. Tseng moved into a jerky run towards the narrow door, his thigh screaming at him. Bullets splintered the bannister, landed in the wall behind him.

He ducked through the door, slammed it shut behind him and ran up a tight stairway.

The door crashed back open just as he reached the top of the stairs, the woman yelling, the sound of heavy footsteps behind her.

Tseng burst out onto the rooftop, saw with relief that the chopper was ready to go, Terel in the cockpit. He dashed towards it, when suddenly—

“Wait!” a child’s voice shouted. And a boy, the tanned boy who had been picking the leaves from the coca bushes, was clambering over the edge of the rooftop.

He climbed the trellis, Tseng thought, as he staggered towards the chopper, the rotors rattling into movement as Terel spotted him.

“Wait! Please!” And the boy was running after him, his face desperate. “Please!”

Tseng slowed, stopped and looked at him—then at the hitmen spilling onto the rooftop. Without thinking, he grabbed the boy with his red-slicked hands, pushed him ahead.

A bullet ripped through his shoulder, and he snarled; whipped around and threw the knife at the closest thug who staggered. The boy clambered into the door of the chopper, Tseng pushed him up.

Terel didn’t spare them a glance, his focus entirely on piloting. On the rooftop, the hitmen started to fire wildly into the air.

The boy scrambled away from the open door. Tseng grabbed the handle, the wind whipping at him, and stared down at La Madrina’s compound as it shrank below them.

“Might want to close the door before you get shot,” Terel shouted above the noise of the helicopter.

Tseng did as he was told, pulling the helicopter door into place with a clang.

Chapter Text

“You’d better take over,” Terel said, as they left the compound behind.

Tseng wiped his hands on his jacket—the suit was already ruined—and limped his way to the front of the chopper. Terel’s jaw was tight and there was a tremor in the hand that held the cyclic stick. Tseng slid into the other seat and took the controls.

“Who’s the kid?” Terel murmured, leaning his head back against the chair and closing his eyes.

Tseng glanced back into the body of the chopper. The boy was clinging to the wall near the door, unkempt black hair hanging loose around his shoulders, a slightly stunned expression on his face. Tseng had left a bloody handprint on his sun-bleached shirt.

“You,” Tseng said. “Bring the first aid kit.”

The boy jumped to attention, scrambling for the plastic green case clipped to the wall. He looked at Terel, fished out a remedy, and brought it to the front, holding the tablet out mutely.

“Thanks.” Terel hooked it out of his hand and swallowed it dry. Tseng saw him tense against what would follow. It didn’t matter. Terel's limbs spasmed and seized, jerking against the harness, and his eyes rolled back so that only the whites showed. The fetid smell of bio filled the air as the poison was expelled from his body, sweat soaking through his clothes, running in rivulets down his face, before the Turk shuddered and passed out, limbs going limp.

The boy made a sound of alarm and backed away.

“Terel?” Tseng leaned over and took Terel’s wrist in one hand. The pulse was there, but thready, fluttering weakly against his fingers.

“He will be fine,” Tseng said, though he was not confident this was true. He had no idea what damage an extended period of poison could do to someone, and remedies didn’t normally knock someone out cold. “What’s your name?”

“They called me Mouse,” the boy said, sneaking a glance at Tseng from the corner of his eye, before digging a potion out of the first aid kit and holding it out.

“I need to take the bullet out of my shoulder first,” Tseng said. “We will take you to Gongaga. Do you have someone we should contact?”

The boy looked back at the floor. “Thank you. No.”

Tseng waited, but Mouse added nothing further to this statement.

“We will ensure you are placed safely with the authorities there,” Tseng said, and then flicked the radio on and tuned it to the correct frequency. “Leota, come in. Leota, come in. Over.”

The radio crackled. “I knew you wouldn’t keep me waiting long! What have you got to report? Over.”

“We have recovered the target, and Terel is… stable. We’re on our way to Gongaga. There is a guest on board. Over.”

“A guest? No, never mind, you can give me the details later. La Madrina’s status? Over.”

“Dead. Over.”

Mouse looked down at the blood on his shirt and then back up at Tseng. A look of wonder appeared in those brown eyes.

“Good. Though it won’t thrill the diplomats, I’m sure,” Leota sounded amused. “Oh well, they had a year to pussy-foot around. See you in Gongaga. Over.”

Wutai prepared for war.

Watch towers sprung up along the coast, raw buildings built in haste from new wood and steel. They were ugly but functional. The bogatyr kept close watch on the skies for approaching aircraft and the ninja practiced throwing spells over longer and longer distances.

Derev had gained a number of new buildings as well. Factories that churned out armour, swords, spears and halberds. What they lacked in craftsmanship they made up for in quantity, and Derev had been able to send out weaponry to all the coastal towns. Godo knew that every man, woman, and child would take up arms in the defence of Wutai, if needed.

Godo drilled his samurai hard, every day. Across the country, every House did the same.

Godo’s father had taken the news of a possible cult of Itsumade worshippers seriously, and was spearheading an operation to try and locate anyone who might admit to knowledge of such a thing—though everyone they had spoken to so far had seemed confused by the very idea. Godo understood their confusion. He struggled to connect some dark conspiracy to the light and pleasant land in which he lived. Sometimes he doubted himself, thought perhaps he had imagined the whole thing, until he closed his eyes and saw the coiled dragon pin President Shinra had thrown down before them at Junon all those weeks ago.

The truth was that, as spring turned to summer, Godo was starting to hope that this war Itsumade had tried to spark would fizzle out before it even began. That Shinra had decided to overlook the summoning of Leviathan for whatever mysterious reasons of their own.

Nonetheless, he continued to carry out drills and training exercises as though an invasion was imminent. And so today he was sparring under the heat of the summer sun when a messenger came running up to him, clutching one of Kasumi’s scrolls, tied with her signature green silk.

He wiped the sweat away, and opened the scroll. Her message was terse. Come home. Something you need to hear.

Godo sheathed his sword, nodded to his samurai, pressed a coin into the hand of the messenger and headed back to his house.

Kasumi had also changed over the past few months. Her stomach swelling, her hair growing thicker. She had, to Godo’s confusion, begun collecting foreign newspapers and magazines. Several months out of date by the time they arrived in Wutai, passed along by fishermen and traders, and always seeming to end up in Kasumi’s hands, where she pored over stories about President Shinra and his antics.

“What are you looking for?” Godo had asked her one evening, as she read and re-read an interview with the President about some medical breakthrough his company had taken credit for.

“Hmm?” She had looked up from the newspaper. “I’m trying to understand him, that’s all.”

“There’s nothing to understand,” Godo had replied. “He’s an empty, vain man.”

“He certainly is vain,” Kasumi had murmured, and turned back to the newspaper.

Inside their reception room he found Kasumi knelt with a strange woman. The woman was in mourning; hair cut close to the scalp, wearing a plain white qipao. When Godo came in she dropped her head, hiding her eyes.

“Thank you for coming, my Lord,” Kasumi smiled at him, but there was a strained look in her face, and one hand rested protectively on her belly. Godo frowned and looked from her to the other woman.

“You remember Lady Feng. She has come a long way to talk to us,” Kasumi shifted her weight and moved her hand onto the other woman’s arm.

“Lady Feng?” Godo inclined his head, hiding his surprise. The last time he had seen Lady Feng had been two years ago. She had been resplendent in a heavily embroidered robe and her hair pinned up with an array of pearls. A far cry from this person knelt before him. “I apologise, I didn’t recognise you.”

Lady Feng hunched her shoulders but did not reply. Godo looked from her to Kasumi. “What’s going on?”

“It’s okay,” Kasumi said to Lady Feng, and then to Godo. “The House of Feng has been… well, they oversee the trade route between the south coast and Gongaga, as you know.”

“Yes, I know. Mostly fish, isn’t it?”

“Fish, rice and steel,” Lady Feng muttered and then made a sound that might have been a laugh, or a death rattle. Godo felt his unease grow.

“It seems that they had been… branching out.” Kasumi said.

“Branching out? How so?”

Kasumi took a deep breath. “They’ve been bringing in drugs. Cocaine, mostly.”

For a moment Godo couldn’t process the words his wife was saying. He looked from her to Lady Feng and back. “What? Drugs?”

“Yes, Lord Kisaragi.” Lady Feng said, her voice quiet. Raspy. “Drugs. And other things.”

Godo struggled for words. “How… how long for?” he asked, finally.

Lady Feng didn’t move. She could have been carved from marble, as she stared at the polished wooden floorboards. “Six years.”

“Six years! How is this possible?”

“I understand your surprise, my lord, but unfortunately this is only the start of Lady Feng’s story,” Kasumi said. “It seems that there were some changes in the people they were working with at Gongaga a few months ago. And Lady Feng’s son was befriended by… a foreigner.”

Lady Feng made a noise that Godo had never heard before, an animal whine. Kasumi stroked her arm as she continued. “Her son apparently felt some connection with this man. Thought he was trustworthy.”

“He was too young to be involved,” Lady Feng whispered.

Kasumi cleared her throat and pushed on. “Apparently, some of the Feng’s ship crew fell sick, and Lady Feng’s son saw it as an opportunity to… invite his friend to visit him.”

“The man was a Shinra thief. He stole Hades.” Lady Feng cut across Kasumi.

Shock rendered Godo speechless. He stared at the woman kneeling in his house in horror.

“Her son was killed during the robbery,” Kasumi said, quietly.

Lady Feng lifted her fist to her mouth, pressed the knuckle against her teeth. Kasumi’s hand rested gently on her shoulder. Godo floundered, the anguish in the room so thick, anyone could drown in it.

“Where is Lord Feng? Why is he not here to tell us this story himself?”

“He went after it,” Kasumi said, her arm still wrapped around Lady Feng. “Lord Feng has left Wutai with the aim to recover Hades.”

“Leaving Wutai is forbidden!” Godo was glad to retreat to anger. “The House of Feng was gifted the God Hades by my ancestor in return for your loyalty! You have betrayed a sacred trust!”

“And I am here to offer penance,” Lady Feng said. She raised her gaze from the floor. Godo met her eyes, flinched back from the rage and grief contained within them. “You will find it useful.”

“Useful? You have allowed one of our Gods to be stolen! And now Lord Feng has gone to… to incite Shinra further!” Godo turned his back on the two women. “I should have you flogged.”

“My son is dead,” Lady Feng’s voice was flat. “What more punishment can you offer?”

“Lady Feng can help us with this coming war. She has ways to acquire weapons. Shinra weapons.” Kasumi said.

“We have weapons,” Godo said. “Weapons made here, by our own craftsmen.”

“It won’t be enough,” Kasumi said. She sounded earnest. Pleading.

Godo took a deep breath and turned back to face them. “Lady Feng, do you worship Itsumade?”

“No, Lord Kisaragi. I am afraid you misunderstand my House. We were never looking backwards.” Lady Feng pushed Kasumi away, and rose to her feet, her chin lifting. “Only inwards.”

“Inwards?”

“I have been a selfish woman, Lord Kisaragi. Selfish and full of pride. And now I have lost everything that mattered.”

Godo looked again at Kasumi, but she avoided meeting his eyes.

“Here.” Lady Feng withdrew a grenade from her qipao and held it out. The Shinra logo was stamped on the side.

Godo didn’t move to take the proffered gift. “Shinra’s weapons have no place in Wutai.”

“My Lord, I think we should take the House of Feng up on their offer,” Kasumi said, quietly.

“Kasumi,” Godo said. “Think about what you are saying!”

“I have thought about it. I have been thinking about it for some time. About what it will actually take, to save Wutai.” Kasumi rose to her feet, took the grenade from Lady Feng and stared down at it. “If we try and meet them in a pitched battle, they will win. We only have so many warriors, and they have an endless array of machines. What do they care, if we take down thousands of their mechanical monsters? It would be a war of attrition, and we would lose.”

Godo stared at his wife.

“But then, I asked myself, how does a thunderbird take down an adamantaimai? By striking fast, and with surgical precision. Shinra have stolen the god Hades from the Feng, but Lady Feng, forgive me, I think your House learned the lessons of your God long ago.”

“Power is not in the elementals,” Lady Feng said. She raised her hand, showing the bracer around her wrist, set with green materia. “Mystify, seal, transform. Turn your enemies strength back on itself.”

“No,” Godo said.

“My Lord, it is the only way—”

“No, Kasumi.” Godo’s fists clenched. “What are we fighting for? If we use Shinra’s mako-powered weapons, we will have already lost.”

Kasumi's lips pressed into a thin line. “My Lord—”

“I said no!” Godo’s voice rose. “And that is an end to it.”

Before either woman could speak again he turned and strode out of the room. Anger burning bright and hot. He stormed out into the garden and found himself staring at the osmanthus Kasumi had planted, growing up one wall, the dark green leaves glossy, the little buds just starting to show.

He ripped the plants out of the ground, roots tearing free of the soil, stems snapping in his hands. Uprooted greenery scattered across the stone path, and he trampled it under his shoes. His fist closed around a spray of buds, crushing them.

Fragrant perfume clung to his fingers, bringing him back to his senses. The ruined plants lay broken all around.

He had expected Shinra to come with mechs and swords, and instead they had slid into Wutai like a snake. No. Like a thunderbird. Fast. Precise.

He stood there for a long moment, regret coiling heavily through him. Kasumi was mistaken about using Shinra weapons, but she had been trying to help. With a sigh, Godo turned back to the house. He would apologise, and they would send someone to bring Lord Feng back. The situation was salvageable.

He reached the door and started to pull it open, only to be stopped by the sound of voices within.

“The arms trafficker we need to contact is currently working out of Junon,” Lady Feng was saying. “I don’t know his name, but we should be able to reach him if we put about that we’re looking for Bomb. He’ll be able to co-ordinate everything. But I have to warn you, he won’t be cheap.”

“The money is not an issue.” Kasumi’s voice. A steel knife to Godo’s gut. “I’ll fund his services personally.”

His father sat in his chair at the head of the long table in the board room, fingers steepled. Heidegger, Scarlet, and Hojo were in their normal positions. Terel was standing at the far end of the table. He looked thinner and paler than Rufus remembered, face sunken in, arm in a splint. Even his hair was different, sparser and more flyaway.

Veld nodded for Rufus to precede him into the board room, and then moved to stand next to Terel, his hand landing briefly on Terel’s shoulder as he passed.

Rufus hastened to take his own chair, feeling the weight of his father’s gaze pass over him.

“Are we still waiting for Reeve?” his father said, impatiently.

“He sent his apologies,” Scarlet responded. “He’s in Junon, there’s been some sort of issue with the construction there.”

“Well, we don’t need him for this. What about Palmer?”

“Oh who knows, probably out to tea.” Scarlet pursed her lips. “However, we still have a majority vote here, if needed.”

“Hmph, fine. Go ahead.” His father nodded to the two Turks.

Terel launched into his report. Rufus wondered if anyone else noticed the smooth eliding of detail as the Turk slid past the missing months, somehow jumping neatly past all of Rufus’ burning speculation about how he had pulled off the feat to instead focus on what he’d brought back.

If the executives had any questions they were apparently forgotten when Terel stepped forward and placed the stolen materia on the table with something akin to flourish, though Rufus thought he caught an odd stutter at the end of the movement.

“Well Terel,” Scarlet purred, leaning forward, her eyes glittering. “This really is quite the trinket, isn’t it?”

Larger than a manufactured materia, the stone pulsed with a barely contained dark energy. It reeked of power and danger, casting an unpleasant hue across the board room that drenched the executives in the colour of blood. The effect it had on the group was undeniable. Even Hojo had lost his customary expression of bored disdain, his mouth instead stretching into an avaricious leer as he contemplated the materia that had been put before them.

Rufus was not immune to the pull of the materia. It gleamed, tantalising, and the urge to reach out and grasp it was almost overwhelming.

“I advise not touching it bare handed,” Veld said. “It has a nasty bite.”

“Don’t tell me how to do my job,” Scarlet snapped, smile vanishing. But she pulled on a protective mechanical glove before reverently picking up the red stone. “President, I assure you my team will not rest until we have extracted every secret this materia holds.”

Rufus thought he saw something flash across Terel’s face, too fast to grasp, before his light smile returned.

Scarlet rolled the materia from side to side in her gloved hand, head tilted, as Terel continued his report. He described soldiers who could throw thundaga spells further, higher and harder than any he’d seen before, and of a spell that the Wutaians called torain, lightning forced screaming into angles and straight lines, stinking of ozone, rigid as steel, a killing trap. He told them, too, of the new watchtowers going up along the coast, built out of steel, standing stark guard over the fluttering wooden villages nestled into bays. Rufus wondered then if the delay had been a mistake, if the materia, whatever its power, was enough to offset the additional defences the Wutaians had built. He pushed the thought away as soon as it came into his head.

Terel had maps to go with the materia; he had drawn contoured mountains with precise lines, settlements marked in black ink, defences in red. Heidegger took them and spread out across the table, his dark eyebrows pulling together as he studied them.

“They’re spread thin. I think a feint. Send in some expendables here,” Heidegger tapped the map, his thick finger landing on a town called Nanhupai, “to draw their troops, then send in an elite team of SOLDIERs over on the opposite coast. We should be able to push through to the capital in, oh, four or five weeks.”

“Forget SOLDIERs, a squadron of LAWs will do the job far more efficiently,” Scarlet turned to the top of the table, where Rufus’ father sat, listening thoughtfully. “My department has been working on a new design for a heli gunner that I think will be particularly effective on mountain terrain.”

“Didn’t you listen to the Turk?” Heidegger interrupted her. “They’ve got advanced lightning magic. We need to occupy the land, manage the Wutes—what we need is boots on the ground.” Heidegger slammed one fist into the palm of his other hand. “We’ll teach the bastards to respect us. Your robots will be fine as back-up, director, but this operation should be led by Public Security.”

“When it comes to military action, steel will beat out anything that bleeds,” Scarlet said coolly. “And the Wutaians don’t need to be ‘managed’, they need to be eradicated.”

“Scarlet,” his father cut in. “We need to keep the public with us. The narrative will be that this is a just war, freeing the oppressed Wutaians from the yoke of a secretive dictatorship and bringing a backwards land the benefits of a modern age. Heidegger is right. Soldiers retain the human element. They can hand out candy to children and what not. It’s more photogenic.”

Veld cleared his throat. “Terel has advised us of the exceptional fighting standards of a highly militarised population and the quantity of natural materia available to them. It is my considered opinion, Directors, that we do not have an ‘elite team’ that can match them.”

“Well, Hojo,” his father nodded to the scientist. “You might as well tell them.”

Hojo grimaced. “Project-S has resulted in a successful specimen—only after correcting for the late Professor Gast’s errors I might note. We have decided that further testing should take place in the field. And utilising the data has allowed us to develop a revised enhancement process for SOLDIER that is ready for mass production. The prototypes we’ve created can be your ‘elite team’.” Hojo’s tongue darted out to wet his lips. “The data we gather from this war will be of great scientific interest.”

Scarlet was undeterred. “As I have argued from the beginning of this project, the scope of SOLDIER has shifted from the application of combat drugs and into the development of full-scale bioweapons. The program should be considered the responsibility of the Advanced Weaponry division moving forward, along with all corresponding budget.”

“Don’t get greedy, Scarlet.” Heidegger laughed, flushed with victory. “President, I am excited to welcome these new SOLDIERs to the fold of Public Security.”

“I’m spinning SOLDIER into its own division,” his father said casually. The effect was as if he had rolled a grenade into the room. Rufus couldn’t help but feel a flash of satisfaction at the look of shock on Heidegger’s face.

“It’s own division? But sir, I have to protest—”

“This decision is not up for discussion.”

Scarlet recovered the quickest. “How very exciting. And just who did you have in mind to run this new department? Because I have several recommendations—”

“Lazard,” his father said.

“Lazard?” Scarlet blinked. “Who is Lazard?”

“Lazard Deusericus?” Veld was staring at his father.

“You know him, Veld?” Scarlet looked at the Turk, then back at his father, and then she looked straight at Rufus, her blue eyes narrowed. “Oh, Deusericus. I see.”

Rufus looked back at her, trying to appear unfazed by her sudden attention, even as alarm bells went off in his head.

“Well, I don’t.” Heidegger growled. “I’ve never even heard of this person.”

“Back to the topic at hand,” his father said impatiently. “We’re in a position of strength. I motion that we go to war.”

“You have my full support,” Scarlet said, her attention flicking away from Rufus. “We’ll crush them like ants!”

“You have my support also,” Heidegger said, still glowering.

“I concur with the motion,” Hojo said. “Scarlet, do bring that materia over to the labs, I think we might be able to collaborate on something interesting.”

“Well then,” his father felt absent-mindedly for the cigar case he kept in the inside pocket of his jacket. “I suppose we’d better get the mayor to make the announcement. I’ll get Harriet to pull together a press conference. Meeting adjourned.”

The executives all rose to their feet. Scarlet was the quickest to exit, leaning in to murmur something to Veld before she stalked out of the room, the red materia clutched in her gloved hand. Heidegger and his father left together, the burr of their voices rising and falling as they marched out of the room, Veld falling into position immediately behind them.

Hojo rose to his feet, glanced disdainfully at Terel and then shuffled out, leaving the Turk and Rufus alone in the board room.

Terel let out a long sigh and his shoulders sagged a little. “Yeesh. I guess that’s that then. Off to war.” He looked at Rufus. “I’ll call someone to take you home. Not sure why they dragged you over here for this to be honest.”

“You can take me home,” Rufus said. “I want to hear the full story. Does the materia you gave us summon Leviathan?”

Terel indicated his splinted arm. “I’m off active duty. Desk work only for the foreseeable. I’ll call Tseng.”

“You didn’t answer my question. And how did you hurt your arm? What happened to you?”

Terel smiled, but it didn’t quite make his eyes. “A dashing tale of epic adventure. But to answer your first question, no, it’s not Leviathan. We’re not sure which God it is. We’re not even sure if the materia is native to Wutai or Gongaga.”

“Gongaga?”

“Well, they claimed an interest. Said that Wutai stole the materia from them in the first place.” Terel gave a one shouldered shrug.

“Hmm. I wonder if it’s Hades.”

Terel looked intrigued. “Why do you wonder that?”

“There’s a story about it. Lord Nikita Kisaragi travelled the world, some hundred or so years ago, and during his voyages he tricked a witch in Gongaga and stole a God, Hades.”

“Huh.” Terel gave Rufus a contemplative look. “I’ve never heard of Hades. The story say anything about what kind of God it is? Fire? Ice?”

“The way they described it was… difficult to understand. I’m not sure that we even have words that directly translate the concepts. But I did gather they considered him powerful.” Rufus shook his head. “The closest I got was transformation. Or judgement. Perhaps,” Rufus sketched the Wutaiain character in the air. “The act of judgement that transforms?”

“Judgement?” Terel’s eyes turned distant. “Maybe…”

“Did you fight a Wutaian for it? Is that how your arm got broken?”

Terel snapped his fingers. “I was going to call Tseng, wasn’t I? Let’s get you home, Rufus, your nanny will be wondering where you are.”

Rufus crossed his arms. “I know you’re giving me the runaround.”

The Turk laughed and drew his phone from his pocket. Rufus watched him idly as he placed the call, his thoughts turning back to everything that had been discussed in the meeting.

“Terel?” Rufus said, after Terel had hung up. “Who is Lazard?”

“No idea.” Terel said. “You’ll have to ask your father about that one.”

Rufus didn’t want to ask his father anything, because asking questions only opened the door for his father to mock him for the many things he didn’t yet know.

But as he thought about it, he realised that there were at least two other people who knew who Lazard was. And whilst he suspected he would have absolutely no chance in extracting any information from Veld, Scarlet was a different matter.

After all, his father had told him to learn about the company. Perhaps it was time to pay a visit to Advanced Weaponry.

Chapter Text

Godo could not remember if he had thrown Kasumi out. Perhaps she had gone of her own accord, chin high as she swept through the ruined garden.

Either way, he had been left alone. Standing in the aftermath of that brutal argument, plunged into sudden quiet, staring at the shattered pieces of a vase on the floor.

Part of him knew he should go straight to the palace. That he should tell his father what he had learned about the Feng. About Kasumi. But what then? There was no ambiguity about the punishment that would befall them.

Another part of him wanted to tear Derev apart, street by street, until he found her. She would admit that she was wrong. That she had been scared, and that fear had made her confused. He would apologise for the plants, would promise to be more patient in the future. Everything would go back to the way it was supposed to be.

In the end, he did neither. Chekov was the only person he said anything to, and that brief. She left.

The days ticked by.

His heart had been ripped out through his chest, leaving him an empty husk.

She sent no messages.

He was the Dragon of Wutai, a prince and a warrior, Lord Godo, the first son of the House of Kisaragi, the bearer of the Great Serpent Leviathan. And each night, when he lay down in his empty bed, he cried like a little boy.

He began to avoid his house. Each day he trained his samurai diligently. Each evening he spent drinking shōchū and playing durak with Chekov. They talked of battle, of magic and of weapons. They discussed the puppet shows that played in the bunraku theatres. And they talked of the Tsar, whose most recent poem, an epic accounting of the Battle of Putuo, was widely considered to be his greatest work yet.

Chekov quietly spread a rumour that Kasumi had returned to her parents house due to difficulties with the pregnancy and a desire to be closer to her mother. In his lighter moments Godo thought perhaps there was a grain of truth in this. Could it not be that the pregnancy had driven her temporarily mad? Perhaps she truly was at her parents house, and after the birth she would return.

In his darker moments he wondered if perhaps she had gone to Junon, and a weapons dealer was making the sale of a lifetime.

One of the local boys brought a newspaper, the Midgar Herald, a week out of date, the headline in huge letters.

WE MARCH TO WAR: PRESIDENT’S MOMENTOUS SPEECH IN FULL

Godo dropped coin into the boy’s hand and threw the newspaper into the chest with the rest of the newspapers Kasumi had collected.

The news of the invasion came almost as a relief. An end to the holding pattern he had found himself in. The information was brought by a bogatyr rather than a messenger. Planes sighted off the Northern coast, near Nanhupai.

His chocobo was waiting for him, in full armour, along with the rest of his samurai. They filled the streets of Derev, the finest warriors in Wutai, armour studded with materia, weapons gleaming in the sunlight. Godo felt his spirit lift as he surveyed them.

Here, at last, was the clear path. Here he could act, exactly as his ancestors had, to protect his country and his people.

He would recall later, how he had looked back and seen Chekov standing in the crowd. Surrounded by cheering women and clerks, he stood slightly apart, his face troubled. Godo lifted his hand in a salute as he mounted his bird. Chekov knitted his brows, but then returned the salute.

He had not known that this was the last time he would see his friend.

He had not known that he would return to a Derev razed. Bridges and gardens ablaze, buildings collapsed, his house gutted and smouldering, the crib in the half-finished nursery burned to ash.

He had not known that the next time he saw Kasumi she would be dressed as an Engetsu and brandishing a new kind of weapon, a synthesis of a Shinra firearm with a naginata, slotted with a mastered fire materia.

Everything he had thought written in stone, eternal, would be washed away in the tidal wave of war.

“Imagine my surprise,” Scarlet said, “when I saw Harriet had changed my schedule for today. Aren’t you supposed to be in school?”

Rufus was standing in Scarlet’s office, Tseng a quiet presence just inside the door. Scarlet herself sat on a red chaise lounge, legs crossed at the knee. There was a clock above her; it’s small white face suspended within a baroque golden framework of flames and phoenix feathers. The time was 6.17pm.

Scarlet’s office was elegantly and exuberantly decorated. Pale yellow wallpaper, overlaid with a darker yellow fleur-de-lis motif. Expensive wooden furniture carved into delicate, curving lines. Her desk was polished to a high sheen and wrapped in golden filigree; the square grey box of the computer out of place against the frippery and frills. There was a set of ornate bookshelves made from white beech, filled with engineering textbooks. To the left side of the office was an angled drafting board, blueprints clipped to it, and a large metal workbench. The workbench was scattered with tiny screwdrivers, a soldering iron, magnifying glass and a mech control unit, interior workings exposed, circuit board held in a clamp.

“Harriet was happy to accommodate my request to learn more about the company,” Rufus said.

Harriet, his father’s PA, had not asked any questions about Rufus’ request. Rather, she had simply rescheduled a number of Scarlet’s appointments with brutal efficiency and then cancelled whatever social engagement Rufus had been supposed to attend that evening.

Tseng had also accepted the change in Rufus’ routine without question. Truthfully, Rufus had expected more pushback, and was a little giddy at the realisation that he could decide to do something different, and everything would seamlessly adjust around him.

Scarlet, however, looked less than impressed at his arrival in her office.

“I’m not sure if you were aware,” Rufus said. “But a few weeks ago my father took me to the laboratories in R&D. He is keen for me to understand the scientific research that Shinra is undertaking. I would surmise that he sees biogenetic engineering as Shinra’s future, and I have to wonder if he views mechanical engineering as Shinra’s past.”

Scarlet’s eyes narrowed.

“However,” Rufus said, “I have been looking at our finances in more detail, and what I have realised is that there are in fact only two divisions in this company that actually turn a profit. One of them is yours. And I felt it would be useful to understand all aspects of the company in full, before drawing any conclusions of my own.”

“How nice of you to take an interest,” Scarlet said, and then looked over at Tseng. “You can wait in the lobby.”

“My orders—”

“Have been superseded. This is the most secure area in the entire building, and I will personally guarantee Rufus’ safety. So get out.”

Tseng’s face was impassive. After a heartbeat he inclined his head, and withdrew on silent feet.

Rufus felt a frisson of excitement as Tseng left. He had not been without a Turk shadowing him since the assassination attempt, and didn’t realise how much he had grown used to the idea that there was always someone watching him.

Scarlet threw one arm out across the top of the seat, drummed her red nails against the fabric. “You do need to get to grips with the company. Particularly the areas that actually make money, instead of squander it recklessly.”

“Perhaps we could start with—”

“You can start in ballistics,” Scarlet cut across him, as she came to her feet in one swift motion. “I assume you’re familiar with the practical application of Bugenhagen’s Theorem and how materia alters the classical mathematical models of projectile motion?”

“I thought Bugenhagen was a planetologist? I’m afraid I haven’t—”

“Oh yes, he went senile and started spouting all kinds of nonsense. But before that he was quite brilliant. Founded the modern scientific understand of materia,” Scarlet said. “However, it isn’t difficult, and they say you’re reasonably intelligent. I’m sure you’ll manage. And besides you won’t need to concern yourself with the details as long as I’m around. What is important for you to understand is that those mathematical models offer us precision. Control. That it’s the materia-based armaments that secure the company’s more… speculative ambitions. Without my division, frankly, you’ll have jack shit. Machines are reliable. Rational. Predictable. Hojo’s creatures are…” Her lip curled. “Emotional.”

She led the way through a series of cavernous workshops. Rufus saw half-constructed mechs, a missile launcher in pieces, someone measuring the teeth on a giant circular saw, and everywhere engineers and scientists rushing about with clipboards and monitoring equipment.

They entered a large space filled with computers. Large screens were mounted on the walls, all of which showed various types of gun barrels. A man in a white coat was hunched over a computer, making adjustments to a 3D model of a slug-ray and frowning at the numbers being output. There were a pile of papers on the desk, with a keycard resting on top of them.

The room had a wide window that overlooked a concrete bunker, the walls marked with soot and, in one area, crumbled away to expose steel beams. A tank auto-canon mounted on a rotating box in one corner shifted in a slow semi-circle, scanning for enemies.

“Schmidt,” Scarlet said. “This is—well, you know who he is. Teach him about what you do. Impress him.”

Schmidt jumped up. “Yes ma’am!”

“If he tells me afterwards that he was bored I will be extremely disappointed.” Scarlet turned to leave.

“Wait,” Rufus said, “Director, I thought—”

“Darling, I have people for this sort of thing.” Scarlet swept out of the room.

Rats, Rufus thought. This had not been the plan. The plan had been to spend time with Scarlet and steer the conversation towards Lazard. Not to talk ballistics with this… technician.

Schmidt was staring at Rufus rather as if he was a tonberry.

“Schmidt, a pleasure to meet you,” Rufus put on the normal smile. “I look forward to learning more about your role.”

“Uh, yes sir.” Schmidt looked around the room in some panic. “Let me think… do you want to try some of the small arms? I can set up the test range.”

Despite himself, Rufus felt a sudden flare of interest.

“Yes, that sounds interesting,” he said.

Thirty minutes later, Schmidt was explaining, with the enthusiasm of a man who had found his true calling in life, the components involved in a firing sequence. And Rufus was blasting mechs with a carbine and a pure unbridled joy that he couldn’t remember ever feeling before in his life.

“They’re working on a way to simulate this in a computer hologram,” Schmidt said, waving to the pile of destroyed machines. “But I don’t think you can ever properly account for all the variables of a physical environment.”

There was also, Rufus thought, something immensely satisfying about the physicality of the whole thing. The weight and recoil, breathing into the shot, the anticipation as he took aim and the elation of hitting the target—bullets tearing through steel plating, shattering metal antenna, cracking lenses, until eventually the machines sparked and pinwheeled into destruction.

He would, he resolved, learn how to shoot properly. The next time he was attacked by assassins he would be ready, able to take one or two out himself. Even his father would be impressed by that.

After he had reduced the last robot to a pile of spare parts, he reluctantly handed the gun back to Schmidt.

“Even things like humidity and altitude can affect a bullet’s trajectory, you know.” Schmidt led the way back to the computer and pulled up the modelling program he had been using. “And of course as soon as you bring materia into play it becomes a whole different ballgame. Let me show you what a difference embedding a fragment of mastered Luck Up materia into the firing mechanism can make…”

Rufus’ gaze fell on the keycard sitting on the desk next to them. Schmidt was a single-minded sort of person, and Rufus doubted he’d even have heard of Lazard, let alone given him any thought. But Schmidt’s job title was Head of Ballistics. He would have high-level access to the employee directory.

“Would it be possible to get a drink?” Rufus interrupted the technician’s spiel.

“A drink?” Schmidt said. “Oh, um, we have… coffee? Or there’s a vending machine.”

“Icicle water is fine,” Rufus said.

Schmidt blinked at him, and then said. “Right, uh, yes of course! Sir! I’ll go and get it.”

As soon as the door swung shut behind Schmidt, Rufus slipped the keycard into his pocket.

The house that Rufus lived in was a four-story mansion in Sector 1, built of pale yellow brick, its facade resplendent with tall and angular bay windows framed with stone columns. The front drive led onto wide residential road that was officially named Alexander Avenue, but was more commonly known as the Golden Row. His neighbours included the wealthiest families of Midgar; the owners of private equity firms, media empires, and real estate companies. Because this was still Midgar, the mansions crowded close to one another, and the Blanchet’s were engaged in an acrimonious legal battle with the De Keyser’s over 20cm of space between their two houses.

Theoretically, his father lived in the house as well, but in practice he spent almost all of his time elsewhere. The last time he’d visited had been in June, for Rufus’ birthday dinner.

Still, the place wasn’t empty. There were the staff: his nanny and the chef lived in the house, and cleaners, tutors, gardeners and similar came and went. There was always a Turk wandering around, and Security Officers patrolling the lobby and surrounding area.

In addition to the staff, Rufus had a tightly managed social calendar. A collaborative effort between his nanny and his father’s PA, the playdate invitations of hopeful petitioners were accepted or rejected according to a complex calculus of status. Invites on his behalf were sent out to the children of Shinra’s key business partners. Thanks to his nanny, he also exchanged visits with Thomas and Dieter semi-regularly, despite their families having little to offer Shinra, and despite the suspicion that hung around Thomas’ mother, who had worked as a consultant to the Cosmo Canyon observatory, and as a result was rumoured to have links to the planetology cult that was taking root in the Western continent.

The house had been furnished and decorated by his mother, and nothing much had changed since she had died. At first, Rufus had been grateful for the familiarity of it all. He would pretend she had just gone away on vacation. That at any moment she would come sweeping back in the front door, her laugh glittering behind her, and everything would go back to how it had been.

But that had been years ago, and he had let go of such childish fantasy. Now the paintings and furniture picked out by his mother bothered him. He felt like he was living in a house frozen in time. A place that had been trapped forever in the moment of the ‘tragic accident’ that had plunged the city into mourning.

The memories of his mother blurred with the paragon the public made of her—young, beautiful, selfless, and glamorous, she had been easy to mythologise. His nanny spoke of her with awe. She had been foundational in the narrative of the Shinra family as benefactors and philanthropists.

But how much of it was a fairy story spun by Shinra’s PR department? The things he remembered were so small. Her laugh. The way her hair smelled. The coarse feel of her lacy skirt when he clutched it in his hand.

Rufus put his hand in his pocket and felt the plastic edges of the keycard. That was the problem. The house kept him caught in the past, but he needed to focus on the future.

It hadn’t been difficult to convince Schmidt to leave with him. After all, it was late, and Rufus had asked several questions with complex answers that Schmidt had enthusiastically elucidated as they walked back through the workshops towards the lobby. They had collected Tseng, and Rufus had introduced them, disarming Schmidt’s stuttering awkwardness and Tseng’s cool detachment by getting them onto the subject of sniper rifles. They had talked shop all the way up to the parking garage, Tseng operating the elevators, and Schmidt remaining blissfully unaware of his missing keycard…

Rufus would have to act tonight. The card would be disabled as soon as Schmidt discovered its absence and reported it. His own computer was monitored. But the one in his father’s study was a different story.

Rufus hurried through supper, cut his nanny short when she tried to launch into an update on her family’s gossip, and disappeared into his room claiming to be tired.

His room was at the back of the house, where he had a view over the long garden. Diamond shaped lawns surrounded with flagstone paths led to a row of linden trees planted to block the view of the mako pipe that ran between them and the house behind.

He went out onto the balcony. His father’s study was kept locked; the old fashioned kind with an access code, but the window was one over and one below, on the second story. Rufus looked at the wall critically. There was an ornamental moulding that ran along the brickwork and would provide some handholds. He was one of the better climbers at school, although the flagstones below would not be as forgiving as the crash mats in the gymnasium. A vision of him losing his grip and smashing into the stones flashed through his mind.

Rufus had always been a worrier, something that had only become worse after his mother’s death, to the frustration of his father. There are two types of men in the world, he would say. Snivelling losers who bleat about all the reasons why they can’t do something. And great leaders who make things happen. If you want to run this company, Rufus, you need to decide what kind of man you’re going to be.

It wouldn’t really matter if he hit the ground. It would hurt, yes, but someone would find him, and potions or materia would quickly reverse any damage. It would be a temporary setback at most.

Before he could change his mind, Rufus clambered over the balcony railing and onto the wall.

They rode hard, chocobo at full stride. As they went, the messenger briefed Godo on the attack.

“A bogatyr raised the alarm when the first planes were sighted, and the defence system worked as planned. The ninja used lightning and trine, and were able to bring down the majority of the first wave of aircraft. The few that made it through the defence dropped warriors with parachutes, but they landed in the marshlands. The bogatyr dealt with those that managed to get out.”

“Losses on our side?”

“Minimal. Five dead, twenty injured, primarily from being too close to aircraft as they crashed.”

The sky was dark ahead of them, as they galloped across the Beitai Bridge, ash twisting in the air. Godo felt his eyes start to water as the chocobo made their way up a mountain and the smoke got worse. Finally they breached the peak, and Godo looked out upon the battlefield.

A smashed plane had torn up part of the beach, and still burned, the air stinking of burning rubber and the acid tang of mako. Godo could see a body caught up in the pilot’s harness, hanging unnaturally still. Another plane had crashed into the sea, only its tail was still visible above the waves, the Shinra logo painted across the metal.

He looked west towards the marshlands. The ooze had already swallowed most of the battle evidence. He could see a lone Shinra warrior struggling in the swamp, the helmet and a desperately grasping hand the only thing remaining above the mud.

Funny how every instinct screamed at him to send help. To save this soldier from a hideous death by drowning.

Instead, Godo turned away from the sight and back to the man beside him.

“My soldiers will relieve the ninja, and take over the task of watching the skies. Ensure your people have a chance to rest and recuperate. This is merely the opening move, we must be ready for the second attack.”

“My lord,” the messenger nodded and raced away on his chocobo. Godo and his samurai headed out along the peaks to take up their positions in the scattering of defence towers—all built to give wide visibility of the sky, sea and beach.

There, on the horizon, a line of dark specks in the sky, rapidly approaching. Sooner than he had expected. More than he had expected.

He and the samurai cast lightning in waves, the sky screaming as it was pulled apart with the crackling blades that tore through the planes. Godo cast until his eyes blurred from exhaustion, until he could barely stand. The sea black. The sky black. Burning wreckage piling up on the beach, some few Shinra making it through and meeting the bogatyr, gun-to-blade.

And then another few. Dying and dying, bodies piling up on the sands.

And then another few. The bogatyr starting to fall back, here and there one falling to bullets, another to grenade.

A plane made it through the barrage of lightning and wheeled across the beach, dropping machines; independent guns attached to whirring helicopter blades that darted out across the sand dunes, firing indiscriminately.

Magic spent, Godo staggered from the tower, calling for the ninja to take up the posts, and ran down the mountain path to the beach, sword in hand. He had trained for this, his men had trained for this. They danced across the sands, all thoughts burned away, only each stab and thrust left, as mechanical as the robots they fought.

He brought his blade up to deflect the bullets from one spinning gun-copter and then brought the blade down and across, sending it spinning and crashing into a sand dune, sparking furiously before exploding. Godo dragged his arm into a defensive posture, his muscles like leaden weights and looked for the next enemy.

There were none.

Three of his samurai lay dead nearby, empty eyes fixed on the ash-clouds above, bodies riddled with bullet holes, the sand beneath them soaking up their blood. The beach was a mess of broken machinery and corpses, the majority crumpled Shinra, hundreds of them, but here and there an armour-clad bogatyr and samurai. Fires burned, the floating sparks blowing towards the mountains.

“My lord!” A samurai staggered towards him. He was bleeding from the shoulder. “My lord we have won!”

Godo stared at him and then back at the beach littered with bodies. Something was moving, one of the dead bogatyr was jerking and groaning.

Not dead!

Godo ran towards the bogatyr. Half his chest had been ripped away, Godo could see the ruins of his ribs standing out from ruptured flesh. The man was going into shock, his lips turning blue, the sweat standing out on his skin.

Godo strained for cure, tried to martial his exhausted mind into connecting with the materia. But it was useless, he was spent and the man was dying before his eyes.

The man was groaning, hitched breaths with broken words inside them. Please, no, mama, hurts, please.

“Can you cast?” Godo turned desperately to the samurai. “Can you heal him?”

He already knew the answer before the samurai said “No, I am sorry my lord, I have no magic left.”

Godo turned away, looked up and down the beach, before his eyes fell on a dead Shinra warrior near him. Refusing to think, he tugged open the small bag belted onto the uniform and pulled out a vial filled with a glowing liquid, the Shinra logo stamped on the outside.

It took an age to tip it into the bogatyr’s mouth, slowly enough so that he didn’t choke or splutter. Rib bones writhed as they knitted back together.

“Find another,” Godo snapped, as the last of the liquid from the vial trickled across the bogatyr’s lips.

“My lord,” the samurai was pale but obeyed, searching the dead Shinra.

It took four of the vials before the bleeding stopped, another two before the wound closed over completely, the skin smooth and unblemished. The bogatyr sat up, grasped Godo’s arm as tears ran down his face.

“You fought well,” Godo said. “We have won a decisive victory today.”

Godo looked down at the little pile of empty potions next to him, the Shinra logo mocking him from where it lay in the bloody sand. Who knew winning felt so much like losing?

But he turned to the samurai and raised his fist in a gesture of triumph.

“A decisive victory,” he repeated. “But now we must prepare for the next battle.”

He saw the samurai’s face drop.

“My lord… they have lost so many. You think there will be more?”

Godo wiped his sword clean, and sheathed it. “Yes. There will be more. We should set traps along the beach. Mine the mountain paths so we can collapse them as needed. And set explosives on the Beitai Bridge, in case they manage to establish a hold here.”

The samurai stood there for a long minute, staring at Godo with realisation and horror slowly dawning on his face.

This is just the beginning.

In the end Godo had to turn away and look back to the sea. The tide was coming in, the waves lapping at the bloodied sand, the broken machines, the fallen soldiers, Shinra and Wutaian alike.

He heard the samurai trudge away to carry out his orders.

Chapter Text

His father’s study was full of shadow, lit only by the dim glow of luminescent diodes on the computer and the intermittent flares of mako from the distant reactor. Rufus climbed through the window and stood for a moment on the plush carpet, letting his eyes adjust to the gloom.

An intimidatingly large oil painting hung on one wall. His father, in a leather wingback chair, face calm and confident as he looked out over the study. One hand rested on a desk, the other held a cigar. On the desk was a sheaf of blueprints, artistically hinting at the shape of a reactor.

Stepping softly, conscious that somewhere beyond the locked door Tseng was roaming the house, Rufus approached the desk. There were photographs in silver frames stood up along the back. Rufus picked one up: it was an old black and white picture of two men, and it took him a moment to realise who they were. His father was much younger, in an open-collared shirt, sporting a broad, unfamiliar, smile. He stood outside some wrought iron gates, his arm slung around the shoulders of Veld.

Veld, with an unlined face and pomaded hair, was recognisable only by the eyes, which stared intently at the camera. It was as if the man could see right through the photograph and into the future, his knowing gaze taking in Rufus, alone in his father’s private study without permission. A prickle of discomfort ran down Rufus’ spine, and he put the photo down. Fishing the keycard out of his pocket, he turned his attention to the computer.

Schmidt’s keycard slid easily through the scanner, and Rufus felt his unease give way to triumph as the computer hummed into life, the screen flashing up with the Shinra logo before landing him on the desktop.

Schmidt was an organised man, his folders and programs neatly labeled. It took Rufus a few seconds to pull up the employee directory and type in Lazard.

The man that appeared on screen looked vaguely familiar, though Rufus couldn’t place him. He supposed he had seen the man at some function or another. It was not impossible.

According to his file, Lazard Deusericus had begun his career as an intern in Urban Development. He had been pivotal in driving forward a dental health program for the benefit of children in the undercity, winning multiple accolades and being recognised with a Heroes of Healthcare award. This had led to him being offered a permanent position in the finance department, where he had gained a level 2 qualification in accounting, and the respect of everyone he worked with. From there, he had transferred into a development program for nurturing up-and-coming leaders. This program had rotated Lazard through multiple departments, until his sudden promotion to Director of SOLDIER; an astonishing advancement which meant he had dethroned Reeve Tuesti as the youngest person ever to be elected to the board.

There was a note with a symbol of a padlock attached to the bottom of the file. Reminder to all Department Heads: you are responsible for preventing gossip and idle rumours from circulating through your teams. —HR

None of this explained the peculiar exchange in the boardroom, or why Lazard, with no military experience, had been handed control of Shinra’s most powerful armed force.

Rufus climbed into his father’s chair. After some thought and clicking around, he was able to open the security feed from the cameras in the Shinra building.

The first thing he saw was the cafeteria, where he had never been. All of the tables were empty, and a cleaner was vacuuming between the tables and chairs. Tabbing to the next camera took him into the industrial sized kitchen behind the cafeteria. A tired looking woman scrubbed at a metal pot in a large sink, and another sprayed down the counters. Rufus watched them, with some curiosity, before tabbing on.

Conference rooms, elevators and offices flickered past, gloomy and quiet. Only security guards and cleaners moving around, except in one office where two half-dressed people were entangled on a desk.

Floor 49 was a mess. Piles of metal sheeting, exposed support beams, under construction signs, yellow tape, and construction bots. The briefing room on floor 50 was a different story. Soldiers were gathered around one edge of a conference table, which was taken up by a large map of Wutai. Based on the maps Terel had hand-drawn, Rufus guessed, squinting at the grainy image.

On the other side of the table was Lazard, his hands moving deliberately as he spoke to the soldiers. And as Rufus watched him, the calm confidence with which he gestured, something icy cold began to collect in Rufus’ stomach.

Even without sound, he knew exactly the tone that Lazard was taking. The conviction and charisma that held every soldier in the room rapt with attention. It was the same conviction with which his father spoke. The same oratory flourishes. The familiarity of Lazard’s face came into sudden, gut-wrenching, focus. Lazard’s face was thinner, he wore his hair longer, but otherwise he looked exactly like the photograph of his father as a young man.

Rufus looked up at the painting on the wall. His father regarded him. Unruffled, that faint smile, for all the world as if he were waiting to see what Rufus would do next.

Rufus wanted to scream. Instead he spread his fingers out and placed both hands flat on the desk, pressing down into the wood. Something unfamiliar was rising up in him. Misery and fury, all mixed up together. This was what betrayal felt like. Scarlet had known. Veld had known. Which meant Terel had known—and had lied to his face. Why did that hurt so much? He couldn’t trust a single one of them. They were all sat around laughing at him, at poor soft unsuspecting little Rufus. Stupid, stupid, he was so stupid.

He already had so little of his father, and he was supposed to share?

On the feed, Lazard waved his hand and gave a silent laugh, the soldiers laughed with him.

Rufus stared at him, his knuckles whitening on the desk.

A creak sounded from outside the study. Rufus jerked back from the computer, head turning towards the door.

Was it his father? Come back to the house? Would he find Rufus here, hyperventilating over the existence of Lazard?

He would die of mortification if his father walked in now.

And yet…

And yet, maybe there was some explanation. Maybe if his father came in now, and said—said—well, there was something he could say, Rufus was sure, that would make sense of this. Rufus didn’t know what it was, but his father would.

Rufus waited a long time. But the noise did not repeat, and his father never came.

“Can you keep an eye on him today? A closer one than normal, I mean. I think he might be coming down with something.”

Julia, Rufus’ nanny, did not often make requests of the Turks. Tseng looked towards the car, where Rufus, in his school uniform, was sliding into the back seat.

“He went to bed early last night, but he still looks so tired. He wouldn’t let me take his temperature,” Julia said. “And he’s been… difficult all morning.”

“I’ll keep an eye on him,” Tseng said.

“They shouldn’t keep making him go to those board meetings and things,” Julia shook her head. “He’s a child! Why does he need to be worried about… whatever they talk about at those things.”

It was the closest she’d ever come to a critical remark about her employers. Tseng filed it away for later, nodded at the security guards, and headed for the car.

Normally, he would have sat in the front, but after Julia’s request he decided to get into the back. Rufus gave him a confused look, that was quickly replaced by irritation.

“I told her I’m fine.”

“I’m glad to hear it,” Tseng said, rapping on the partition between them and the driver. The car slid noiselessly into gear and began moving down the drive.

Rufus regarded him for a moment, and then crossed his arms and turned to frown out of the window.

Now that he was in the back seat, Tseng realised he had no idea what he was supposed to do. Sick, or worried, eight year olds were not something he’d spent a lot of time thinking about. In fact, he had not spent much time thinking about Rufus at all, except for the logistics of getting him from A-to-B in as secure a manner as possible.

While he was still trying to come up with an opening, Rufus suddenly said:

“Tseng, what did your parents think of you becoming a Turk?”

I should’ve got in the front, Tseng thought.

“I’m not sure that’s relevant.”

“Relevant to what? It’s a question. You had parents, I presume… Veld didn’t just conjure you up out of thin air.”

“No.”

“Well then. What did they think of you becoming a Turk? Or don’t they know?”

“They’re dead,” Tseng said. Skathi was dead, so it was close enough to being true.

“Oh. My condolences. Still, what do you think they would have thought?”

“Does it matter?” Tseng glanced over. Rufus was still frowning out the window.

“I suppose it doesn’t. You never wonder?”

Tseng thought about Skathi. If she had known what a Turk was, there was no doubt she would disapprove.

“No,” he said.

“Well, why would you?” Rufus said. “What about siblings?”

“No,” Tseng said, cautiously. “Why do you ask?”

“I’m tired of not knowing anything about the people I spend practically every second of the day with,” Rufus said. “It’s really not very fair.”

“I see.”

“After all, my life is an open book. Everybody knows everything about me. And Turks even more than that.”

“More than everything?”

“Yes. You probably know things I don’t even know myself. Like—oh, I don’t know. What my Aunt Gladys had for breakfast four days ago.”

“I can confidently say we don’t know that.”

“No? You’re slacking.”

“I shall try and do better where your Aunt’s breakfast is concerned,” Tseng said, deadpan, but Rufus didn’t smile.

“You should tell me something about yourself. Something real.”

Tseng surveyed his life. There was not much there that he wanted to share.

“I told you I lived in Sector 2,” he said, and looked over to catch Rufus rolling his eyes.

“Wonderful. I know you so much better now.”

Tseng sighed.

“Since you live such an uneventful life, why don’t we try something else? Tell me something about myself that I don’t know.” Rufus drummed his fingers against the sidewall of the car, gazing out at the avenue they were passing down. They were nearly at the school.

“You like dogs,” Tseng said.

“What?”

“When the troopers have dogs, you always smile at them,” Tseng said.

“I like dogs? That’s what you’ve got?” And then, before Tseng could reply. “Never mind, it was a stupid question.”

He was out of the car the second it came to a stop. Tseng got out more slowly, and watched Rufus head towards a knot of other children standing on the steps of the entrance.

Kasumi Kisaragi had never expected to leave Wutai.

She had especially not expected to leave Wutai on a coal-powered cargo ship that was flying the Gongaga colours. Whilst pregnant.

How was it even possible to be this pregnant? Her back ached, her belly was striped, her legs were a maze of purple veins, and her bladder had shrunk to the size of a grain of rice.

The baby, which had been energetic from the start, had gone into a frenzy the moment she had boarded the ship. Her kicks and punches kept Kasumi awake into the small hours of the night, until she was ready to cry from frustration and exhaustion.

Any tears that did leak out could definitely be blamed on her tiredness. She would not cry for Godo. She would not cry for a man who had spent half of their short marriage at sea, and then had come home and treated her with all the indulgence and casual dismissiveness one had for a pet.

Strange to think that she had been the envy of every unwed woman in Derev. Her life a fairy-tale, marrying the dashing prince of the House of Kisaragi, who would become first servant to the Tsar, and de facto ruler of Wutai.

She wouldn’t cry for him. Even if Chekov’s wife had written to her with the news that Godo had gone north to defend the coast. How could he be so stupid? Didn’t he understand that he was a symbol? Dragon of Wutai! Bearer of Leviathan! Why did he have to be so foolish as to believe his own myth?

Didn’t he understand that, if he died, Wutai’s morale would break?

Sometimes she would close her eyes and see his face. He was a handsome man. Every inch the prince. Strong in the jaw, with a fine long nose and high cheekbones, and those thick eyebrows. Powerful arms. She had marvelled at the way they had felt in her hands, running her fingertips over the muscles, trying to memorise their patterns, the way they moved beneath his skin.

She would remember the way he had looked at her. Like he couldn’t believe his luck. The way his eyes would soften and go dark, a grin breaking out across his face. He would sweep her up in those powerful arms, ignoring her laughing protests. Maybe it wasn’t love, but it was something, wasn’t it?

And then the baby would let loose a flurry of kicks, she would scream into the thin pillow, and get up to go waddling towards the toilet again, attempting to look dignified as she passed the crew.

The crew, like the boat, belonged to Lady Feng.

They had spent a week in the Feng homelands, preparing for the trip. Lady Feng had descended into the crypt below her house and not emerged. For they entombed their dead, in the south, like they did in the foreign lands. It was a custom that Kasumi, who had grown up in Derev, had thought of as strange, a little uncivilised perhaps, but fascinating. That was, until she arrived in the Feng household. Imagining all the mouldering corpses locked away in the darkness, below her, with Lady Feng squatting next to the stone box that held her son’s body, muttering to it and stroking the lid, made her shudder.

Not fascinating. Horrifying.

Now they were at sea, and Lady Feng kept turning herself into a frog.

Kasumi had broached the subject, tactfully, in one of the few times that Lady Feng had been in her normal form, and eating dinner in the Captain’s cabin.

“Why be a frog?” she had asked. “Are you not worried you might be washed overboard?”

“Why be a human?” Lady Feng had replied. “With all the misery that entails? Frogs don’t feel pain you know. Not like we do. Would you like to try it?”

“I had better not,” Kasumi had said. “Who knows what it would do to the baby?”

“Turn it into a tadpole, I expect,” Lady Feng had said. “A little tadpole, free from nightmares.”

“Still, probably best avoided, yes?”

“We won’t turn the Shinra into frogs,” Lady Feng had said thoughtfully, clinking her fork against the plate. “We won’t give them that relief. We’ll make them experts in pain. Pain in every stripe and shade. We’ll have them grovelling in the mud, begging for Hades to take them. But we shall make them suffer through it, every agonising inch, no matter how they beg.”

Lady Feng was not the ally that Kasumi would have chosen, but Lady Feng was the ally she had. The Feng ninja were already looking to Kasumi for guidance, not that surprising given the Lady of their House kept becoming an amphibian and getting underfoot.

It was more than that though. The crew were no fools. If Kasumi could see the way the tides were flowing, so could they.

If Godo could not do what needed to be done, then Kasumi would need to do it for him.

She had a plan.

Well, okay. The start of a plan.

Wutai was an island nation, with a sea god on its side. A nation of mountain and forest, a nation without roads, where spirits still led travellers astray. Shinra might have an army of thousands, and all the monstrous mechanical weapons one twisted company could invent, but they could only bring them, and more importantly their supplies, one boatload at a time.

Kasumi intended to bring the war to them. To take her ninja—or rather the Feng’s ninja—and infiltrate every Shinra city and outpost. To strike fast and hard, like a thunderbird, and then melt away. To destroy or steal everything that Shinra owned that went on, over, or under the sea, and thus sever the supply lines as completely as she could.

It was the best she could do, to give her country a chance. To give Godo a chance.

And she hoped to Leviathan that the man in Junon would sell her the explosives and information she needed to pull it off.

The Bomb.

All her hopes rested on a man she had never met.

Chapter Text

By the time he met Lazard face-to-face, Rufus was ready.

All his hurt locked away. Anger smoothed into something resembling acceptance.

That said—if the opportunity to push Lazard down some stairs came about, Rufus wouldn’t turn away from it.

It was at a press announcement. The Republic of Gongaga had finally agreed to let Shinra build a reactor out in the jungle.

His father stood at the press podium, with Rufus and the Directors—minus Heidegger, who was off in some outpost managing his part of the invasion of Wutai—behind him. Lazard was polished and bland; grey suit, white gloves, ascot tie. He kept his attention on the reporters, smiling for the cameras.

His father gave the speech. A smooth chain of well-oiled phrases. How proud he was to be bringing the benefits of mako to Gongaga. How the Western continent had been the birthplace of the reactor and deserved to reap the benefits. How the government of Gongaga were looking to the future with optimism. What a contrast they were to Wutai, who were capable only of paranoia and aggression.

Afterwards, they held a celebration event in the Skyview atrium. The senior leaders of the company mingling with potential business partners looking to get established in Gongaga, since it was about to be put firmly on the map.

Waiters circulated with trays of canapés and champagne. His father smoked cigars with Dogus and other long-standing partners who stood to further their fortunes alongside Shinra. Scarlet laughed uproariously as she held forth to a group of spell-bound business men. Reeve looked at his champagne with a bemused air as a man in a sports blazer tried to sell him on his steel company. Hojo had already left, after doing a single circuit of the room and glaring at anyone who attempted to talk to him.

Turks in the background, so quiet you might forget they were there, watching everything.

Rufus held his glass of orange juice and made polite, repetitive, conversation with the people that came and went. After a while, Lazard detached himself from the knot of people he was with and made a beeline for him.

“The young Master Shinra,” Lazard said, as he approached. “I don’t believe we’ve been properly introduced.”

“Director,” Rufus said. “Congratulations on your well-deserved promotion.”

Lazard smiled. An easy smile that had been practiced enough to look natural. “Thank you. I can only hope to be worthy of the trust the President has placed in me.”

“Indeed,” Rufus said, but before he could make a polite excuse to move on, he realised Veld was heading towards them. And that Lazard’s smile was faltering, just a little.

“Director,” Veld said. “How are your SOLDIERs faring in Wutai?”

“Extremely well,” Lazard said. “Heidegger’s troops have created an adequate diversion, and my team are proceeding towards the Wutai capital. They are due to arrive in six days as planned.”

“They’re everything that Hojo promised, then?”

“It’s fair to say that Sephiroth is performing at an extraordinarily high level.”

“Ah,” Veld said. “I see. And the rest?”

“It’s early days yet. Everyone needs time to prove themselves.”

“And you’re certain they’ve maintained discretion? The element of surprise is key.”

“I am aware of the strategy. And yes,” Lazard said. “The maps your man shared have been invaluable.”

“Forgive me, Director,” Veld said. “I have concerns about dropping untried men into hostile territory. It’s a lot of pressure to place on people so—inexperienced.”

“I have absolute faith in my people,” Lazard said. There was an edge to his voice. “If you’ll excuse me, I did want to speak with Director Scarlet on a small matter.”

Rufus watched Lazard go, and then looked up at Veld.

“Now, there’s a man out of his depth,” Veld murmured. “Chin up, Rufus.”

And then he was gone, stalking away into the crowd like a shadow.

Rufus stood on the edge of the room for a while longer. After the initial round of polite introductions and enquiries about school, few people remained in conversation with him. He had no fat contracts to offer, no stories about golfing and chocobo breeding to share, and there were no other children around. People were getting louder, the room hotter, and the cigar smoke was creating an ambient fug. It was making his head hurt.

Rufus looked around, then put his empty glass on a table, and headed to the balcony.

The wash of cool air was a relief. Rufus moved toward the edge of the balcony, looked out at the view of the city. Midgar a glorious panorama of scattered city lights and shadowy buildings. The reactor opposite flaring a barium-fire glow into the dark sky. A stolen moment of peace, listening to the distant traffic and the heartbeat thrum of mako.

And then Rufus heard the click of the door behind him. He stifled a sigh. Of course someone had followed him out. A Turk, probably.

Turning, he saw to his surprise that it was Reeve, still holding his glass of champagne.

Rufus knew the Director of Urban Planning had a reputation as an engineering genius. He was one of only a handful of people his father had entrusted with the trade secrets behind the reactor process; this was the main reason he had been in Junon for most of the past month.

And yet he came across as perpetually bewildered. Someone who, despite his exquisitely well-tailored suits, always managed to give the impression that he had accidentally stumbled into the room and was doing his best to catch up with a conversation he only half understood

“Ah Rufus,” Reeve said. “I saw you step out for some fresh air, and I thought I might join you.”

“Director,” Rufus said, politely. “How is the construction work in Junon going?”

“Fine, fine,” Reeve said. “We’ve done several successful test runs, officially we bring the reactor online next week.” He pulled something from his pocket, a little bundle of stiff metal wires. “Of course, building underwater has presented challenges—” He fiddled with the wires, and Rufus realised they were twisted into the shape of a tiny cat.

Fascinated, he stepped forward, and saw the little wire head of the cat lift up and look around.

“—but the team have been brilliant, absolutely brilliant, and we’ve successfully risen to the challenge.” Reeve placed the cat down on a table and stepped back. The cat stretched, then padded to the edge of the table and peered over it.

“Oh,” Rufus said. “It’s so lifelike. How did you do that?”

“A little toy, nothing more,” Reeve said, flapping one hand dismissively.

The cat ran over the edge of the table and clung to the underside, before darting away.

“And, in fact, being forced to develop several new materials that can function underwater has been of surprising value,” Reeve said. “I understand the learnings from this project are of great interest to the aeronautics division.”

The cat reappeared, one wire leg wrapped around a small round piece of metal that looked like a watch battery.

Reeve held out his hand. The cat placed the metal thing into his palm and then flopped onto its back and pawed at the air. Reeve dropped the metal circle into his glass of champagne.

“It follows radio signals,” Reeve said. “Useful for sweeping bugs.”

“That’s… very clever.”

“Unfortunately,” Reeve said. “I’ve learned that some things are a necessity. I wanted to speak to you Rufus, because… well, I understand you visited Weaponry recently. I can understand why. Scarlet holds many cards in this company, but I wouldn’t want you to—” he paused, stared out at the night view of Midgar. “Incredible isn’t it, what your father achieved here? It never fails to amaze me. Anyway, I know the Weapons department is very flashy. Small boys do love guns and robots. I know I certainly did.”

Rufus felt a dozen questions explode inside him, settled for a gesture inviting Reeve to continue.

“We’ve always got to look to the future, don’t we? Certainly your father is. Midgar is… the pinnacle of human achievement. Officially speaking. That’s what they’ve written in the guide book.” Reeve nodded. “But we have to be constantly striving for the next pinnacle. Space, perhaps? Or somewhere else. Nobody makes the history books by maintaining things, do they? A thankless task, maintenance. But it’s important. You need people to do it. You need money to do it.”

“I suppose so,” Rufus said.

“Destroy something or build something,” Reeve said. “Such a strange way we decide our heroes. Or discover something new. Your father managed all three. But I’m rambling, I didn’t come out here to give you my philosophy on fame.”

“Why did you come out here?”

“This new materia they’ve found,” Reeve said, and his voice dropped. “Hades. They say it’s proof that the legends are real. Your father… well. He’s been encouraged. He’s cutting my budget. Even though we just built a reactor under water. Do you have any idea what the annual cost on keeping that running is going to be? Do you know what corrosion is?”

“Legends? What do you mean he’s been encouraged?”

“It doesn’t matter,” Reeve said. “The point is that if you don’t maintain a system, it starts to break down. Look, I’ll come clean. I came out here for a reason.”

“What reason?”

“To find out what you want. So I can give it to you.”

“Why?”

Reeve smiled, it was tinged with sadness. “Perhaps so that in the future you’ll remember I did you a favour.”

Rufus considered that. The things he wanted were either impossible or so nebulous he couldn’t put them into words. He would like Lazard to disappear. He would like to be old enough to take an actual position on the board, instead of having to sit there and listen to everyone else make decisions. He would like his father to say oh, good job, Rufus. He would like his mother to be alive.

None of which Reeve could give him.

“You do this a lot?” Rufus nodded at the glass of champagne. “Secret conversations?”

“I mean, I wouldn’t say a lot. Certainly no more than any other Director. In fact, probably less.” Reeve glanced over his shoulder. “We should be quick, by the way.”

He would owe Reeve an unspecified favour. Rufus knew that was a bad bargain. He also knew that he didn’t have anything else to offer, except a loan against his assumed future power.

“I want—” Rufus tried to come up with the right phrasing. “To understand these tricks. How to hold secret conversations, how to find information that isn’t…” he thought about his father’s computer. “That isn’t public, and how to do it without being made public.”

“Ah,” Reeve said. “I thought you might ask for a toy gizmo. But you’re too smart for that, eh? I’ll see what I can do.”

He looked down at his glass of champagne, made a face, and went to the balcony. Rufus watched him toss the liquid and the bug over the edge, a glittering arc that dissipated into droplets.

“It is an incredible view,” Reeve said. “I never get over it. I’d like it to survive beyond my lifetime, that’s all. Anyway. I’ll be in touch.”

It had taken Kasumi a long time to get the Captain’s day room right.

She had laid out all the things she had brought with her. Some of it hers, most of it taken from the House of Feng.

Scrolls, paintings, sculptures, ceramics. Expensive things. A wooden chest inlaid with ornately carved adamantaimai shell, a jade vase carved into the shape of a leaping fish, a little music box made out of gold and set with rubies.

The result was ostentatious. Garish. If she had ever presented a formal reception room like this in Wutai she would have been thought a fool, with no faith in the ability of each thing to stand alone.

But Kasumi knew that the Bomb wouldn’t know the artists. He wouldn’t understand the meaning encoded into a sculpture or tapestry. She needed him to look at this glittering hoard, this clutter of nonsense, and read a simple message.

Wealth. Power. Influence.

And everything contained within that.

Possibility. Change.

She had gone back-and-forth on what to wear. Her formal robes were hot, and impractical for the ship. Still, fourteen layers of embroidered silk had a weight that went beyond tradition. She wore her best jewellery, trusting that gold and mythril spoke a global language.

Lady Feng was to her right. She was still dressed in white, but he wouldn’t understand the significance of that. Through the porthole, Kasumi could see Junon, cold metal reflected in churning grey water.

The Bomb, when he arrived, was all bright colours. A force of nature condensed into a person. Orange hair like a sunset, vivid blue eyes like the crest of an ocean wave, flashing white grin. A green collared shirt with short sleeves, spiky letters picking out Ferrand’s Pickled Herring emblazoned above the pocket. Tight yellow trousers. Tall enough that he had to duck his head to come through the door into the day room. Where he stopped, eyebrows raised, to look around.

“Okay,” he said. “This is... different.”

“Your presence is welcome,” Kasumi said. The Junonese words slippery and cold in her mouth.

“It’s not every day I get hand-delivered a mysterious invite on a scroll tied with green silk. And look what’s on the other side… two lovely ladies.” His grin was disingenuous. “Feels like I wandered into an old sailors yarn. Hopefully, you aren’t about to put a curse on me.”

“Hopefully, he doesn’t give us cause to curse him,” Lady Feng said, in Wutaian, her irritated words hidden behind a pleasant smile.

“I am Lady Kisaragi, daughter of the House of Nagatsuki, who tend the Autumn Gardens, and wife to Lord Kisaragi, the Dragon of Wutai and bearer of the Great Serpent Leviathan,” Kasumi said. “May I offer you tea?”

“Tea. Sure.” He glanced at the tea set laid out on the table, and then sat—perched, really, too tall for the chair to be comfortable—opposite her.

She poured the tea, and began her proposal. Careful and precise.

Shinra expanding too fast. Spread thin, factories and outposts built with no thought given to defensibility. Countless weak points.

She had 178 ninja. 59 samurai. Through Lady Feng, she had influence in Gongaga. “And, in Gongaga, the Titan Alliance holds onto its grievances like the dirt holds onto bones. We can direct their rage.”

Kasumi’s people would strike wherever they weren’t expected, and then scatter into the shadows. “We bleed them slowly, a thousand cuts. Everything they try and do, we cause them to struggle and founder.”

And they wouldn’t stop, not until Shinra pulled out of Wutai.

He listened to her without comment or interruption, and for that she was grateful.

“I’ll be damned,” he said, after she had finished. And then nothing.

“What is Ferrand?” she asked him, when the silence had become uncomfortable.

He looked down at his shirt, as if he had forgotten what he’d decided to wear.

“Ah—it’s a company. Was. Bust now.”

“Bankrupt,” Lady Feng translated.

“It was important to you?”

“It was a free shirt. Worked for them, on and off, before they went under.” His fingers drummed his knee. “178 ninja,” he said, the word sounding strange in his accent. “59 samurai. And a gaggle of idiots in Gongaga.”

“And you,” Kasumi said. “And your weapons. All your connections and all your knowledge.”

He looked about the room. She saw his gaze catching on the paintings of mountains and rivers. The plates with paintings of fruit trees and houses, Leviathan curled around the edges; a prosaic world encircled by mythic tides. The poems by master calligraphers that spoke of herons and drunks and lost love and forgotten shores and fragile moments and death and the waxing moon.

“I will give you all of it,” she said. “Everything. But, in return, you will make us what we need to be.”

“Well now,” he said, and grinned. “I never did like to disappoint a lady.”

He unfolded out of the chair and thrust his hand towards her, palm flat.

“Take it in yours,” Lady Feng said, in Wutaian. “It means he agrees.”

Kasumi put her palm against his. It was warm and calloused. He closed his fingers around her hand.

“Lady Kisaragi, daughter of the House of Nagatsuki, who tend the Autumn Gardens, and wife to Lord Kisaragi, the Dragon of Wutai and bearer of the Great Serpent Leviathan,” he said. “You can call me Cathal.”

Veld’s office was free of the ostentatious displays the other directors preferred. He kept it clean, organised, and simple. Locked metal filing cabinets against one wall, with an old-fashioned carriage clock perched on top of one of them. Maps of Midgar and the Planet adorned the opposite wall. His desk was uncluttered, empty except for a typewriter, a desk phone, and a coffee cup with the Shinra logo on it.

There were no personal effects. If Tseng hadn’t already known Veld had a wife and a daughter, he would have never guessed from his office.

Terel was already there, blond hair falling into his eyes. Tseng closed the door behind him, and took up position beside him. The sling was gone, but Tseng could see Terel trying to hide the minute tremor in his bony hands.

Veld was behind the desk, back straight, hands clasped in front of him.

“Tseng,” Veld said. “Terel has requested your assistance with an investigation.”

“Yes sir,” Tseng said.

“Terel. Recap the position.”

“Consider the assassins that attacked Rufus,” Terel said, turning towards Tseng. “Familiar enough with Shinra to pose as guards, and gain access to the restricted floors. They were also enhanced.”

“Yes. I remember,” Tseng said.

“Drowning in mako, according to the autopsy report.” Veld said. “Wouldn’t have lasted a month. Crude.”

“We’re working from the assumption that the Wutaians must’ve had a person on the inside,” Terel said. “But because it was a depreciated method of enhancement it is likely someone who didn’t have ongoing access to R&D. Possibly someone linked with Public Security.”

“The investigation has failed to turn up anything useful,” Veld said. “Whoever this traitor is, it was a one-and-done deal and they’ve gone quiet. However, when Terel went to Wutai, he discovered further information.”

Terel gestured toward the red serpent pin on Veld’s desk. “They call it Itsumade, the fire dragon,” he said. “It’s associated with some sort of cult. The Wutaians thought they had been stamped out… until that meeting in Junon. Right after Godo Kisaragi got back to Wutai, they mounted a search for any worshippers of Itsumade.”

“Additionally, there’s nothing to suggest the army in Wutai has mako enhancement technology,” Veld said. “The Wutes are damn good at using materia, no doubt about it. But none of the dead we’ve recovered show signs of enhancement.”

“Putting the pieces together, it seems that it wasn’t Wutai, or at least not the Kisaragi, behind the assassination attempt. It was this other faction.” Terel said.

“Who used Shinra to upset the status quo,” Veld said. “Clever bastards.”

“But it didn’t go as planned,” Terel said. “This Itsumade faction meant that assassination to succeed, and no doubt would have left evidence that it was Wutai. But the mako-enhanced operatives and their fire dragon pin would have been gone.”

“Rufus would have died.” Veld glared at the pin. “And we’d have gone thundering into Wutai like Odin himself to deliver judgement, summon materia be damned.”

“Instead, they ran into you, and the attempt failed.” Terel gave Tseng a quick grin. “But my hunch is that some of this faction are still in Midgar. And this is where I need you.”

“The idea is for you to bait them, Tseng,” Veld said. “You’d be a likely candidate. Wondering about your heritage, which could easily lead to ambivalence about Shinra. Young enough to be potentially malleable. And a Turk. You would be very valuable to them.”

“I don’t wonder about my heritage, sir,” Tseng said, and then thought about the little Leviathan statue on his window sill.

“Sure, but they don’t know that,” Terel said. “So the plan is to—”

“Terel,” Veld said. Terel went silent.

Tseng felt the full weight of Veld’s regard land on him. He twitched, despite himself.

“You’re a Turk, first and foremost,” Veld said. “You wouldn’t be, if I didn’t have absolute confidence in you. But being a Turk doesn’t erase the past, even if we erase the record of it. None of us are blank slates. You know that better than most.”

“Sir.”

“Everything has utility. People’s assumptions, their suspicions. They are a tool that we can use.” When Veld looked at Tseng, it was like he could see all the way to the twisty wordless thoughts in the back of Tseng’s skull. “Is that going to be a problem for you?”

Tseng looked away, wanting to escape the gravity well of Veld’s penetrating stare.

There was only one acceptable answer to his question.

But Tseng did not want his past. Did not want the heritage written indelibly on his face. He wanted to ask Veld; is the only reason you took me in because of how I look? You thought it might be useful one day? But he was afraid of the answer.

But then his gaze fell on Terel’s hands, and he saw the spasm that ran through the muscle, the twitch in his little finger.

“No, sir.”

“Good. Carry on, Terel.”

“Okay,” Terel looked between them, before coming back to Tseng. “We’re going to give you all the scutwork. Monster patrols, low-level informers, dealing with the syndicates. And you’re going to be indiscreet.”

“Indiscreet?”

“Complain. You’re unhappy with your lot. Annoyed you’re still a rookie. Overlooked, under-utilised, given all the shit jobs. Bored, so you take up drinking, gambling, whatever. You’re broadcasting that you’re a weak link. A lost boy looking for a cause. For the right people, you might turn.” Terel nodded. “And we’ll trust that information gets to the right people.”

“These Itsumade sons of bitches have been playing us for fools, Tseng,” Veld said. “But you’re going to get the game back under our control.”

Godo knew war.

He had read all the sagas and poems. All the accounts of the great battles.

And yet, he had not been prepared for the greatest challenge to come, not from Shinra, who attacked in desultory waves, but from the management of his own army.

The river system that supplied water for the town struggled under the strain of the encamped warriors, who had more than tripled the population of the town overnight. Both men and chocobo needed feeding, and the land around the town quickly become a morass of mud. At some point, the town’s drainage pipes overloaded, flooding the fields, and sickness swept through both the town and the army shortly afterwards.

“Nobody ever wrote a poem about the smell,” his second said, gloomily.

“Or the flies,” Godo muttered, swatting one away.

Godo had summoned Leviathan once, to sink battleships that had sat some distance from the coast, and fired long range artillery at them. Otherwise, Shinra seemed happy to make sporadic attempts at taking the beach, usually at night, and always retreated after a few hours.

It was poor strategy on their part, and Godo should have been glad of it, with his men staggering out of formation every few minutes to throw up—and yet he had the terrible sense he was missing something vital.

But there were too many other things to think about, to worry about what game Shinra was playing.

The prisoners, for example.

The first time a Shinra trooper had thrown down their rifle and shouted I surrender! I surrender! he had seen it as a positive development. Shinra’s fighters had no pride, no honour, and this would surely be a decisive factor in Wutai’s victory.

But then the questions came: where to keep them? What to feed them? What to do with them? Everyone knew that foreigners were not allowed into Wutai.

And yet.

Here they were.

“You remember the Saga of Feather Mountain?” his second said. “They put their enemies, living and dead alike, into a dry well.”

Godo knew the story. He had never given great thought to what it meant, to throw people into a well with their dead comrades and let them die slowly.

“We will find another way,” he said.

In the end, they confined the prisoners to what had been the school, and set them to grinding what little rice had been salvaged into flour.

His second disapproved, Godo knew. Resented the food the prisoners ate, the water they drank. Godo found himself missing Chekov keenly, who had a knack for seeing solutions that he could not.

The missing piece, the vital piece, was brought to him in three messages.

The first was a scroll carried by a messenger; it told him that five Shinra soldiers had been sighted on the road into Derev and that the city was mounting a defence. The tone was matter-of-fact. Godo was unconcerned. Five soldiers would be easily dealt with, though it was puzzling how they managed to get so far inland without detection.

The second was a ninja, who had travelled hard and fast, and told him with a shaking voice that it was a difficult fight, and much of Derev had sustained damage, but they had managed to kill one of the soldiers.

“When he died he just… vanished,” the ninja said. “Like a spirit.”

Godo split his force, taking half back towards the capital.

The third message came from the stream of families fleeing north, carrying what little they could grab.

They said:

Demon.

Chapter Text

My dearest Kasumi,

I do not know where to send this letter and I doubt it will ever reach you. I hope you left Derev. I hope you went far away, to somewhere you are safe. I hope you are alive. I have to believe you are alive.

By now, I am sure you have heard that Derev has fallen. What they will tell you, how they will describe it—

Godo looked up from the pen and paper. They were in a hut, some way into the Golden Mountains. It was raining, and he could see the water running down the inside of the wall in one corner, where the roof had warped.

—how they will describe him, I don’t know. I was there, at the end, and I cannot describe him. Only that, to see his sword is to die.

They will tell you the palace fell. It is a testament to the bogatyr that it was three days before the line broke. We arrived too late to help them.

My father is dead. Chekov is dead. So many are dead. Who will remember them?

One of the bogatyr escaped with me. He tells me the Tsar refused to flee. He went down with his sword in hand. Will they write a poem to him? Who will write it?

On the floor of the hut, a handful of men slept, exhausted. Faces blackened with ash and dirt.

We killed three of the five. The bogatyr took down one before arrived, though it cost them dearly.

I summoned Leviathan but—

Godo’s pen crawled to a stop. He stared at the characters he had drawn. The strokes for Leviathan contained the shape for undefeated.

—but the Shinra withstood.

There was a moment, as we fought, that we took shelter in a theatre. There were people already there. A carpenter, and his children, a chinovnik and his wife. They were so frightened, Kasumi.

The chinovnik offered me a Mystify. I took it, and cast Confuse on the Shinra. One of the soldiers ran into a building, cast a great Ice spell on himself, and the roof fell in on him. Another hit himself in the head with his sword, knocking himself out. A bogatyr I thought dead roused himself enough to put a spear through his gut. He stabbed him twelve times before the Shinra died.

I am a coward, Kasumi, and these are the tricks of a coward, but what could I do?

Should I have faced them fairly, and died like everyone else?

What could I do?

They will tell you Derev burned. It is true. It burns still. Our house has gone, the palace gardens, even the fruit trees along Leviathan’s Winding Back. Nobody is certain how the fires started, some say they began in the Senya District due to panic as people tried to flee, others that they were set in the warehouses to prevent the stores falling into enemy hands. Whatever the reason, once started, they got out of control.

Godo pressed the heel of his hand to his head. He saw Itsumade, eyes full of flame.

We abandoned the city.

I am ashamed and I am frightened.

May Leviathan keep you and our child safe.

Godo

Chapter Text

Since he had no family that he could recall, the Turks had sent Mouse to the Boitatá Home for Children.

It was a grand name for a small building. It was built in the traditional Gongaga style, with round walls and a tiled grey roof. There were three bedrooms split between seventeen children, a medium sized kitchen, a playroom that doubled as a classroom, a vegetable garden, and a dilapidated chicken coop. The home was run by a pair of sisters; two brisk women, Amelia and Iris, who appreciated that Mouse spoke little and followed instructions well.

They had told him he could not go down on their register as ‘Mouse’, but he could not remember what he had gone by before. His name was hidden behind a thick pain of glass, smeary and distorted, along with the faces of his parents. So they put him down as ‘Rudyard Boitatá’—Rudyard, because it was the name of the protagonist in the book Amelia was reading, and Boitatá because it was used for all the children who came to the Home without last names.

Mouse hadn’t protested. Nor had he protested when they wrote his date of birth down as the day of his arrival, and, after eyeballing him, decided he was 13 years old. He wasn’t sure if that was right, but he supposed it didn’t matter too much. He was grateful to be away from the casual cruelty of La Madrina’s soldiers, grateful to have escaped the long, gruelling days in the heat, and grateful to have landed somewhere apparently safe. A new name and birthday was a small price to pay.

Some things in his new life were perplexing. He had grown used to spending hours on his own, picking coca leaves, avoiding La Madrina’s men, and not talking to anyone. He had learned early that the pickers that talked back got into trouble. In the dorms he had kept himself to himself. His method for survival had been simple: head down, stay quiet.

But, in the Home, all the children wanted to talk to him. They wanted his opinion on things he knew nothing about. They wanted to play games, but were bad at explaining the rules, so that Mouse would end the game being told ‘you won!’ or ‘you lost!’ with no idea how. Sometimes games morphed in the middle, one minute he would be playing ‘hit the coin’ and the next ‘tag’, without any idea of what triggered the change.

The children were messy and loud. Sometimes they exploded with emotion; wailing in misery, yelling in fury, or rolling around the floor laughing hysterically. The younger they were, the more emotional they were, but the older ones were no less confusing. There was a complex hierarchy of friendship, with constant change, and Mouse could not keep track.

He took refuge in work. As one of the older children, he was expected to help out in the kitchen and in the garden. Amelia oversaw both, and she recognised him as a quick learner. She taught him about all the things they grew—the pungent herbs in unruly borders, the vegetables in neat lines, the fruit trees at the back of the garden. She taught him how to look after the chickens. And she taught him how to scramble eggs, how to make drop bread, how to stretch out the vegetables by turning them into soups and stews, and how to make stock from the scraps. The work was easier and more interesting than picking coca leaves. The callouses on his hands started to heal. He ate better, and began to put on both weight and height.

After a while, Amelia began to trust him with the shopping. She would send him into the centre of town with a carefully counted measure of gil, to buy the things they couldn’t grow; sugar, flour, corn, and bones from the butcher. Many of the shopkeepers threw in extra, usually with a comment about needing to feed a growing lad, and that pleased her.

“It’s because you’re polite,” she told him, as she pulled up weeds from the vegetable beds. “And so they want to help.”

It was on one of these shopping trips that he spotted Leota.

She was walking briskly down one of the main streets. Instead of her suit, she was wearing a loose cream-coloured shirt and dark green trousers, and her hair was cut shorter. But he recognised her by her broken nose, and the way her mouth quirked up at the side, as if she knew a joke that nobody else did.

At the sight of her, his heart started hammering. That night was etched into his memory. The way he had been unable to sleep, and had gone outside his dorm. The sight of the man, Tseng, slipping through the shadows like a ghost. He had stood waiting, wondering what was happening, until the sound of the helicopter rotors from the roof had split the night air like a roaring dragon.

What had galvanised him into climbing up the trellis he couldn’t say. A desperation, long banked, that had flamed into life at the chance of freedom.

And then Tseng; his hands lifting him to safety, the blood on them. She’s dead, he had said, meaning La Madrina.

Iris delivered their school lessons, basic maths, remedial reading, and what she referred to as moral instruction. Theft was immoral, not listening to your elders was immoral, not washing your hands before eating was immoral, and fighting, especially with other children, was immoral. Mouse did not ask about murder.

She told many little stories to illustrate the point. In all of them, characters that were greedy, violent, and spiteful were punished, whilst the characters that were brave, peaceful, and kind were invariably rewarded with riches and love. In Iris’s world, justice was foreordained, inevitable as the sunrise.

Mouse did not counter her tales, but he knew she was wrong. Even in his short life he had learned that justice was meted out unfairly, if at all.

He did not ask Iris the questions that came into his head. What about if you attack someone to stop them attacking you? What about to stop someone hurting someone else? If you know someone is going to do something really bad and you hurt them before they do, isn’t that okay?

He didn’t ask, because Mouse already knew the truth. Tseng had killed La Madrina and had saved him. It was not justice but, as far as Mouse was concerned, Tseng was a hero.

Now, standing on the corner of the street and watching Leota move purposefully along it, he found himself wondering what she was doing here, back in Gongaga. Was Tseng here too? He hadn’t said thank you. He had been too stunned, too swept up into the unknown.

He followed her.

Leota was heading towards the south side of the town, where Shinra had started to set up an encampment. They were planning to build a transport road out into the jungle, Mouse had heard, that led to the site they had chosen for their reactor.

However, a few minutes after he started trailing her, she suddenly changed direction and disappeared behind a house.

Mouse cautiously edged around the curved wall of the house after her. There was nothing behind the house except a couple of deck chairs set facing the jungle. Leota had vanished. Mouse stood there for a moment, feeling stupid, and then turned around to leave.

“So,” Leota said, from where she had been standing behind him. “Who asked you to follow me?”

Mouse jerked with surprise. He had not heard her come up on him at all.

When he didn't reply, Leota frowned. “I’ve seen you somewhere before.”

“Is Tseng here?” Mouse asked.

“Tseng?” Her brow cleared. “Ah, now I remember. You’ve grown. Remind me what your name is, kid?”

“Rud—Mouse,” Mouse said.

“Feel like I would’ve remembered that. Tell me Rudmouse, what were you doing following me?”

“Looking for Tseng.”

“Why were you looking for Tseng?”

“…” Mouse felt embarrassed. “I wanted to say thank you.”

“I see,” Leota said, and the quirk at the side of her mouth tightened, almost into a grimace. “Well, he’s not here.”

“Okay,” Mouse said. “Sorry to bother you.”

“No bother. And nobody asked you to follow me?”

Mouse shook his head.

“Hmm.”

“I should go,” Mouse said.

“Wait a moment.” Leota still had that grimace on her face. “You want to give me a hand with something?”

Mouse thought about it.

“It would be a real help,” Leota said. “And Tseng would be happy to know you did me a solid.”

“What do you need help with?” Mouse asked.

“Nothing bad,” Leota said, although the possibility of it being something bad had not crossed Mouse’s mind. “I need to keep an eye on someone, that’s all.”

A different child might have asked why, but Mouse did not. Instead, he asked, “Who?”

Sloppiness did not come naturally to Tseng.

He was standing at the bar of a grubby, neon-lit pub in Under-2, dressed in an outfit that might pass for undercover if you didn’t look too hard. Brand name dark jeans, and a leather coat. Casual, but too expensive for the low level manager he was pretending to be. He had the tiny statue of Leviathan in his pocket, ready to use as a prop, if needed. He had dropped his wallet on the bar as he paid for the drink, letting it land in such a way that it fell open to show his ID card.

Some people called Under-2 the poor-man’s Wall Market. It was situated on the opposite side of the city to the Don’s empire, far enough away that getting to the entertainment district was time consuming and difficult. And so Under-2 was able to support a small selection of brothels, gambling parlours, and night-clubs. It lacked the polish and glitz of Wall, but some people said that made it more authentic. It had a reputation for being the place to find underground musicians before they made it.

Tseng was trying his best, whilst also taking into consideration Terels’ advice to not look like you’re trying. For the last two weeks he had been coming down to drink, complain in an uncircumspect way, and occasionally try his hand at blackjack or craps.

He looked around himself with some gloom. There were chipped gilt frames holding pictures of Icicle Inn on the wall. The drinkers could admire snow fields, moogles, and people standing with snowboards and skis at the top of slopes while they knocked back their beers.

There were few other people in the bar. A group of men in dirty overalls gathered around one table, laughing loudly, two women sat together near the window, heads close together. A pool table in one corner, with several teenagers milling around and hitting at the balls haphazardly.

None of them looked like they were about to attempt to recruit him into a Wutaian cult. Or anti-Wutaian cult.

He had spent some time wondering what kind of person they might send. A girl, probably, Terel had said. After all, seduction was a time-honoured technique and more than one Turk had been compromised by a pretty face.

Tseng wasn’t sure how he felt about that idea. Partly excited, partly afraid. He had spent a few nights trying to imagine what she might look like. In truth, he had no idea what he was hoping for.

“Now there’s a long face.” A woman sat down on the barstool next to him.

She was middle-aged, with a soft chin. Her brown hair was pulled up into a messy bun on the top of her head, and she wore jeans and a faded sweater. She looked like the kind of woman who helped out at the community centre in her spare time. Her eyes were friendly and her smile good-natured.

“It’s been a long day,” Tseng said. Complaining did not come naturally to him either, but he had a job to do.

“In that case,” she said, easily. “Let me buy you a drink.”

The bartender poured them both a beer, the foam slopping over the edges of the glass as he slammed them down in front of them.

“We don’t get a lot of people from topside around here,” she said. “You work at Shinra?”

“Yes,” Tseng said. “Admin. And… other things.” He did his best to invest other things with a level of dark intrigue.

“How exciting,” she said. “I’m Aria.”

“Tseng,” he said.

The conversation started light, with Aria regaling him with anecdotes about the people of Under-2. She was a good storyteller, making the slums sound like a sitcom, full of zany characters doing funny things.

But the beer kept coming, and Tseng found himself drawn out with questions; if he hadn’t been watching for it, he might not have noticed, for Aria made it feel as natural as breathing.

Had he always lived above plate? Yes, Tseng answered, honestly, though it had felt precarious at times. Oh yes, Aria said, and launched into a story about a friend of hers who had once lived above plate, but had injured her back, lost her job, and was now back down here.

What did he think of Shinra? I’m very lucky to work there. Wasn’t he just, she’d give her right arm to get a job with them. Well, there was always enlisting, of course, but she’d never pass the fitness check, and anyway, what with recent events, it didn’t seem the safest option.

Speaking of, what about this war? What do you make of it?

Well… Tseng gave a noncommittal hum. He had his opinions, of course, but better not go there…

When yet another beer landed in front of him, Tseng felt a flicker of concern. At the rate they were going he wouldn’t have to pretend to be drunk.

Be indiscreet, he thought, and tried to focus on the conversation. He laughed too loudly at Aria’s next joke, and was glad when she and the bartender started talking about chocobo racing.

He took a drink, and stared at the picture opposite him. The moogle grinned back at him.

And then Aria turned back to him. “I gotta say, this pub isn’t what I would call a proper night out. Not for a topsider. But I know a nice place, bit of a hidden gem. You want to check it out?”

“Sure,” he said.

She took him to another pub. This one was bigger, with colourful paper streamers hanging from the steel beams in the ceiling, and a live band playing something fast and loud from Costa Del Sol. People were dancing, enthusiastically, in a space in front of the stage.

“They’re famous for their cocktails,” Aria shouted at him. “I’ll get you one!”

It tasted of sugar and fruit juice, and went down too quickly.

Everything began to blur together.

He found himself dancing, Aria laughing as she showed him the steps, and him unable to stop himself from smiling at her surprise at the speed at which he picked them up.

“I admit it, you’re a pretty good dancer,” she said, raising a glass to him. “Get a bit older, honey, and you’re going to be fighting the girls off with sticks.”

Aria knew everybody by name: the singer of the band, the person behind the bar, the people drinking, even the kids running about grabbing dirty glasses.

At some point, he lost his hair-tie.

Outside the pub, with a group of women smoking, passing a lighter back and forth.

“You hear Didi’s gone?” one of them said to Aria. “Stabbed! Right in broad daylight!”

“Didier was a fence,” Aria said to Tseng. “Pretty good guy to know, kept his hands clean, you know, no violence.”

“Not like this new guy. What’s his name, Aria?”

“Sal,” Aria said.

“A psycho,” said one of the other women. “Dead in the eyes. Treats those kids he’s got thievin’ for him like shit.”

“He won’t last,” Aria said. “These jumped up thugs always think murder is the way to get ahead, and then wonder why nobody wants to do business with them.”

“I’m definitely not dealin’ with him,” the other woman said. “Don’t care how good his shit is. He can go whistle. Can’t abide someone who knocks a kid about.”

“Me either,” Tseng said, and then wondered why he’d said it.

When they moved on, he almost left his jacket behind, but the woman who had been smoking with them ran up the street with it and handed it to him.

“Stick with Aria,” she said. “She’ll make sure you get on the right train. And watch for pickpockets!”

They stopped at a tiny diner, nothing more than a metal beam laid across crates underneath a plastic awning, and bought fries in gravy.

“Must be hard for you,” Aria said. “Without anywhere to really call home.”

Midgar is home, would have been his normal response. But that wasn’t why he was here.

Instead, he told her about the paintings in the art shop. He told her how Midgar contained pieces of everywhere else, everywhere on the planet, except Wutai. He told her about Skathi, how she had been an ordinary person, who had taken in an orphan for no reason except the goodness of her heart. He told her how she’d died, meaninglessly and messily, and how he hadn’t been able to save her. I would’ve done anything, he told her.

He pulled out the tiny statue of Leviathan and showed it to her. He talked more than he meant to and forgot his own point.

“Are you even old enough to drink topside?” she asked him, scrunching up the paper cone the fries had come in. “I swear Shinra recruits get younger every year.”

He pushed his hair back and tried to read her face. She looked like a nice lady. He looked like a drunk teenage Wutaian Turk. Lies were easier when they came wrapped in the truth. He didn’t have to pretend to be anything he wasn’t and neither did she.

“You’ve just got time to make the last train,” she said. “Come on.”

They made it to the station with two minutes to spare. To his surprise, she gave him a hug. “Nice to meet you Tseng. I’m sure we’ll cross paths again, but in the meantime, look after yourself.”

He had to stop halfway between the station and his apartment to throw up into a litter bin.

When he got home he used the communal bathroom for the first time. He dragged off his jacket and a bit of paper unfolded itself and fell to the floor. He picked it up, with some difficulty.

You seem like you could use a friend. Call on me the next time you’re in Under-2. Aria.

The undercity did not have addresses, but she had drawn a small map and an arrow that pointed to where he supposed she lived.

He folded the paper back up and tucked it in the jacket, and then found himself looking at his reflection in the mirror. It had doubled up, so that there were two Tseng’s staring back at him, wavering in and out of focus.

They sent a mother, he thought. Damn them.

He stayed in the shower until the hot water ran out.