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Chapter Text

Shinra Electric Power Company

From: Lazard Deusericus

To: Kunsel Özdemir

Re: SEPC/S2000/9.7.83/NR/3U - CONFIDENTIAL

Date: December 5 ν-εγλ 00,  10.03 am

Ordinarily I would deliver a briefing as sensitive as this in person, but I am off-site and time is of the essence. 

Your latest report on Neil Roche’s morale, together with Asker’s performance appraisals, have given me cause for concern. Were NR an ordinary recruit, I would not hesitate to decommission him; however, given his unique circumstances and our current rather precarious situation, you will understand that that is out of the question. Our only option is to raise his morale and make him fit for service. 

Asker will continue to oversee NR’s training regimen. I want you to take responsibility for boosting NR’s self-esteem. He must be allowed to taste success, however low-level that success may initially be. We need him to want to remain in SOLDIER.  

To this end, I have arranged for him to be assigned a series of missions, and I want you to offer to accompany him. You must ensure the offer appears spontaneous. I need hardly add that we are relying on your utmost discretion. If NR suspects we have assigned him a minder, that can only have a deleterious effect on his morale.

Before you raise the objection that field operations are outside your contractual obligations, let me be clear: this is not a request. It’s an order. We have considered all aspects of this problem carefully, and we agree you are the best man for the job. NR needs a friend. The missions I have selected for NR are, for obvious reasons, rated ultra-low-risk and should be well within his capabilities. I foresee no need for active engagement on your part. Keep an eye on him and keep him alive. 

Please report to the quartermaster’s office asap. They will issue you with the requisite materia and equipment. NR himself will be able to provide you with further details regarding the first mission: destination, objectives, etc… A helicopter has been ordered for you, departing 1400 hours.

Delete after reading. 

Kunsel was still mentally processing the full significance of this directive when his PHS beeped to let him know he had received an SMS from Cissnei of the Turks. He immediately clicked away from his email to open her message, which said:

CodeNameShuriken: still on 4 2nite?

A stranger walking past Kunsel at this exact moment would have seen nothing out of the ordinary:  merely a young man dressed in a purple Second Class SOLDIER uniform, tall and broad-shouldered and narrow-waisted as all SOLDIERs were, with a tanned face, curly brown hair and blue eyes, whose appeal lay more in the lively good humour of his expression than in the handsomeness of his features. They would have observed this outwardly average young man gazing at his PHS with an air of pensive abstraction, a slight frown creasing his forehead, and they might have concluded, ah, that one looks like he forgot to call his mother - Or, if they knew him personally, heh, guess Kunsel lost big on the chocobos again , which would also have been wrong, but more true to his character. Kunsel never missed his weekly phone call to his Ma. 

Thus to all outward appearances calm and composed, Kunsel’s inner state was one of agitated despair. With a silent wail his heart fell to its knees and raised its fists to curse the indifference heavens. Why, why did this have to happen to him today? Why couldn’t fate have stayed its cruel hand by a mere twenty-four hours? For the last twelve months he’d been waging a meticulously-planned campaign in pursuit of the Turk they called the most beautiful woman in Shinra, well aware she was completely out of his league and for that very reason all the more determined to bag her. And now, now, just when she’d finally agreed to let him take her out to dinner and victory was within his grasp, Lazard with his impeccable timing had stepped in to ruin everything.

Kunsel knew he had to play it cool. Cool was the rule. He didn’t want her to think he was weak.

HelmetHead:  sorry, ncd. Was jst about to txt you. Got a mission, cnt get out of it

CodeNameShuriken:  wtf? mission? YOU???

HelmetHead:  what? 

CodeNameShuriken: 😂 u dont do missions

HelmetHead:   i sometimes do missions

CodeNameShuriken: dont lie. Ive seen ur file. r u standing me up?

His heart beat a little faster. She’d actually gone to the trouble of accessing his file and reading up on him? That was a good sign, wasn’t it? It had to mean she was at least a little bit interested. 

Meanwhile, his thumbs were busy typing:

HelmetHead: technically not a stand up if i apologise beforehand

CodeNameShuriken:   better apologise quick then. guys don’t stand me up and live.

He wondered if she meant that. Quite possibly she did. Fuck, she was so hot.

HelmetHead: u think i want to be out in the buttend of nowhere babysitting baby Heidegger when i could be drinking champagne with you at Whiteleys?

CodeNameShuriken: OMG

HelmetHead: w?

CodeNameShuriken: that was supposed to be Zack’s mission

HelmetHead: Zack’s in banora with tseng

CodeNameShuriken: 🤣🤣🤣 sucker 

He didn’t stop to think. His thumbs flew over the keys. 

HelmetHead: L said im the best man for the job

CodeNameShuriken: cuz ur the only 2nd left in the bldng

That wasn’t true. Was it? No, he’d definitely seen Asker around earlier.

CodeNameShuriken:  ⚰️⚰️⚰️

HelmetHead: 😇

CodeNameShuriken: try not 2 die 

HelmetHead: for you, babe, anything

As a riposte, it left something to be desired, but it was all he could come up with on the spur of the moment. She’d assume he was using babe ironically, because who actually would only try not to die for someone else’s sake and not for their own sake? They’d have to be crazy to do that. At least, he hoped she’d assume he was using it ironically. Though the more he thought about it, the less obvious it seemed. 

CodeNameShuriken: gotta go. c u when u get back

She disconnected before his flying fingers could finish typing is that a promise ? Just as well, probably. 

***

He found his nemesis (the hapless raw recruit, the floundering cockblock, the useless lump of nepotistic ineptitude foisted upon them by a blustering bearded braggart) standing alone in the briefing room, looking lost. 

“Hi, dude! It’s Roche, isn’t it? One of the new intake, right? Hey - why the long face, buddy?”

“I’m a pathetic failure,” the youth replied in sepulchral tones. “A loser. An also-ran.”

“Hey, come on now. Your race has barely got started.”

Roche’s sloping shoulders slumped even further. “Some things simply aren’t meant to be.”

“What’s the problem?” asked Kunsel, though he knew. As a matter of fact, on paper Roche wasn’t the worst recruit he’d ever seen. Asker’s reports rated him competent across the board in swordsmanship, materia wielding, endurance running, gymnastics… all the basic skills the job required. He could be better than he is, Asker had noted, if he wanted to be.

“My supervisor despises me,” said Roche with weary resignation, as if there was nothing he could do to fix that.

“I’m sure that’s not true. I know Asker. He’s not a despising-people kind of guy.”

“He said I don’t understand the most important thing about being in SOLDIER.”

“Oh yeah? What’s that?”

“I have to embrace my dreams.”

Well what a coincidence, thought Kunsel sourly. If it weren’t for you, pal, I’d be embracing my own dreams tonight. Now some other lucky schmuck would be taking her out in his stead, wining and dining and wooing and, if the stars aligned, canoodling with the woman of his dreams. He was pretty sure he wasn’t the only guy she was seeing. 

“How can I embrace my dreams,” cried Roche, “When I don’t have any?”

“Everybody’s got dreams, man.”

“Not if they’ve never been allowed to dream for themselves.”

Kunsel hesitated. Loath though he was to admit it, the kid had a point. Who in their right mind would choose to be Director Heidegger’s nephew? Strictly speaking, they weren’t blood-relations; Roche was the son of the late sister of Director Heidegger’s late wife. He was seventeen years old, of average height and slim build, his blond hair shaved in a military buzz cut, his naturally blue eyes just beginning to glimmer around the irises with the mako light that would intensify as he progressed through the treatment stages. No one would guess from looking at him that he and the giant hairy gasbag were connected in any way. But he was all the family Heidegger had, and for some reason his uncle seemed to care about him.

Okay, maybe ‘care’ was too strong a word. It might be truer to say that Heidegger was sick and tired of being embarrassed by his dead wife’s nephew’s cock-ups. Roche had been asked to leave the posh academic school where Rufus Shinra had excelled as head boy; he’d failed to show up for the entrance exam to study military engineering at Junon Polytechnic, and had only just scraped through basic training at the academy because the teachers were too scared to flunk him. He’d briefly gone on to officer school, but the head of the school, a close personal friend of Heidegger’s, had begged the Director to take his nephew away, ‘before something happens that we’ll all regret.’ 

SOLDIER was the last resort. “Make something of him!” Heidegger had roared, giving Kunsel the unfortunate mental image of a lop-sided ashtray he’d once lovingly crafted for his mother way back in kindergarten. This memory was swiftly replaced by an even-more-unfortunate mental image of Roche’s charred remains fitting neatly into said ashtray after a tragic encounter with a Hedgehog Pie.

“Maybe I should quit,” said Roche lugubriously.

“Aw, come on man, don’t write yourself off without giving it your best shot first. Didn’t you just get an assignment?”

“Oh - that. Yes.”

“Dude, the Director wouldn’t give you a mission if he didn’t think you could handle it. What’s your destination?”

“Some… island? Off Mideel? Kav - Krave - I can’t pronounce it.”

“Kavaratti?” said Kunsel in disbelief.

He’d assumed they would be going somewhere within easy reach, a civilised place with low-level enemies - somewhere like Kalm or Healen. But no. No such luck. Lazard was sending them to a foetid tropical hell hole two day’s journey from Midgar: they’d have to fly to Junon, change choppers, fly to Mideel Town, take a jeep to the coast, hire a boat, and sail over the horizon until they reached that hot, steaming, bug-infested island on the very fringe of the known world. 

“Asker told me one of the company ships foundered on rocks near this island,” said Roche. “My orders are to salvage the cargo. But I don’t know. I feel in my bones that failure is inevitable for me. My destiny is ruled by a dark star. It might be better for everyone if I hand in my resignation right now and let someone else take this mission, someone who stands a chance of doing it right.”

A terrible thought crossed Kunsel’s mind. Truly, an unthinkable thought. He felt ashamed of himself. And anyway, this kid was Heidegger’s nephew, protected by the genji armour of nepotism. Shoving the thought aside, he said, “You’re never going to get anywhere if you keep running yourself down. You need to buck your ideas up. Channel the power of positive thinking. Manifest, right? I’m Kunsel, by the way.”

“I know who you are. Everybody knows you.”

Kunsel couldn't help feeling flattered. He might not be the Shinra posterboy like Sephiroth or a human powerhouse like Zack, and he'd probably never have his own fan club, but he was nevertheless a vital cog in the machine that was SOLDIER. Remove him, and everybody would feel the difference. “Well, my friend, if you know who I am then you know I know what I’m talking about. So listen, how about I tag along on this mission with you, show you the ropes, teach you some SOLDIER tricks?”

Roche blinked. “Are you serious?”

“I wouldn’t make the offer if I weren’t.”

“It’s just… Everyone says you don’t do missions.”

Fucking hell , thought Kunsel. To Roche he said, “I do missions. They’re usually very top secret missions, so not a lot of people know about them. But it just so happens I’ve got nothing on for the next few days, and I’m making this offer to help you out because your story has moved me. I remember how it feels to be the new guy. Sometimes all we need is somebody reaching out to lend a hand.”

“You’d really do that? You’d come with me?”

“Oh, sure,” Kunsel grinned. “For a price.”

***

Dateline: Tuesday 8th December, ν-εγλ 00

Location: 10.5651° N, 72.6417° E

“I didn’t… think…SOLDIERs….were allowed…to use guns,” Roche gasped from where he’d fallen in the blood-stained sand. 

“Yeah, see, that is mostly true, but -”  Kunsel waved the muzzle of his standard-issue Shinra Quicksilver MKIV semi-automatic pistol at the dissolving corpse of the garuda sprawled on a boulder a few metres away - “A gunslinger in the party sometimes comes in handy.”

“Oh, god…” Roche’s face contorted in pain. “My arm - “

“It’s okay.” Kunsel knelt beside him. The heal materia in his wrist-bracer was already glowing green; Roche’s pain-filled eyes reflected its soothing light. “I got you, buddy.“

The mission docket had warned them to expect feral guard hounds and malfunctioning mecha. The quartermaster had duly issued them with bolt materia, plus curaga, esuna, barrier, drain - everything a SOLDIER needed to keep himself alive in the field. And right up until approximately three minutes ago, the mission had proceeded without a hitch. Roche’s fighting style had come as a bit of a surprise, it was true;  Kunsel had expected the kid to be hesitant, timid even, but he couldn’t have been more wrong. The moment Roche clapped eyes on their first enemy he blew all Kunsel’s preconceptions to smithereens and went hog wild, absolutely apeshit, flinging handfuls of thunderbolts in all directions, shouting Yee-haw and Let’s goooo at the top of his lungs, lunging with his sword at anything that moved and even some things that didn’t, like a toddler pretending to fight monsters with a stick. Kunsel took cover behind a pile of rocks so as not to get hit in the crossfire.

No one could have foreseen the garuda. Thunderbirds never normally strayed this far south. Its migration route must have been disrupted by the same storm that had driven the company’s freighter onto the rocks. Even so, the bird wouldn’t have been an issue if Roche had taken a bit more care when he equipped his materia. He’d put the elemental in the wrong slot, rendering it useless.  The garuda’s three-pronged electrical attack had lifted him off his feet and thrown him half-a-dozen metres backwards; he’d hit his head on a coconut palm and lost consciousness for almost half a minute. Kunsel had had no choice but to pull out the gun he kept hidden in an armpit holster and shoot the monster. 

“How bad is it?” Roche asked him. “Don’t lie to me.”

Roche’s sword arm had taken the full force of the garuda’s thundaga. It didn’t even look like an arm any more. It looked more like a haunch of sun-cured ham that had been hanging from the smokey rafters of a country inn for the last decade.

“I’ve seen worse,” Kunsel lied.

Healing Roche’s arm back to normal depleted what remained of their ether stock, and drained Kunsel so completely that he had no strength left to do anything but flop down in the sand beside his patient. “I can feel my fingers now,” Roche murmured.

“Pain’s gone?”

“Just tingling.”

“Good. Hey, you know…  After you’ve had a few more treatments, you won’t feel pain any more. Not like that. It’ll just be - uh, a mild sting.”  Or so Zack had told him. “That’s something to look forward to, right?”

They rested, recovering their strength. After a while Kunsel sat up, unscrewed the lid of his canteen, took a long draught of cool water, and offered the canteen to Roche, who propped himself up on one elbow to take it, but did not immediately drink. His baby blue eyes searched Kunsel’s face as if he wanted to ask a question, but could not find the words. He’s so young, thought Kunsel. A favourite joke in SOLDIER was that SOLDIER years were like dog years: one year in SOLDIER counted for seven years of a normal human’s life. If you lasted ten years, you were old , man. Kunsel was in his eighth year. Hardly any of the guys who’d signed up with him were still around. 

“You saved my life,” said Roche. 

He sounded like he couldn’t believe anybody would do that for him; like he wouldn’t have been surprised if Kunsel had simply stood there and watched him die, and wouldn’t have blamed him either. It was too damn sad. Kunsel hated that sad feeling. So he leaned over to give Roche a friendly punch on the shoulder  - “No biggy. We’re buddies, right?” - and got to his feet. 

Ugly suspicions were disturbing his thoughts again; he couldn’t get them out of his head. What made it worse was that his suspicions weren’t completely implausible. Director Lazard was a complicated man. Kunsel believed the Director genuinely had the welfare of his men at heart, but the interests of the department as a whole - the good of the many - would, for Lazard, always take priority over the life of any given SOLDIER, and sometimes it was in the interests of the department that individual operatives be removed. Killed in the line of duty. An honourable end. A generous pension for the family. A very Shinra thing to do. Director Heidegger would have nothing to be ashamed of -

No! God, what was wrong with him? Why was he thinking like this? Roche hadn’t run amok or sold secrets to the enemy or turned into a drooling idiot. He was just a raw recruit who suffered from low self-esteem and needed to learn a bit of self-control. Lazard had no reason to want him dead. In fact, Lazard had very clearly stated he wanted the kid to come back alive. Fucking hell. The heat was starting to get to him. He had more pressing matters to attend to right now than letting his imagination run wild.

Kunsel crossed the sand to the boulder where the garuda had fallen and began searching the area with his eyes. So far, this assignment hadn’t yielded much in the way of booty. At 50 gil a pop, the potions the guardhounds had dropped were barely worth the trouble of bending over to pick them up, and he’d drunk the only ether he’d found while curing Roche. He’d scored one X-Potion, which would fetch fifteen hundred in the QM’s Stores and maybe as much as two K down in Wall Market; hardly riches, but better than nothing. He hadn’t yet lost hope of striking lucky with the garuda. They sometimes dropped rare items, and if he took his time and combed the area carefully, he might just - 

Deep in a crack in the rock, a fulminating glint of sulphurous yellow caught his eye. The crack was too narrow for his fingers; he had to use the spine of a palm leaf to fish the item out, a delicate operation, because the thing was greasy and slippery. When he finally eased it into the sunlight, he saw it was exactly what he’d expected: a lightning ring, covered in black-white gobs of bird shite and fluffy pin-feathers. Once he’d cleaned the thing, the official Shinra Store would give him a couple of thou for it, but Kunsel knew a guy in Under-Five who’d pay at least three times that. Enough for one champagne dinner for two at Whiteleys, at least. 

“Looks like we’re done here,” he said to Roche. “Let’s head for home, buddy.”

Chapter Text

The return journey took nearly forty-eight hours. Roche dozed on and off all the way to Junon, but when their helicopter lifted off from the airfield he finally woke up properly and ate the bagged lunch Kunsel had saved for him. He was starting to look a little more alive.

“So,” said Kunsel, “You did it, man. How d’you feel? D’you feel good?”

“I guess.”

“I told you you could do it. First mission, in the bag.”

“Thanks to you.”

“You did your fair share. More than your fair share.”

“If you hadn’t been there, I’d be dead now.”

This was beginning to get tedious. “Dude, you can’t keep dwelling on the might-have-beens. What matters is… Mission accomplished! Honour preserved! Conflict resolved! Right?”

“Right,” said Roche without conviction.

“You have to get your head in the game.”

“Oh,” said Roche, “I forgot…” He fumbled through the pockets of his uniform, and eventually produced a length of grubby, knotted white cloth Kunsel recognised as a Shinra patented anti-silence Headband™. “This is for you. It was stuck in the gears of one of the heli-gunners. I would have given it to you before, but the garuda made me forget.”

“Nah, my friend, you’re good.”

“Don’t you want it? We had a deal - “

“That’s your trophy. You should keep it.”

“A headband’s not much of a trophy. What would I do with it? I have seven headbands already. I know it’s a mere token, but please, take it.”

“Well… How about this? Just as a favour to you, because I like you, I’ll take it off your hands for five hundred gil.”

Roche looked confused, and also a little offended. “I’m not asking for money. It’s a gift, for saving my life.”

Kunsel leaned forwards, elbows on knees, upper body straining against the seat’s shoulder harness. “Okay, first off, your life is worth way more than one measly headband, and don’t you forget it.  Second, you can’t just go giving your items away. SOLDIER isn’t a charity, man. We’re supposed to make a profit.”

“But…”

“What? Are you going to tell me about the clause in your contract that says you can only sell items through QMS or the company shop? Dude, just ignore that. Everyone else does.”

“But…”

“No buts. Listen to me. I’m about to give you the best advice you’ll ever get, and I’m giving it to you for free. If you’re dumb enough to play by the rules, you’re going to stay a poor man all your life. Is that what you want? I mean, yes, if it’s something really priceless, like a gold rolling pin or a tonberry knife, you want to go through the official channels because they’ll find out if you don’t. Shinra won’t stiff you on the rare items. They want that shit. But you won’t see an item like that more than once or twice in your career. 

“Now, if it’s just regular stuff like bangles or headbands, the company couldn’t care less if you cut some deals on the side. In fact, they expect it. Our whole pay system’s structured around it. The base salary’s shite, but you already know that, and your mission fees are barely going to cover your rent until you make Second. The real money’s in the loot we find. That’s why Shinra lets us keep it. It’s our incentive to get out in the field and hustle. 

“Look, Roche, I’m gonna be honest with you. If you took this headband to QMS they’d give you one and half thou for it. That’s the official price. In reality, though, they wouldn’t give you a single round gil, because they’re drowning in headbands right now. They’ll tell you to come back next month and try again, and that’s no good to you, because you need the gil now .  If you sell that headband to me for five hundred, you have cash in your wallet today . And if I find someone who’ll give me more than a thousand for it, we’ll split the difference. What do you think?”

“I don’t know. Are you sure we won’t get into trouble?”

“Would I lie to a buddy? Come on, have some faith. Ask anyone. They’ll tell you I handle deals for all the guys. I manage all Zack Fair’s loot for him. My usual share is fifteen per cent, but since you’re a new customer I’ll do you a special rate.”

Roche took his time thinking it over. Then he said, rather shyly, “I must admit I could do with the money. City life is so much more expensive than I imagined. The gil runs through my fingers like sand.”

“Ain’t that the truth?”

“Kunsel, can I tell you something? There’s… There’s something close to my heart I’m saving up for.”

“A night on the town with your crush?” said Kunsel, who, as Midgar loomed larger and larger outside the starboard windows, was finding his thoughts increasingly preoccupied with  Cissnei and the hope that she might, by some lucky chance, be free tonight. He would call her as soon as they landed.

“Oh, no, nothing like that. A motorbike.”

The way he spoke, voice thick with breathless longing, like a believer uttering a prayer, like a lover confessing his most ardent wish, caused Kunsel to turn and consider him more closely. Roche’s eyes were shining, but it wasn’t the mako. It was the fire in his belly, the yearning in his heart. It was, Kunsel realised, Roche’s dream. 

But since Kunsel had no immediate use for this information, he filed it away in the back of his mind and did not give it another thought.

***

Cissnei wasn’t answering her phone. The messages he sent came back undelivered. 

“You wanna grab a pint?” he asked Roche.

When off-duty, Cissnei and her colleagues could often be found hanging out at the Goblins Bar in Sector 8, a watering-hole popular with Shinra people of all ranks. Tonight was karaoke night and the bar was packed tight; the only free seats were at the Turks’ table, which was permanently reserved for their exclusive use. Freyra, Emma and Rude waved him over. “Kunsel, join us! You’re in for a treat tonight. Rude’s going to sing. Who’s your friend? New recruit?” Freyra winked at Roche. “Hi, handsome.”

She was a good-looking woman, if not quite in Cissnei’s league. Roche seemed oblivious to her flirting. Emma said, “If you’re looking for Cissnei, she’s gone to Cosmo Canyon.”

This news was both welcome and unwelcome, in equal measure. Welcome, because at least he knew now she hadn’t blocked him - there was no PHS coverage in the Canyon - but unwelcome because it meant he might not see her for days. 

“Cosmo Canyon, huh? That’s not as far away as Kavaratti Island - right, Roche? Me and my good buddy Roche here just got back half an hour ago. We’re celebrating the successful completion of his first mission.”

The Turks looked at each other. They weren’t buying it. They knew he’d come to the Goblins hoping to find her. Rude said, “She went with Tseng.”

Kunsel knew what that meant. Cissnei’s mission to the Canyon had something to do with Avalanche. The Turks’ second-in-command did not leave the city for trivial reasons. But if Tseng had gone to Cosmo Canyon, did that mean the business in Banora was done and dusted? If so, then where was Zack? Zack never missed karaoke night at the Goblins if he could help it. 

First up was a woman from materia quality control singing Ghost Train in a sweet, if slightly off-key, soprano. Karmila Stetson, her name was. That fact was unlikely to come in useful, but Kunsel never forgot a name or a face, so it was just there, in his mind, whether he wanted it or not. Next came Walkerton Spivey, Mr Bushy Sideboards from automotive engineering, and then it was Rude’s turn. Rude’s famously mellow voice, deep and slightly husky, was perfectly suited to the melancholy yearning of Forever Rachel. By the time he’d finished, people all around the room were wiping their eyes with their sleeves. Even Kunsel had a lump in his throat. Rude accepted the crowd’s enthusiastic applause with a modest bow and returned to their table. “You’re quite the crooner,” Kunsel congratulated him. 

Roche, steadily working his way through one pint of beer after another, contributed very little to the conversation. His thoughts seemed to be far away.

Chloe Kelly from Educational Outreach took a turn at the microphone, followed by a buxom blonde girl Kunsel hadn’t seen before; Rude said she was one of the President’s new PAs. “Yeah, that tracks,” said Kunsel. Then Emma took the stage to belt out the full seven minute, fifteen verse version of Daddy Don’t Take My Wedding Dress to the Pawn Shop, I Know Billy’s Gonna Come Home Soon, whipping the audience up to join in the chorus. Instead of stepping down when the song was over, she called out, “Kunsel, join me. Let’s do Magic House.” He didn’t wait to be asked twice. 

He had a decent tenor voice and he loved the buzz of performing, so after Magic House he and Emma stayed onstage to duet Johnny C Bad and Spinach Rag, before reluctantly yielding the microphone to a middle manager from Strategic Planning who had been patiently waiting his turn. Kunsel’s vocal chords were feeling a little overstretched by the time he returned to the Turks’ table.

Roche suddenly rose to his feet. The moment he stood up it was obvious to everyone that he was very drunk. “There’s a shong in my heart,” he announced, swaying as he spoke, “And Imma gonna shing it - “

“Oh buddy no,” croaked Kunsel, “You don’t want to do that.”

Too late: Roche was already stumbling towards the stage. A woman cried out as he pushed her aside. A man demanded to know what he thought he was doing. Roche snatched the microphone from the Strategic Planning suit, who was just getting into his stride with Dancing Mad. Angry mutterings spread through the audience. Roche didn’t seem to hear, or care. 

“You should probably intervene,” Rude murmured in Kunsel’s direction.”The sooner, the better.”

“Ladeesh an’ gennelmen,” said Roche, holding the mic so close to his mouth that it looked as if he was trying to chew it, “Allow me t’introdoosh myself. Name’sh Rosh? Imma sojz - shoulder - SOLDIER? Third clash?”

“Is he asking us?” laughed Freyra.

 “An’ iwanna tellya. I completed my first missshion today.”

“No one cares!” shouted a heckler.

Roche ignored him. “But I couldna dunnit without my guardian angel, my friend, my buddy, my pal, my besht friend that I can alwaysh rely on, SHOULDER Shecond clash Kunshel!”

“Fuck me, he’s drunk,” said Freyra.  

“There he is, ladeez and gennelman! Shitting right there. That guy shaved my life. Give him a big hand!”

There was a polite scattering of half-hearted applause. Many faces turned in Kunsel’s direction, and their eyes all said the same thing: Man, I’m sorry about this. You must be so embarrassed.

“Is that true?” said Emma. “Kunsel, did you save his life?”

“Kunzzshel, my friend, this song in my heart is for you!” And without waiting for the music - because he hadn’t selected any music -  Roche began to sing, “Bow-wow-wow he’s a good boy who never stops - “

“Ah, fuck.” Kunsel buried his head in his hands. 

“Get off!” shouted the heckler.

“ - Go all out, go all out, little Kunsel…” Roche gyrated his hips in time to the beat of the song. “You’ve got so much courage and everybody thinks you’re swell - “

“Make it stop,” Kunsel groaned.

“Did you hear that?” Freyra was speaking right into his ear. “Your buddy thinks you’re swell.”

“Please don’t tell Cissnei.”

“Oh, you can believe I am so going to tell her.”

“ - If only we could have such big hearts, as big as Kunsel’s and Shinra’s - “

“Get off!” roared the heckler, losing his cool. “Fuck you! You’re shit! Fuck SOLDIER! Fuck Kunt-sell or whatever his fucking name is!”

Roche stopped dancing. Slowly he lowered the microphone. A pregnant silence fell over the room. Roche’s ice-blue eyes glittered.  “Excuse me,” he said calmly, “I didn’t quite catch that. Could you repeat it, please?”

Kunsel saw the heckler was wearing a khaki zip-up hoodie with the Shinra crest. On the right shoulder of the hoodie the letters S.P.P.D. were embroidered between three scarlet chevrons and the heraldic image of griffon rampant. The guy was an off-duty army sergeant. That explained the aggression. And from the looks of him he was as drunk as Roche, rocking from side to side on unsteady feet.

“I fucking can repeat it, you fucking arrogant prick,” the sozzled sergeant bellowed. “I said fuck you, SOLDIER. You’re fucking ruining that song. Stamp’s not yours, he’s ours, so just fucking fuck off out of it, you fucking freak.”

“You, sir,” Roche enunciated each word slowly and with great dignity, “Are a very rude man. I’m not normally one to lose my temper, but you - “ He grasped the microphone stand with both hands - “Have pushed me to my limit.”

The crowd gasped as Roche swung the stand into the air and twirled it, SOLDIER fashion, before taking up a battle stance, shoulders squared, feet wide apart. “You will answer for your insults, sir. Prepare to battle, or accept dishonour.”

“Ah, fuck, no,” Kunsel groaned.

Roche leaned back onto his hind foot, getting ready to throw the microphone stand as if it were a javelin. He might not hit the sergeant. His aim wasn’t that good. But he’d hit someone in this crowded room, and maybe more than just one. He’d hit them with the same force that had brought down a Shinra heli-gunner in two blows. Whoever he hit would die. The papers would call it the Karaoke Massacre at the Goblins Bar. 

“You need to stop him,” Freyra cried.

“I know!” But how? When a SOLDIER’s mental gears shifted into combat mode it was practically impossible to talk him down. The only answer was to fight him into submission. Fuuuck!! Where the hell was Zack Fair when you needed him? Zack could have resolved this crisis in no time.  And then -

Chapter Text

Shinra Electric Power Company  

External Incident Report

Department: SOLDIER

Date and time of incident: December 10th  ν-εγλ 00   c. 22:30 hours 

Location: Goblin’s Bar, cnr Loveless Ave/W 25th St, Sector 8, Midgar

Reported by: Özdemir, Kunsel. SC/S/1995/4.3.78/KO/2S*

Date and time: December 11th ν-εγλ 00 11:26 hrs

Page 2

before the situation could escalate further, Rude cast Sleep rendering both Roche and Sergeant Nixon unconscious. I returned with Roche in a taxi to barracks. Thus concluding the incident. 

Casualties:

Injured         Shinra 0         Civilians 0

Dead           Shinra 0          Civilians 0

Estimated damages         1 broken microphone stand @ c. 200 g.

Director Lazard’s fountain pen was a thing of beauty, made of laquered ebonite on which a mildly erotic scene from Wutaian folklore had been hand-painted in extravagant detail: twin dragons coiing around each other, a nude jemnezemy nestled in their scaley embrace. Kunsel knew, because he made it his business to know such things, that this pen had been gifted to the Director six months ago by the wife of the leader of a consortium of Wutaian sand and gravel merchants, who had come to Midgar to bid on a tender for supplying the reactor sites planned for their country. The construction work hadn’t started yet, but everyone said it couldn’t be long now. Shinra had won the war; there was nothing left to wait for.

Kunsel didn’t know yet when or how the information about the pen would come in useful. Perhaps never. That didn’t matter. What mattered was knowing things other people didn’t know, and knowing more things than anyone else knew. These could be trivial things, overlooked things, little bits and pieces that might eventually add up. That pen, for example, thought a mere trinket, had to be worth at least fifty thousand gil… And yet its owner perpetually had about him an air of vague dissatisfaction, as if life had somehow fallen short of his expectations and he was bearing it as best he could. 

Director Lazard was thirty-three years old. In Shinra’s corporate hierarchy there was nowhere left for him to climb. The positions of President and Vice-President were taken. 

Lazard signed the incident report with a flourish. How smoothly that twenty-four-carat gold nib glided across the page!  With damages totalling a mere two hundred gil, this particular incident was pretty small beer. Not a week went by in Midgar without some drunken Thirds or Seconds (who ought to know better) getting into bar fights on the plate or down in the slums, causing thousands of gil worth of damage, tens of thousands sometimes. It all came out of their wages. Some of those idiots were going to die in debt to Shinra. They just didn’t know how to stop. 

Maybe , thought Kunsel, the real reason Genesis and Angeal defected was that they couldn’t afford to pay for yet another round of repairs to the sim-room. 

Director Lazard laid down his pen and rested his folded hands on the incident report. Kunsel pictured the wet ink soaking into the fabric of the Director’s pristine white gloves, leaving a tiny blue-black blot. If that happened, he would undoubtedly change them for another pair. Kunsel assumed he had a drawer full of them.

Wearing hand protection out in the field made sense. He and Roche had been issued with mithril gloves for their trip to the island. White, though, seemed like an impractical colour choice. It would show every speck of dirt. Lazard’s gloves were always spotlessly clean. So maybe that was the message: I don’t get my hands dirty. That’s your job . Which to Kunsel mind’s was fair enough:  it was indeed a SOLDIER’s job to go out there and get his hands dirty.

No, the weird thing about Lazard’s gloves was that he wore them all the time. Out in the field and in the office. At board meetings. Signing forms. When relaxing with a drink. Working out in the gym! When wiping his lily-white backside in the executive toilet. Okay, Kunsel didn’t know for sure if that last one was true, but he wouldn’t be surprised. 

Why did Director Lazard never remove his gloves? What was he hiding? The official story on his background was that his father had been a Shinra railwayman, killed when Lazard was just a child by terrorists who’d blown up a bridge moments before Lazard’s father’s train was due to cross it. In Lazard’s personnel file his father’s name was given as Deusericus, Havard , and there were some staff on the brink of retirement in the Railways division of Urb Dev who claimed to remember him, but Kunsel was pretty sure they were lying. He’d never found anyone down in the slums who’d known a train driver called Havard Deusericus. 

So if the fictional Havard was not Director Lazard’s father, then who was? Kunsel thought the answer was blindingly obvious. However, it was no secret that Lazard had been born and raised in the slums - the Director took pride in his origins, boasted about being a son of the soil - and it was for this reason that many people simply could not believe he was the offspring of the man he so closely resembled. President Shinra doted on that frivolous fashion-plate Rufus; some would say he’d spoiled his son and heir rotten. Such a loving father, people argued, would never abandon his own flesh and blood to grow up in poverty and disease. If that was what they wanted to believe, who was Kunsel to disabuse them? 

Kunsel spent a lot of time in the undercity. He maintained a wide network of contacts down there. The slums were a festering breeding-ground for rumours. One persistent rumour that had been going around for years said that kids who grew up close to the reactors’ outlets developed all kinds of weird little deformities on their bodies, which their parents went to great lengths to conceal. Did Lazard have a couple of extra pinkies? Were his fingers webbed like the feet of a duck, or covered in scales like a sahagin? But if so, why didn’t he get it fixed? Shinra offered the world’s most advanced medical care, and money was no object for him. 

Kunsel would have given almost anything for one good look at his Director’s naked hands. And not because the information would be valuable, because it wouldn’t; a minor malformation was hardly blackmail material. More to the point, Director Lazard was his benefactor, and Kunsel was determined to be as loyal to Lazard as this world allowed a man to be. He’d never stoop to blackmailing his Director, not unless he had no other choice. 

He was just really curious about the hands thing. The Director’s gloves were an unsolved mystery, and Kunsel didn’t like unsolved mysteries. He liked to know what was going on around him. In Shinra, your life could depend on it. 

“I’ve read Roche’s mission report,” said Director Lazard. “Things went well, it seems.”

“All things considered,” Kunsel agreed.

Lazard smiled. The Director had his fair share of the Shinra family charm, enhanced in his case by genuine likeability. “Roche says you saved his life.”

A strange feeling came over Kunsel - not exactly embarrassment, and not guilt either, but as if he’d been caught pretending to be something he was not. “That garuda could have killed us both.”

“Thank goodness for your quick thinking, then.” Lazard’s brand of humour was so dry that sometimes it was difficult to know when he was being sarcastic. He went on, “Not everyone has found Roche easy to work with. He seems to have taken a shine to you. I view that as a positive development. Tomorrow he’ll receive a new assignment, and you’ll be accompanying him, same drill as before. This one shouldn’t take you more than a couple of hours.”

“You’re sure you wouldn’t rather get Zack to do it, sir?” suggested Kunsel hopefully.

“Quite sure, thank you.  Speaking of whom, I’d like you to take Zack out for a drink after work one night soon, have a chat with him. He’s off site today, but he’s scheduled in the training room tomorrow from five to six. That would be a good time. Catch him when he comes out.”

“Is there a problem with Zack?”

“I don’t know.” Lazard rested his chin on his gloved hands, looking pensive. “It seems he wasn’t entirely happy with the way things were handled in Banora. He may be feeling a little confused. Get him to open up to you about it. I want to know what he’s thinking. We need some new Firsts, and he’s the leading candidate, but not if…” 

Lazard didn’t need to finish the thought that was uppermost in both their minds. There had been too many desertions already. 

“Understood, sir,” said Kunsel. 

Chapter Text

Certain Shinra-brand accessories are being traded illegally in the Sector 4 Ward B marketplace. The employee responsible has already been arrested, but some of the accessories are still hidden in the slums. Go and recover all of the accessories.

“Another treasure hunt,” said Roche. 

Kunsel ground his teeth, but it wasn’t Roche he was pissed at. Just who the fuck did these small-time operators think they were dealing with, muscling in on his territory? No sooner did Peace Preservation shut one down than two others sprang up in his place, like that demented whack-a-mole mecha Professor Hojo had installed upstairs. And even when they were caught, the company let them off with a slap on the wrist, so why wouldn’t they go right out and do it again? These days it seemed everybody was getting into the game, trying to hustle up a few extra gil. Rank bloody amateurs. And where did their stock come from? Off the back of a Shinra lorry. Pilfered from the stock room. Undercutting honest brokers like himself, they’d take whatever they could get; it was all profit to them. 

So which bumbling low-level clerk had got himself arrested this time? The mission docket didn’t say, but Kunsel knew how to find out. Tonight, once he’d finished picking Zack’s brains over a few pints of Zolom XXX, he’d pass by Captain Viljoen’s place and give him the pristine vintage copy of Turbocharged: Boobs Gone Berserk! Vol. 11 that he was looking for to complete his collection. It had been in Kunsel’s possession for a while now, but he’d been holding it in reserve against the day he needed a favour in return.

“Will there be monsters?” asked Roche. “I don’t see the point in wheeling out the big guns if it’s a simple question of picking up some items.”

“I’m sure we can find some monsters for you.”

“Kunsel, can I tell you something? Working with you, it’s been - well, it’s been a revelation.”

“Is that so?”  said Kunsel, who was busy thinking about something else. Should he warn the traders of Ward B in Sector Four that SOLDIER was coming to sweep the area for stolen accessories? Or should he unleash Roche on them unawares? Show them what happened when they got greedy and cut deals with his competitors behind his back?

“Almost from the very first moment I joined SOLDIER I was sure I’d made a mistake and that this life wasn’t for me. But out there, on that island, with you, I discovered the truth. I’m not unfit for SOLDIER. It was only the training I hated. It felt so… tedious and repetitive. And pointless. Nothing was at stake. Out there, on that island, our very lives were at stake. The heat, the sand, the blood, even the pain… it felt so real. More than real. Meaningful. And for the first time in my life, I too felt completely real. I never knew it was possible to experience the world with such vibrant intensity.”

 “Well, that’s great.” Letting Roche go wild on the merchants of Under-Four would certainly teach them a lesson, but was it the lesson Kunsel wanted them to learn? If he tipped them the wink, they’d have time to board up their shops, hide their most valuable items, minimise the damage. They’d have reason to be grateful to him.

“I’ve never felt so alive as in those few moments when I thought I was going to die,” said Roche. “It was euphoric! Intoxicating! I crave to know that ecstasy again!”

“Good,” said Kunsel. “Now listen, I’ve got an errand to run first, so I’ll meet you down there at 1200 hours, outside the Under Four B payments office. You can catch the eleven-thirty-five train from Sector One. Don’t be late.”

“You can count on me,” Roche replied. 

***

Wednesday morning, 8.46 am

“I’ve just received an initial repairs estimate from the Payment Office Division,” said Lazard, swivelling in his chair to hand the printed spreadsheet to Kunsel. “It’s rather spectacular.”

Kunsel ran his eye down the itemised list. For roof reconstruction and reshingling - for replacement of computers - for plastering and painting - for new windows - for a new door… When he came to the bottom of the page and saw the number of zeros in the total, he whistled aloud, though really it was a fair sum, all things considered. Roche had torn through the Ward B payments sub-office like a one-man tornado. He’d ripped the roof clean off and sent mythril-cladded safes flying through the air as if they weighed no more than cupcakes. It would have been awe-inspiring if it wasn’t so frightening. The kid had no self-control whatsoever.

“What about the market stall-holders?” he asked Lazard. “They took a big hit too.”

“I know, and I’d like to make it right for them. They won’t dare make an official claim against Shinra. Could you handle that for me? I know you have connections. I’ll provide the funds, but keep my name out of it.”

“That’s very generous of you, sir.”

Lazard gave a delicate shrug. “It’s only money. I’m more concerned about the human cost. Fortunately, no one was killed, but a couple of the ward office staff sustained life-changing injuries. Shinra will honour its responsibility towards them, of course, but no amount of compensation can give them back what they’ve lost. Roche is rather reckless, isn’t he?”

“He’s a force of nature.” After a moment’s thought, Kunsel added, “But no more than the rest of them.”

Maybe, thought Kunsel, some scientific principle was at work here, something like the law of equivalent exchange or the conservation of energy; the balance of life and death. To get something, you had to give up something in return. Maybe that was why the weapons department couldn’t figure out a way for their mecha AI to tell SOLDIERs apart from monsters. 

“Out of interest,” said Lazard, “Why did he attack the payment office?”

“Is that what they said?” Kunsel was a little taken aback by the surge of anger he felt on Roche’s behalf. It wasn’t fair to blame the kid. “Sir, to tell you the truth, the ward office started it. Roche was chasing a drake, and he went too close to the perimeter fence, which tripped the sensors, which activated the bee saucers. And then when - completely in his own self-defense, it must be said - he blasted the saucers with the tri-thundaga that some moron in QM saw fit to issue to him even though he’s only a three-U, and blew off the roof of the building, the sweepers came after him, and then he just… went berserk.”

“Leaving a trail of destruction in his wake.”

 Didn’t they all, though? It was what they were made to do. Aloud, Kunsel said, “Sir, don’t you think it’s time Zack took over mentoring Roche? It was supposed to be his job in the first place, and he’d be better at it than I am. Zack knows what it’s like. He can relate. ”

“Zack Fair has more important things to do.” To Kunsel’s annoyance, his Director did not expand on this cryptic statement. “As for young Roche, we are stuck with him, so we need to get him stabilised whether he likes it or not. This week he’s out on training exercises, and next week there’s a treatment session scheduled for Monday. He’ll need some down time after that. Once he has recovered - 

If he recovers , Kunsel privately amended.

“ - I’ll find a new mission for him. Somewhere a little less crowded than an undercity market. Await my email. Meanwhile, Peace Preservation can take care of this invoice. We’re not using SOLDIER gil to clean up after Heidegger’s nephew.”

Chapter Text

Our cargo, stolen by an anti-Shinra element, has been found inside the plate.

The organization was neutralized, but an AI weapon glitch prevented us from reclaiming our precious cargo.

We have no use for malfunctioning machines—destroy them and collect our goods!

Kunsel didn’t like the look of Roche’s eyes. For one thing, the kid seemed to be having difficulty meeting his gaze. That was new. For another, he’d developed intermittent nystagmus. For two or three seconds at a time his pupils would rapidly flick back and forth as if speed reading something printed on the inside of his skull. The mako glow around the irises had intensified, but that was normal and expected and a measurable thing. What couldn’t be measured, or even described, really, was the gleam that came and went in Roche’s blue eyes. Kunsel didn’t want to use words like maniacal or demented . He felt it was too soon for that. The kid had only just come back to work after his latest treatment. He might just need some time to settle down.

Medical said the treatment had gone off without a hitch. They’d certified Roche one hundred per cent A-OK for service. Then again, they would, wouldn’t they? It was their job to produce SOLDIERs, not failures. They had quotas to meet, year-end bonuses to earn. 

Which was exactly why SOLDIER needed someone like Kunsel. When it came to spotting the symptoms of a SOLDIER whose mind was slipping, no one had more experience than he did. And that strange gleam in Roche’s eyes was definitely making him uneasy. 

They stood shoulder to shoulder in front of the mission board, reading Roche’s latest assignment. Kunsel could feel the kid practically vibrating with excitement. 

“Oh my giddy aunt,” Roche laughed. “Destroy the rogue mecha! Woo! That’s music to my ears. Man versus machine in the eternal dance for dominance. I can’t wait!”

***

Roche’s whoops of joy and the clang of his blade reverberated through the hallways of the plate’s interior - a disorienting maze, but also, in its own way, another neglected beach on a desert island, where all kinds of rubbish washed up: empty crates, rusting typewriters, bundles of PVC pipes, homeless vagrants, monsters. Roche’s whirling sword struck sparks from the stainless steel walls. Kunsel followed at a safe distance, casting Heal whenever Roche looked like flagging. 

Along the way Kunsel bagged a pair of sprint shoes and a power wrist stashed in locker chests. Finders keepers. The Under-Four traders in the Ward B market would be looking to re-stock. It was an ill wind, etc… 

Roche had no interest in stopping to pick up items. He was completely absorbed in his rampage. In a way, Kunsel envied him. The only thing in which he’d ever managed to lose himself so completely, lose himself to the point of ecstasy, was sex. Nice work if you can get it . He wondered if Roche was a virgin. He felt certain the answer was yes. 

Then he fell to thinking about Cissnei, and became so lost and entangled in these thoughts that when Roche took a blast from a bee saucer that made him stagger and fall to his knees, it almost didn’t register.

“Help?” Roche groaned.

Kunsel shook off his daydream and cast Regen. 

It took Roche twenty minutes to neutralise the rabid flying machine that was trying its best to slice him into ribbons. The mecha wasn’t operating at full capacity and Roche could have cut the battle short if he’d wanted to, but he was having way too much fun. Kunsel regretted not bringing ear muffs. His head rang with the echo of repeated metallic blows.

The Director could say what he liked, but this shit was NOT in his contract. If he ended up with tinnitus as a result of these missions, he was fucking going to sue Lazard. 

At last the machine dropped to the floor of the hallway and lay there, a crumpled wreck, hissing and sparking. Weapons Development would send their scavengers to retrieve the parts later, if the scrap merchant’s boys didn’t beat them to it. Kunsel plucked out a pair of diamond gloves that had somehow become tangled in the blade mechanism, and after a moment’s struggle with his own conscience, offered them to Roche.

Roche, exhausted, breathless, chest-heaving, sweaty, oil-spattered, blood streaming down his face from three cuts on his forehead where the machine had come within a millimetre of scalping him, smiled beatifically (there was  blood between his white teeth) and shook his head. “Keep it. I got what I wanted.”

He plonked down heavily on the floor beside the twitching mecha, laughed, and said, “We make a great team, my friend. The Tank and the Healer.”

“Dude, you need to start learning to heal yourself. I’m not going to tag along with you on every mission, you know. SOLDIERs usually operate solo.”

Chapter Text

Shinra Electric Power Company

From: Kunsel Özdemir 

To: Zack Fair

Re: Your good news

Date: April 20 ν-εγλ 01,  9.28 pm.

Congratulations on making First, Zack. I always knew you’d get there. I just wish you could’ve had five minutes to bask in the glory before the shit hit the fan. 

I know working under Professor Hojo can be stressful but nothing excuses what Hollander did. The man’s a homocidal maniac. He turned our own building against us. Did you know one of the elevators tried to kill Reno? Reno’s a dickhead - on that we can all agree - but I wouldn’t wish being crushed to death by a runaway elevator on my worst enemy. Not even Genesis. Correction: especially not Genesis. I want to see him put on trial for his crimes. If anyone can catch him, you can, Zack. I think it has to be you. Sephiroth’s too close to him. Genesis needs to be held to account for what he’s done. He didn’t just betray Shinra. He betrayed his comrades. There’s no forgiveness for that. 

The final count isn’t in but we lost at least fourteen. I’ll send you the full list when I have it. My boy Roche didn’t do so well but at least he’s alive. When the red light went off he was deployed to the Drum, so when central locking went down and the specimens escaped, he was jumped by a couple of zenene and badly Poisoned. He’s in sickbay recovering. It was touch and go for a while, but they think he’ll make it.

Take care of yourself out there, my friend. SOLDIERs aren’t immortal, even if it feels that way. Don’t do anything Angeal wouldn’t do. Does he know you made First? I hope you have some way of letting him know. He’d be so proud of you. 

***

Shinra Electric Power Company

From: Lazard Deusericus

To: All staff

Re: Our duty

Date: April 21 ν-εγλ 01,  9.24 am

SOLDIER members, I thank you all for your daily hard work.

The recent attempt to take down Shinra and everything this company stands for struck particularly close to home, not just for me, but for all of us. Some of your comrades were called upon to make the ultimate sacrifice. We mourn their loss, as we honour their courage. They did their duty. There can be no higher praise. 

The loss is doubly painful when we consider that it was inflicted by one of our own. SOLDIER members have been privileged with great power. We must use this gift for the benefit of the people. Our noble duty is to protect the weak and humble, advance peace, and combat greed and injustice around the world. When any SOLDIER, irregardless of his fame and status, puts his selfish personal desires ahead of the common good, the stain of dishonour tarnishes us all. Thus I urge everyone: strive to your utmost to restore the good name of SOLDIER by putting down insurrection wherever you find it. 

***

Shinra Electric Power Company

From: Lazard Deusericus

To: Kunsel Özdemir 

Re: Mission assignment: supplies recall. 

Date: April 30th ν-εγλ 01,  8.03 am

M.D. inform me Roche is fully operational. This is welcome news. 

During last month’s attack on the Shinra Building by Genesis and his cohort of insurrectionists, some SOLDIER supplies of a highly sensitive nature went missing from M.D., along with stocks of Shinra weapons. We have intel that these supplies are cached in the wasteland, coordinates tentatively Point 742 NE 12. Genesis troops have also been spied in the area. Take Roche, equip yourselves, go to the area, recover whatever you can. 

***

The next afternoon...

Director Lazard laid down the mission report and gave Kunsel one of his enigmatic smiles. “It’s a pity you couldn’t recover the medical supplies, but aside from that, things seem to have gone well.”

“I’d say better than expected, sir.” 

What Kunsel really wanted to say was this: that wasn’t a minor training mission like the other ones you made me go on. That was serious business. Don’t you have any real SOLDIERs left to send? Did it have to be me and some half-baked baby Third who just got out of sickbay three days ago? If you don’t cut this out, sooner or later I’m going to die on one of these missions. Is that what you want? Is it? Is it?

“Roche evidently enjoyed himself. His battle skills are improving.”

“Oh, for sure, sir. He’s definitely gone up a level - from berserk to suicidal.”

“Please dispense with the sarcasm,” Lazard rebuked him mildly. 

“Normally I wouldn’t say anything. You know me, sir. I always want to be absolutely sure before I report that a SOLDIER needs to be decommissioned. I always try to give a guy the benefit of the doubt. I don’t want…”

“Nobody wants to do that to a fellow unless it’s absolutely necessary,” Lazard agreed. “But it is sometimes necessary. If he’s deteriorated to the point where he’s a menace to himself and others, the end isn’t far away in any case. I see nothing in this report to indicate that Roche is anywhere near that point. Is there something you’re not telling me?”

“Sir, of course not. But Roche… I mean, he isn’t just anybody, is he? He’s not an ordinary SOLDIER. You can’t decommission him. So we have to make sure he never reaches that point.  It’s my considered opinion you need to stand Roche down.”

“That’s out of the question.”

“Send him on an extended leave, or something.”

“Right now I can’t afford to bench a single one of my Thirds. We’re down to two Firsts, which means I’m already sending Seconds on missions that are technically above their pay grade. Next week I’m going to try Roche on a solo mission. We’ll see how he handles himself.”

Kunsel opened his mouth to object…

“Unless,” the Director added drily, “You’d prefer to take the solo mission yourself?”

… And shut it again. It was so fucking hard sometimes to know when Director Lazard was serious and when he was joking. 

Chapter Text

Extract from a conversation recorded in Shinra Central Elevator No. 5, 10.23 am Tuesday May 14th ν-εγλ 01 .

SEC/DAR1993/18.11.80/C.S/S*: Oh, hey there, hot stuff.  Going up?

SEC/S1998/22.7.82/ZF/1E: All the way to the top!

SEC/DAR1993/18.11.80/C.S/S*: You’re heading out somewhere?

SEC/S1998/22.7.82/ZF/1E: Yup. Cargo recall mission. Some [redacted] troops stole some equipment from us and just dumped it in one of those abandoned coal mines west of Corel. The Director’s asked me to bring it back.

SEC/DAR1993/18.11.80/C.S/S*: Isn’t that kind of a low-level mission for you?

SEC/S1998/22.7.82/ZF/1E: I’ll be in and out in no time.  Piece of cake.

SEC/DAR1993/18.11.80/C.S/S*: Wasn’t there anyone else they could send?

SEC/S1998/22.7.82/ZF/1E" Well… we are kind of short-staffed right now. Originally they sent some Third, but he couldn’t handle it. Got badly injured. Had to be medi-vacced out. He’s pretty down in the dumps about it. So now I’m Mr Clean-Up.

SEC/DAR1993/18.11.80/C.S/S*: I’m surprised your Director has nothing better for you to do. Like hunting [ redacted] . Or do you need our help again?

SEC/S1998/22.7.82/ZF/1E: Uh….

SEC/DAR1993/18.11.80/C.S/S*: Oh [ redacted] , I’m just teasing you. 

SEC/S1998/22.7.82/ZF/1E: Yes, but… Hey, you know, [ redacted] , if we ever did get sent on a mission together, that would be pretty cool. You can take care of yourself in a fight.

SEC/DAR1993/18.11.80/C.S/S*: Thanks. I’m flattered. I think.

SEC/S1998/22.7.82/ZF/1E: Sorry, that came out wrong. I mean it’d be fun to go on a mission with you, and it would be… uh… it would be a way to, uh…  to spend some time together.

SEC/DAR1993/18.11.80/C.S/S*: [ redacted], are you asking me on a date? 

SEC/S1998/22.7.82/ZF/1E: Well… uh…

SEC/DAR1993/18.11.80/C.S/S*: Here’s my floor. Gotta run. Good luck on your mission. Oh, and, for the record - if you were, the answer’s yes. See you -

SEC/S1998/22.7.82/ZF/2E" Dinner when I get back?

Chapter Text

Sunday May 19th

“I’m sorry about your arm,” said Lazard.

The nurses had turned down Kunsel’s morphine drip so he could be coherent enough to answer the Director’s questions. He would rather have had the morphine and no Director.

“Does it hurt much?” asked Lazard.

“Oh, oh yeah, just a bit. Like a nest of frickin’ fire-ants are eating through my bone.” 

“That’s the nerve endings reconnecting. They’ve accelerated the process. You should have regained normal usage by the day after tomorrow.”

“What gets me is, it wasn’t even a fucking mission.” The pain (too much) and the morphine (too little) was making Kunsel reckless; he would never normally have sworn in front of his Director, whose own language was, like his gloves, spotlessly clean. “I half-expected him to end up killing me on a mission. I’d come to terms with that. But when you’re walking through Wall Market in search of a nice little bar, because your boss asked you to take your buddy out for a friendly chat, the last thing you fucking expect is for the fucker to cut your fucking arm off!”

“Well, at least you and your limb have been reunited,” said Lazard, a faint but infuriating smile playing around his lips. “I suppose we can call it a trial separation.”

“You think this is fucking funny?”

“No. Forgive me. I’m trying to say I’m glad no there’s no permanent harm done.”

“It could have been my head !”

“It was an accident. Roche is very upset about it.”

“ He ’s upset?”

“You got too close.”

“Oh, so now it’s my fault?”

“That’s not what I meant - “

“I had to stop him killing that guy.”

“The one who took your wallet? Some might say he deserved it.”

Kunsel couldn’t believe he was hearing this. “Oh for fuck’s sake! Director! SOLDIER can’t go round the slums whooping and hollering like kids on a rollercoaster and hacking up pickpockets as if they were monsters. It looks bad. It is bad. It’s just a really fucking bad thing to do. SOLDIER’s supposed to be their protectors, not their - their - “

“Predators?” Lazard suggested. “Gaolers? Executioners?”

“All that!” Kunsel cried. “It only stirs up hatred. That’s like the total fucking opposite of what we want.”

“Indeed,” said Lazard. His gloved hands lay folded on his knees.

“Roche wasn’t like this when I met him. He was a sad sack but he had some common sense. At least he was smart enough to know he ought to go home. Now the poor kid’s completely off his rocker.”

Lazard’s face remained impassive, inscrutable. The sight of it filled Kunsel with anger. Another wave of pain shot through his arm and he exclaimed, “And you know who I blame? Not him , the poor bastard. He can’t help being mental. We did that to him. We did it. Shinra did it. He started with one screw loose and we fucking unscrewed all the rest.”

Lazard’s expression didn’t change at all. “Keep your voice down,” he said quietly.

“I blame whichever fucker up in medical keeps passing him fit for service.”

“Be reasonable. Their hands are tied like ours.”

“They gave him a fucking booster while he was in sick bay, did you know that?” 

Director Lazard was a man who did everything in moderation. He rarely raised his voice. He didn’t raise it now. He didn’t lean all the way forward or make strong gestures to emphasise his words. He merely inclined his head, and said, “My obligation is to focus on the big picture. Neil Roche is not at the centre of that picture. He’s barely on the periphery.”

“Then take him out of it.” The importance of what he was trying to say, the effort of saying it, was making Kunsel feel hot and cold all over. He could feel the beads of sweat trickling down from his forehead. “You’ve got to take him off the program. Please, sir, I’m fucking begging you. It’s going to destroy him.”

“Neil Roche is a very privileged person,” said Lazard, checking his watch. “You should save your sympathy for people who deserve it.”  He stood up. “I have to go. Try to get some rest.” 

Chapter Text

Shinra Electric Power Company

From: Sephiroth

To: Zack Fair

Re: Mission assignment: supplies recall. 

Date: September 17th ν-εγλ 01,  8.03 am

This is an emergency situation.

Shinra accessories have been stolen by Genesis troops that infiltrated the plate.

They are apparently too tough for the SOLDIER 3rd class operative we sent in.

Go there and recover the accessories and the 3rd class. 

***

Zack was standing bent over, his forehead practically touching his knees, double-checking the lacing on his sprint shoes, when Kunsel burst into the locker room. “It’s Roche, isn’t it?” he demanded. “The Third class in the plate. It’s Roche.”

Zack straightened up. “Is it? Seph didn’t give me a name.”

“It’s got to be him. Who else could fuck it up this badly? He told me he had an assignment inside the plate today.”

“Well, If he’s alive, I’ll bring him back.” Zack reached for a poison materia as he spoke. “Dead or alive, I’ll bring him home.” He slotted the materia into his rune armlet, checked that it was secure. “I promise.”

“I’m coming with you.”

This gave Zack pause. He looked hard at Kunsel. “You sure?”

“Don’t try to stop me.”

Zack thought about it for a minute, a little wrinkle forming between his black brows. Suddenly he broke into a smile: one of his huge, inspiring, over-confident, you-can-rely-on-me grins that always made the world feel, briefly, like a safer place. “Well, all right then. Just so long as you don’t slow me down, okay?”

***

Zack moved at lightning speed through the steel-reinforced corridors of the inner plate. Kunsel had to run as fast as he could not to get left behind. There was no time to stop and check chests for items, and Kunsel didn’t even care. Seeing Zack in action - his laser focus; his tightly controlled, precise and powerful movements; the complete absent of lag as his body flowed from action to action, cast Wall, guarded, dashed forward to slash one, two, three times, then jumped back again, cast Thundaga, rolled, guarded, and finally twisted in under the enemy’s defense to deliver the take-out blow -  all this made it abundantly clear just how far short Roche fell by comparison. Director Lazard should never have sent the kid in here on his own. 

“Does he want him dead?” Kunsel cried aloud. Zack was too busy mowing down enemies to hear him, which was probably just as well. Zack’s attitude towards the SOLDIER leadership had always been one of cheerful, unquestioning loyalty. It was part of what made him such a great operative. Zack never second-guessed himself.  Kunsel, on the other hand, was becoming increasingly certain that his initial suspicions about the Director’s intentions regarding the psychologically fragile, overly-well-connected Roche - those terrible thoughts which he’d so ruthlessly repressed - had, in fact, been correct all along. 

And if he, Kunsel, became collateral damage in the course of Lazard’s attempts to get Roche KIA’ed, what then? He’d worked hard to make himself useful to the Director, but no one was indispensable. It wouldn’t take long to find some new guy to do his job. His parents would receive a form letter of condolence, financial compensation, his personal effects in a box. Lazard’s secretaries organised all that. The Director had to focus on the big picture.

“There he is!” Zack yelled. “Kunsel, go to him. I’ll take the mech.”

The Launcher Machine was blundering blindly in circles. It crashed into a wall, staggered backwards, rotated, and stomped away down the corridor. Zack dashed after it. Kunsel ran over to Roche, who’d managed to crawl to shelter behind a stack of aluminium boxes before passing out from his wounds. The worst was the shell-hole in his flank, but he was also green from inhaling poison gas (that damn Launcher! Fucking evil machine) and the poison was draining the life from him; Kunsel would need to fix that first. He knelt down and got to work.

Roche’s eyelids fluttered. “Oh - it’s you - my friend - “

“Take it easy,” said Kunsel. “We got you. Don’t try to talk.”

From the distance came a sound like a hundred kitchen shelves collapsing and a thousand copper pans crashing to the floor, which lasted for three or four seconds. A short silence fell, followed by a percussive boom that shook the walls and made Kunsel’s eardrums ache. A cloud of smoke filled the corridor, out of which, as expected, Zack soon emerged, his face smeared with soot and his hair in disarray. He was grinning from ear to ear. “Cakewalk,” he said.

“All right for some,” said Kunsel.

“How’s the patient?” Zack knelt on Roche’s other side and held his hand unselfconsciously. “Hey there, buddy.”

Roche groaned and squeezed Zack’s hand. Zack squeezed right back. “You need help?” he asked Kunsel.

“Wouldn’t say no.”

“Is that… Zack Fair?” Roche murmured faintly.

“The one and only. Now you hang in there, buddy. Me and Doc Kunsel here will have you good as new in no time.” 

Between them and all the Curaga and potions and elixirs they carried, Roche was soon whole again. They helped him sit up against the wall and gave him some water to drink. The first thing Roche asked when he could speak again was, “Did you get it?”

“The Launcher? Yeah, don’t worry. It was kinda funny, actually. It fell down the stairs and couldn’t get up. Man, I wish you could have seen it, lying there on its back all helpless like a flipped beetle, waving its big stumpy legs in the air.” 

Zack wiggled his fingers to show Roche what the fallen machine had looked like, and Roche laughed until he started choking. Zack, moving faster than Kunsel, slapped him on the back. Two small pieces of shrapnel flew out of his mouth, followed by a tooth. “That’s a molar,” said Kunsel, picking it up. Roche was still trying to get his breath back. “If we save it, they can - “

“Nah, no need for that,” Zack cut in. “He’ll grow another. Trust me. I’m saving a fortune on dentist bills.  Here, buddy - “ He plucked the tooth from Kunsel’s palm and pushed it into Roche’s top pocket - “Keep it. As a souvenir.”

Chapter Text

Shinra executive cafeteria, Thursday 28th September, ν-εγλ 01, 12.37 pm

“Hey,” said Cissnei, dropping her plastic lunch tray into the table and pulling out the seat opposite Kunsel’s own, “How’s it going?”

At the sight of her lovely face his heart immediately began to beat faster. Now take it easy , he thought. Don’t make a fool of yourself. 

“Same old,” he said. “You?”

“Yeah, same.” Cissnei took a big bite out of her juicy burger, and said through the mouthful, “So, Tseng and Zack are on their way to Modoheim.”

“Yeah. They left about an hour ago.”

“It’s gonna be freezing up there. Brrr,” Cissnei pretended to shiver. Dropping her voice to a confidential whisper, she added, “It’s like the last place Genesis would go, don’t you think? Snow and ice was never his thing. He’s more of a luxury oceanview suite on the Costa coast kind of guy.”

Kunsel lowered his voice to match hers. They leaned a little closer to each other over their lunch trays. “Well, something ’s causing disturbances in the mako up there. It’s got to be either Genesis or Avalanche. Or, worse case scenario, some new group of hostiles.”

“God, don’t even say that.” She made a small warding-off-evil gesture, laughing quietly as she did so. “So, who’s your money on?”

“I really, really want it to be Genesis,” said Kunsel with feeling. “I want us to catch him so bad I can practically taste it. If only I could be there to bear witness when Zack finally punches that smug bastard’s lights out, I’d die a happy man.”

“I heard you tangled with some of his copies last week.”

“The week before last, yeah.”

“They got inside the plate. That’s a bit too close for comfort. Kunsel, did you… recognise any of them?”

His fists, which were resting on the tabletop, clenched of their own accord. “No. The sick fucker’s made them all look like him. Fucking narcissistic prick.”

“That’s exactly what he is.”

“Zack killed them. Quick and clean. It was the kindest thing to do. They’re better off dead. They’re already dead, really. Dead in every way that matters. How could he do that to them? They looked up to him. They worshipped him. And now they’re dead. And Angeal, he’s just as bad, and somehow that’s worse, because he was always the good one. But he’s done nothing to help them.”

Kunsel felt the touch of her hand on his wrist and looked up. “Sssh.“ Her voice was soft and full of kindness. “Remember where we are. Most people don’t know. We want to keep it that way.”

“Fuck.” Kunsel ran his hands through his curly hair, bowed his head. “Sorry. Forgot.”

“It’s okay. I’m not going to rat on you. Just be more careful, please. Now, tell me about your baby boy Heidegger, how’s he doing? I heard you pulled his ass out of the fire again on that mission. You’ve really been that kid’s guardian angel.”

“You want to know the truth?” This time he remembered to keep his voice down. 

She leaned even closer. “Tell me,” she breathed.

“I think Lazard’s trying to get him killed.”

A tray loaded with food hit their table with a clatter, scattering fries and making them both jump. A lump of fear knotted in Kunsel’s throat; he looked up, half-expecting a posse of Peace Preservation troopers come to arrest him - but it was only that slimy weasel, Reno.  

“Is this a private party?” said Reno, “Or can anyone join?”

Without waiting for an invitation he pulled out the chair next to Cissnei and folded his long skinny body into it, scooting over so close to her that their shoulders were touching and their knees surely had to be touching under the table. The incredible thing was that she didn’t seem to mind. Kunsel couldn’t understand it. How could a woman as independent as Cissnei tolerate a colleague who acted like he owned her? If it had been anyone else invading her personal space like that, she’d have told them to back off and probably broken their arm to make sure they got the message. 

Maybe it was just some Turks thing, this closeness between them, something to do with being partners and having each other’s backs. Kunsel hoped it was just a Turks thing. 

“So,” Reno looked from Kunsel to Cissnei and back to Kunsel, grinning his sharp-toothed  grin, “What were you two kids whispering about? Got some hot gossip?”

“Kunsel thinks Lazard’s trying murder Heidegger’s nephew.”

“You said to keep it quiet!” Kunsel exclaimed, stung by her casual betrayal of his confidence. 

“Reno thinks the same thing. Don’t you, Reno?”

The slimy weasel nodded. He couldn’t speak because his mouth was crammed with food. Bent almost double, he’d lowered his face to within inches of his plate and was shovelling chips down his throat at an alarming speed; Kunsel was amazed he didn’t choke. 

“Reno was saying just the other day how weird it is that Lazard keeps sending Roche on missions above his pay grade. He said it’s almost as if he wants to get rid of him. Didn’t you, Reno?”

Reno nodded, jaw masticating furiously, and swallowed with an audible gulp. His neck was so skinny Kunsel could see the lump of food making its way down his gullet. 

“Lazard never wanted Roche in the first place,” said Cissnei. “It’s obvious he doesn’t have what it takes to be a SOLDIER.”

Kunsel bristled a little on his protegé’s behalf. “Roche can fight.”

“He’s mental,” said Reno, pausing between mouthfuls. “That’s why the Chief wouldn’t take him.”

Kunsel stared at Cissnei. “What?”

“Didn’t you know? Heidegger asked us first. The Chief said no.”

“But Heidegger - “

“Hates us, yeah,” said Reno. “But still wanted to dump that wingnut on us; wanted it real bad. Says it all, really.  

“Heidegger complained to the President about it,” said Cissnei. “He asked the President to force us to take Roche. But the President refused. He said Roche could go into SOLDIER instead.”

“So it was the President’s doing?”

“Yep,” said Reno.

“So… it’s the President who wants Roche dead?”

Reno sputtered with laughter, and shot a look at Cissnei which clearly said, Can you believe this guy? “Dead or alive, him upstairs doesn’t give a fuck one way or the other. Roche is nobody.”

Kunsel took exception to that. “He’s not nobody.”

“Yeah, well - he’s not exactly the next Sephiroth, is he?  As a SOLDIER, he’s a massive cock up. Stands to reason Lazard wouldn’t shed any tears if he snuffed it. Easiest way of getting rid of him.”

Kunsel wasn’t sure what to think. He didn’t like Reno’s flippant tone. It didn’t please him to find that he and this Turk were of one mind when it came to Roche; he would infinitely have preferred Reno to be wrong. He owed a lot to Director Lazard. Everything, really. Whereas Reno was an obnoxious dickhead who’d never done a favour for another human being in the whole of his life, probably. On the other hand, Kunsel couldn’t deny the relief he felt hearing someone else thought Lazard’s behaviour was suspicious. It made him feel a bit less like a paranoid, traitorous ingrate. 

Lazard had no interest in helping Roche. That much was clear. But these Turks might, if he gave them a sufficiently good reason.  They could go over Director Lazard’s head to the big man himself. They could get something done. 

He said, “Roche shouldn’t be given any more treatments. They don’t agree with him.”

“Like, what, he’s allergic?” Reno snickered. “Gets an itchy rash?”

“You know what I mean.”

Reno gave him a hostile look. Kunsel gave it right back, measure for measure, locking eyes.

It was a mystery to him why all the women in their building went gaga over this Turk. What made Reno so apparently irresistible? The guy dyed his hair. He plucked his eyebrows. He waxed his chest hair. He was scrawny and ferret-faced and smelled of strange chemicals and stale cigarettes. He was rumoured to be completely undiscriminating in his choice of sexual partners, of which, rumour also had it, there were many, far too many to count. Yet Cissnei’s eyes softened and grew warm when she looked at him in a way that they never did when she directed her gaze at Kunsel.

Life was just so damn unfair sometimes.

Cissnei broke the tension. “You mean he doesn’t have the psychological resilience, right?” 

“Yes. It’s like… it’s like his gearbox is broken. He’s either in fifth or reverse. Manic or mopey. There's no in-between. He can’t get stabilised. Every time he goes for a treatment, it gets worse. He had one the week before last, a treatment I mean, and the first thing he did when he got back to the floor was order in fried chicken and donuts for everyone.”

Reno, who was worrying with his fingernails at a strand of meat trapped between his front teeth, mumbled around his hand, “You got a problem with free food?”

“He can’t afford it.”

“Beardy’ll pay.”

“Yesterday he picked a fight with Essai for no reason and knocked him out cold.”

“Sounds like a typical day in SOLDIER.” Reno flicked the fragment of meat onto his plate.

“Okay, look,” said Kunsel, “I know that from the outside it probably all looks the same to you, but I’m on the inside, and I’m telling you, Roche is a ticking time bomb. If nobody intervenes, sooner or later we’ll end up in a situation where we can’t keep him, we can’t get rid of him, and we can’t control him, and that’s going to be a problem for you . For now he’s still just about manageable, but he shouldn’t have any more treatments.”

“Is that an option?” asked Reno, looking at Cissnei.

“Kunsel did it,” she reminded him.

“Yeah, but that’s because he’s not a mental case. They had another use for him.”

“I’m still here,” said Kunsel. 

Cissnei smiled at him. Her eyes were the exact same colour as her hair, yet somehow her hair was auburn while her eyes were gold. She said, “Zack’s worried about Roche too.”

“He is?” said Kunsel, while Reno, in the same moment, said, “How do you know?”

“He told me. After your mission inside the plate, he and I went out that night for a steak at Whiteleys. He told me all about it.”

Kunsel’s heart stood still. The woman of his dreams had gone on a dinner date to Whiteley’s with Zack?

“You never told me that,” said Reno, sounding just a fraction less cocky than usual.

How many other dates had they been on?

“Because it was none of your business,” she replied sweetly.

Not Zack. Dear god, please not Zack. I can’t compete with Zack. I can’t even resent him. I’d choose Zack over me too.

“Zack said you were so worried about Roche you insisted on going on the rescue mission with him. That was really brave of you, Kunsel. He said you wouldn’t take no for an answer. He said you’re a really good healer, too. He said he was glad to have you on his team.”

“Zack said that?” He knew she was buttering him up on purpose, pandering to his ego, but it still felt good.

She nodded and smiled reassuringly. “We’ll talk to the Chief about Roche, won’t we, Reno? I think you’re right, he shouldn’t have any more treatments. The last thing we need right now is another problematic SOLDIER on our hands. I’m sure the Chief will agree. He’ll get it sorted, don’t worry. We’ll find a nice little niche for Roche somewhere.”

Reno stood up. “Well, it’s been a blast chatting with you, but duty calls. You coming, Ciss?” His hand caressed the nape of Cissnei’s neck, lightly, a little possessively, and not at all fraternally, and she didn’t brush it away. Kunsel’s good feelings evaporated. 

The two Turks left the cafeteria together, Reno’s arm slung around her shoulder, Cissnei laughing at some joke he’d whispered in her ear. For a few miserable moments Kunsel wondered if they were laughing at him. Then he took a deep breath, squared his shoulders and decided that, after all, it didn’t matter. If they could save Roche from sliding into SOLDIER dementia, then he’d happily play the fool for their amusement. He was a healer, dammit. He was going to fix this situation. He was going to make sure Roche was okay. 

He pulled out his phone and started typing:

From: Özdemir Kunsel

To: Zack Fair

Re: Snowy Village

Date: September 28th ν-εγλ 01,  1.26 pm.

So now you're in Modeoheim, eh? Isn't that near Icicle Inn, the permafrost area? It must be freezing cold out there…

Chapter Text

The news from Modeoheim was good, Kunsel supposed. Angeal dead, Genesis dead, Hollander captured. The end of the civil war. The end of an era. He wished he could have seen Zack kill Genesis. He wished Angeal hadn’t had to die. 

He hadn’t got this news through the official channels, of course. The company could hardly send round a bulletin letting everyone know SOLDIERs First Class Angeal and Genesis had been killed in action again . It was Cissnei who’d told him; she’d come down to their floor to deliver the new face to face. Zack killed them both, she said. Keep it to yourself, she said. He was grateful for her thoughtfulness half an hour later, when the order came through for two Seconds and half a dozen Thirds to ship to Modeoheim for escort duty. Kunsel wanted to take the mission, but Lazard wouldn't let him go. Roche was one of the Thirds selected. The order didn’t say who they’d be escorting or where they were going, but Kunsel knew. They were taking Hollander to Junon. The Turks would question him there. It was no more than the fucker deserved. 

He wished he knew whether Zack was okay, though it was hard to see how he could be. Zack hadn’t come back to the office. Sephiroth too was conspicuous by his absence. He had to be grieving for his friends. Lazard said Zack was being sent on an extended leave to Costa del Sol. So, Zack was going to spend the next month or so lying on a beach in the hot sun, doing nothing, brooding?  How was that supposed to help his mental state? For guys like Zack, idleness was a curse. You could frame what had happened with Angeal as a blessed release from suffering, or as a pupil’s obedience to his mentor’s final command, or as the last kind act of a devoted friend, or however you liked - still the fact remained that Zack had been forced to kill the man he admired most in the world by that man himself . How could anyone ever be the same after that? 

Roche remained in Junon for a week. Kunsel tried several times during that week to talk face-to-face with his Director about Zack, but Lazard was busy in back-to-back meetings and constantly unavailable. At the end of the week Hollander’s guard detail rotated and Roche shipped home. Kunsel took him out to the Goblins for a drink. The Turks’ table was empty. Had they all gone to Junon?

Roche didn’t have much to say about Hollander. He wanted to talk about a girl he’d met in a materia shop, the dirt bikes they’d ridden in the sand dunes when he was off duty, the new Hardy-Daytona the people in the Lower Junon showroom had so kindly allowed him to take for a spin. For our Protectors of the People? Anything!   Kunsel wondered whether they’d felt they had a choice. SOLDIERs could come across as pretty intimidating even when they didn’t mean to be. At least Roche hadn’t done his usual Roche thing of tearing off on a mad spree and totalling the bike by driving it off the end of the big cannon. He’d returned it to the showroom in one piece. Progress? 

Some tactful probing on Kunsel’s part revealed that Roche knew nothing about what had happened to Genesis and Angeal. He thought the expedition to Modeoheim had been mounted to catch Hollander alone. “To be honest,” said Roche, “In person he’s quite a let-down. From the way everyone talks about him, I was expecting an evil mad scientist. Hollander’s so drearily unremarkable you could lose him in a crowd. A mere fat, middle-aged man in dad sandals and an apple logo t-shirt that could have come from a charity shop bin.”

Ah yes, thought Kunsel, the Banora connection. “Evil doesn’t always look like evil,” he said.

“If I’d known the fellow was a wanted criminal, I’d have said something earlier.”

These words set Kunsel’s skin tingling. Something important was about to drop, something key; he could sense it. He sat up. “Roche, what do you mean?”

“I’ve seen him before. I’m certain it was him. He was wearing the same shirt and sandals.”

Kunsel did some rapid mental calculations. Hollander had defected from Shinra at the same time as the Mass Desertion Incident, which had taken place before Roche joined SOLDIER. There was no way Roche could have met him in any official capacity. “Where did you see him? In Midgar?”

“Yes, right here, in our building.”

“When, Roche?”

“It was the day the building was attacked. Back in… April, I think? I was on my way to the Drum, and I saw him in one of the side rooms off the corridor.”

“You saw Hollander?” 

“Yes.”

“You’re sure about this?”

“Absolutely. I clearly remember thinking how unhygienic he looked, for a scientist. Director Lazard was talking to him. I was afraid the Director was coming to check on me, so I didn’t stop. I was in a hurry to get to my post.”

Kunsel’s blood ran hot and cold. Roche had no idea what he was saying. He didn’t seem to understand that this was the kind of knowledge that got men killed.

Misreading Kunsel’s horror-stricken face, Roche exclaimed, “I didn’t know it was Hollander. He looked so normal. He was wearing a lab coat. I thought he was one of the lab technicians. If I’d known the Director was in danger I’d never have left him alone with him, I swear.”

Kunsel couldn’t speak. Waves of dizziness threatened to overthrow him. He felt as if he’d stepped out of a fog only to find himself standing on the edge of a precipice looking down on a dangerous landscape, and seeing, in its entirety, for the first time, all the twists and turns of the road that had brought them to this pass. 

“I should have mentioned it sooner,” said Roche gloomily, shoulders slumping.

“Who else have you told?”

“No one - “

“Good. That’s good. You did good, buddy. You were right. It’s not something to talk about. You don’t want to get yourself in trouble. Now I’ve gotta go somewhere for a minute. You just sit tight, okay? Be cool. Don’t talk to anyone.”

“Where are you going?”

“Nowhere. Just to take a slash…”

In the men’s washrooms, Kunsel shut the cubicle door and sat down on the toilet to have a think. He knew he needed to think fast. He couldn’t trust Roche to remember who else he’d told. Treason was a capital offense, and the reward offered for information leading to the arrest of traitors was enough to buy a Hardy-Daytona. For a Board member, for the President’s own illegitimate son? Maybe two Hardy-Daytonas. The question to which Kunsel urgently needed to find an answer was not whether he’d pass Roche’s information on, but how.  It was a question of what he owed to Director Lazard, what he owed to himself, what he owed to his comrades, and how to strike a balance between these conflicting loyalties, so that he could live with his conscience when he woke up tomorrow, and all the tomorrows after that.  

Chapter Text

In his years with SOLDIER, Kunsel had seen a lot of guys come and go. 

His Ma and Pa had loved him dearly, but they were poor farmers with too many mouths to feed, and at fourteen he’d left home with their blessing to join the Shinra army and get paid for seeing the world. He’d done all right in the infantry; he had a good eye and a steady aim, and they were training him to be a sniper. Then somebody said, “Hey, you ever thought of going into SOLDIER?” and he’d put his name down. He couldn’t remember now why he’d decided to do that. At fifteen, his ambitions were simple: fame, girls, money. 

The intake officer made him sign off on a document listing potential side effects, which included, but were not limited to, disability, deformity, shortened life expectancy, and death. Kunsel didn’t bother to read it properly. Future-him could worry about those things. Anyway, who wanted to live forever? Better a short life with glory than a long life as a mediocre nobody. Right?

He was one of thirty-eight boys in his year’s summer intake group. They’d stopped taking girls a couple of years before. To teenage Kunsel it was so obvious girls didn’t belong in SOLDIER that he never stopped to wonder why they’d changed their policy; later, when it finally occurred to him to ask, Director Lazard said it was because, after they introduced the revised treatment protocol, all the girl candidates died. 

Twenty-nine of the thirty-eight boys passed the initial SOLDIER assessment course. Kunsel’s final report rated him mostly average, with outstanding grades in only three metrics: sharpshooting, psychological stability, and personal relationships. Everybody liked Kunsel. Kunsel got on with everybody.  For some reason, people who needed help seemed to gravitate towards him. All his life people had been opening up to him, sharing things they’d never told anyone else.  His Ma called it his gift.

The day for their first enhancement treatment arrived. Everyone was excited, and a little nervous too. What would it be like? Would it hurt? Would they be able to take it like a man, or would they break down and blub like a little girl? When it was over, they’d be different, but how exactly would they be different? Would they be able to feel it right away? They all dreamed of becoming a second Sephiroth. 

The medical staff took the boys through in batches of six. First they changed into hospital gowns. Then they were given a transfusion, which took about an hour. They watched Stamp videos while they waited. The staff laughed and joked with them, and promised them tea and cookies when it was all over. Then they were taken into a room containing six large glass tubes surrounded by complicated Shinra-style machinery, reassuringly futuristic. Each boy was asked to climb inside one of the tubes and sit on the chair provided. Kunsel’s machine was operated by a woman with a motherly air. Sweet dreams , she mouthed through the glass as she turned the dial.

The next time he opened his eyes he was lying on a bed in a hospital room not much bigger than a closet: dim fluorescent light, white-tiled floor and walls, narrow white metal bed with crinkly paper sheets. No windows, except for one small round window set in the stainless steel door, and a peaceful silence, broken only by the quiet beeping of the medical machines clustered round the head of his bed. They sounded as if they were having a conversation with each other, one that didn’t include him. 

He didn’t feel any different. There was no discomfort or pain. Had the treatment failed, was that why he was here? He didn’t feel sick. He just felt normal. Could he find someone to ask? 

The electrodes stuck to his skin peeled off easily. He jumped down from the bed, walked to the door, turned the handle. It opened.

The corridor was white-tiled like his room. Doors identical to the one through which he’d just emerged were set in the walls at regular intervals. A trick of the light or perspective made the corridor look endless. He felt he was walking in a dream. 

He went to the first door and looked through its little window. Figgis was sitting up in his bed reading a magazine. Kunsel rapped on the window, but Figgis didn’t hear. Were the rooms soundproof?  He tried the handle. The door was locked. He wondered why his own door hadn’t been locked. Had it deliberately been left open? Or had the person whose job it was to lock the doors been careless, forgetful? Had they failed to double-check?

On such minor oversights could the entire course of a life turn. 

He  crossed the corridor and looked through another window. Nobody was there. The bed was empty, the paper bedsheets rumpled and torn, a long smear of what looked like blood on the wall. 

Sebastian was in the next room. He was busy wanking, and didn’t notice Kunsel’s face at the window. Kunsel moved on. 

In the next room, Majok lay fast asleep.

In the next room the bed was empty, the sheets were bloody, and a naked boy - it had to be either Aguirre or Loic - was standing in the furthest corner, face turned to the wall, beating his forehead against the tiles, slowly, rhythmically, like a metronome. Bright red blood stained the tiles. The boy’s bare skin had taken on a blueish tinge. Darker, viscous streaks of blood ran down his back from an open wound on his left shoulder. Something was sticking out of it, moving. A flap of skin, burnt skin - No, a bone, a blackened bone, with shreds of rubbery skin hanging from it like a garbage bag on a stick. It was twitching -

I want to wake up now , thought Kunsel.

A door slammed; hard-soled feet came running towards him. He turned around, saw the medical staff, the lady doctor who had wished him sweet dreams. “What did he see?” she asked the others. Her eyes were hard. He knew he’d done something wrong. He shouldn’t have left his room. Fear seized him; he began to sob like a child. 

“I want to go home. Please, I want to go home. I want my ma. I don’t want to do this any more - “

The lady doctor told the orderlies to take him away. They grabbed him by the arms. Where was the super-strength he’d been promised? He couldn’t break free. 

“Let him go,” said Director Lazard. He must have come in following the others. “I’ll take him.”

Back then, the Director was the new kid in SOLDIER. He’d only been in his job a few months, and had wanted - he explained to Kunsel - to see with his own eyes what the treatment process involved. Kunsel was far too young himself then to understand just how young Lazard was. The Director took him to his inner office, gave him a third-class uniform to wear, made him a sweet mug of hot cocoa, told him to rest, and went to his desk, where he busied himself with some paperwork. Kunsel sipped his cocoa and began to feel that maybe everything was going to be okay after all. He was, by nature, an optimist. 

Eventually the Director put down his pen and came over to sit beside him. “You do realise, don’t you, that you can’t go home? You signed a contract; we have to hold you to it. Desertion is a very serious offense.”

Kunsel’s fingers tightened around the still-warm mug. He wasn’t going to start bleating again, not in front of his Director. Moreover, he sensed a compromise was in the offing. The Director’s face was grave, but he had kind eyes. 

The Director said, “I’m sorry about your friends. Not everybody makes it. That’s how it is, I’m afraid.”

“Am I going to grow bat wings?”

“No, I don’t think so. I’m told that the negative side effects usually manifest themselves immediately. I think you’re safe on that front.”

“Phew!” Kunsel forced a laugh.

“But we have a different problem. You’ve seen some things you shouldn’t have seen.”

He should have stayed in his room! He knew it! How could he have been so stupid? Damn and blast whoever left his door open. Double damn and blast his cursed curiosity! His Ma always said it would be the death of him. 

“I won’t tell anyone, I swear, sir. I promise!”

“I believe you. Do you know what I’ve just been doing? Reading your intake assessments. You’re a clever boy, aren’t you? You can put two and two together. And they say you’re good with people. I think someone with your skillset would be wasted on the battlefield. I’ve a different job in mind for you, one I think would suit you perfectly. In fact, I’ve been looking for a candidate with your profile for a while now. But it would mean no more treatments, so you’d have to give up any dreams you might have of making First. Are you interested?” 

Since that day, Kunsel had seen a lot of SOLDIERs come and go. Some of them didn’t make it past the first treatment. When the ones who’d survived asked what had happened to their friends, it was Kunsel’s job to assure them that Shinra always took care of its own, and then report back to Director Lazard on their reactions. He befriended the new guys, showed them the ropes, made them feel they had someone they could talk to. He kept Director Lazard informed about the state of the department’s morale. He monitored their mental health and let Lazard know if a SOLDIER’s mind was slipping. He watched the Thirds particularly closely. The Seconds were at less risk of going mad. They’d proved their resilience.

It was mostly thanks to Kunsel that Director Lazard enjoyed the reputation of having his finger on the pulse of his department. Months before the Mass Desertion Incident, Kunsel had warned Lazard something big was brewing; he’d warned him at least a dozen times, but Lazard hadn’t done anything about it, which was most unlike him, and had deeply pissed Kunsel off; he feared getting thrown under the bus when the shit hit the fan. After working so closely with Lazard for many years, Kunsel knew something about the Director that not a lot of other people knew. Beneath his facade of stern decency, Lazard Deusericus was a ruthless man. 

Would he sacrifice whomever he needed to sacrifice in order to serve his own ends? Even if that meant the deaths of scores of his own men? Of course he would. He was a Shinra. 

Kunsel took out his PHS. He was about to send what might possibly be the most important message of his life. He couldn’t afford to get a single word wrong. The Turks would go through Lazard’s phone records for sure. He had to phrase his message in a way that left room for plausible deniability, while at the same allowing Lazard to decipher the warning hidden between the lines.  

From: Özdemir Kunsel

To: Lazard Deusericus

Re: New information about Hollander - URGENT

Date: October 5 ν-εγλ 01,  9.14 pm.

Sir

While I was debriefing Roche just now he said something that imho requires your urgent attention. He says that on the afternoon of April 20th, he saw you talking to Professor Hollander in one of the corridors leading to the Drum. As you know Roche’s memory is unreliable to say the least, but he insists he recognised you both. If this rumour starts spreading it could damage your reputation. I am sure there is some simple explanation that will account for this case of mistaken identity. I hope you can do something a.s.a.p.

Kunsel hit send , flipped the PHS shut, counted to ten, took a deep breath, wished fervently that none of this had ever happened, then flipped the phone open again and started typing:

HelmetHead: Cissnei, you around? Can we meet in your office, in an hour from now? We need to talk….

Chapter Text

At 21:35 hrs on Wednesday 5th October, Lazard Deusericus ordered a company helicopter to fly him to Fort Condor. 

At 21:58 hrs, the helicopter took off from the Shinra Building rooftop helipad. 

At 22:41 hrs, a party of SPPD troopers under the command of Tseng of the Turks arrived at the SOLDIER Director’s office to put him under arrest. A second detachment of troopers under the command of Judith of the Turks arrived at the Director’s penthouse at 22:46 hrs.  

At 01:02 hrs the following day, the helicopter landed on a small plateau in the Mithril Mountains and the crew were forced out at gunpoint. 

Two days later, the burnt-out remains of the helicopter were discovered in a remote field ten miles north-west of the village of Luca Paula in Junon province. The Shinra army mounted a search and rescue operation, but the body of Lazard Deusericus was never found. His fate was officially recorded as missing in action.

At SOLDIER 2nd Class Kunsel Özdemir’s treason trial, which was held in camera , the prosecution could only produce one piece of evidence against him: the email he had sent to Director Lazard on 05.10.01, which, it was argued, was intended to forewarn him that his treason had been discovered, and had thus precipitated the Director’s flight. Cissnei of the Turks, Tseng of the Turks, 3rd Class SOLDIER Neil Roche and 1st Class SOLDIER Sephiroth, among others, testified to Kunsel Özdemir’s good character and loyal service. It was rumoured that the bench (Heidegger, M., SPPD Director; Veld, P., DAR Director; Shinra, R., Vice-President) were split on the verdict, but before they could hand down their judgement the President himself intervened with a pre-emptive pardon. 

Subsequent investigations revealed that Director Lazard had been defrauding the company on a massive scale for years, submitting false accounts and inflated expenses claims, and withholding or underpaying the wages of the men under his command. In a move that proved very popular with both the armed forces and the public, President Shinra compensated the SOLDIERs for their lost earnings out of his own pocket, and added a bonus. “For good luck,” he said.

SOLDIER was subsumed into and became a division of Shinra’s Peace Preservation Department, where certain persons thought it should have been all along. Director Veld offered Kunsel Özdemir a job in Administrative Research, but, after giving the matter due consideration, Kunsel turned it down. Regardless of who was in charge,  SOLDIERs would always need someone to keep an eye on their mental health, and who was better equipped for that task than he? When Zack and Sephiroth were K.I.A’ed at Nibelheim he thought long and hard about a sideways move. The department just wouldn’t be the same without Zack, and he didn’t know if he could stand it. But he couldn’t abandon the guys in their hour of need. He remained at his post, and when SPPD formed its Psych-Med division in ν-εγλ 04, Kunsel Özdemir was appointed to run it, a position which he holds to this day. 

On Kunsel’s advice, Director Heidegger redeployed SOLDIER Third Class Neil Roche into the Highways Patrol Division. In order to carry out his new duties Roche was issued with a Hardy-Daytona for his exclusive use, which means there’s one person, at least, who found the ending of this story to be entirely satisfactory.