FF7-AC: Empire: Chapter 1; Updated

X-Project: [FF7-AC] Developer Name: Empire
 
Characters: Rufus, Cloud
Preliminary rating: G
Status: Incomplete
Started: October 2, 2005; 2200 hours approx.
 
I
 
A single lamp flickered unsteadily in the room, providing barely enough illumination for him to read by. Tseng would have nagged, ever concerned about his damaged eyesight. But Tseng wasn’t there; nor were the rest of the Turks. Reno and Rude had left just hours ago, taking the company helicopter with them, vanishing off into the night after Tseng and Elena, who had left a day or so earlier.
 
And so he was alone, except for the reports.
 
The reports. There was a whole network of Shinra employees out there now, each relaying data and numbers and analyses to the President, even if not a single one of them knew where the President was. The reports went to the Turks, and from the Turks to himself, and his orders went the other way, all without even revealing his location. Direct contact was limited to PHS, all heavily encrypted and typically routed through remote locations to prevent tracing, and even that was typically restricted to a select group and only for emergencies.
 
It was better that way. Safer. It meant that he could spare all four of his bodyguards instead of requiring one or two hovering over his shoulder at any one time, and it meant that Tseng had one less thing to nag about.
 
It should have meant that there wouldn’t be any one troubling him here in Healin. It should have meant that no one even knew where he was.
 
But apparently the only two non-Turks to whom he had revealed his location did not have the good graces to respect his privacy.
 
-
 
Rufus sighed when the door opened. He had locked it, of course, but the lock was a flimsy affair, and evidently his unwanted and uninvited guest wasn’t in the mood to take no as an answer. Heavy footsteps rang across the parquet floor, moving through the living room and headed for his makeshift office. Definitely not any of the Turks, then. Tseng and Elena were quieter, Reno’s footsteps faster, and Rude’s more deliberate.
 
The vision in his good eye was swimming from focusing on the tiny letters for too long. Paper was in such dire shortage here that employees had an awful tendency to squeeze as much text onto one sheet as possible, cutting the margins to non-existence and reducing the font size to something better viewed under a microscope. But it was necessary, so—
 
“Rufus.”
 
“Good evening.” He blinked, but did not take his attention away from the report. “I’m afraid that you come at a busy time…”
 
“Hard at work rebuilding Shinra company?”
 
A black shape loomed at the other end of his desk, and placed a gentle but firm hand on the piece of paper that he was – that he had been reading. Reluctantly, Rufus set the paper aside and looked up, squinting.
 
“Cloud-san. How may I help you?”
 
Cloud Strife had not changed since Rufus had last saw him: decked out in the same black ensemble with the silver wolf’s head tacked to one shoulder pad and a red ribbon tied to one arm. His expression was grim, a slight frown gracing his face, as his eyes – glowing mako eyes – bore into Rufus’ own. “I will not let you rebuild Shinra.”
 
Rufus found his gaze flicking to the massive Buster Sword strapped to Strife’s back, before returning to ex-Soldier’s face. He leaned back against his wheelchair, sliding his arms to the armrests, in a position that made it easier to draw the pistol that rested in the belt holster. The gun was a comforting weight against his side, and for the briefest moment he did consider drawing it, and ordering Strife out of the room. But he discarded that thought as quickly as it came; force had not availed him the night of his ascendancy to office; it would certainly not avail him now.
 
“It will not be the Shinra of old,” he said instead, keeping his expression earnest and sincere. “As I said in our previous meeting, we have a large debt to repay the world, and I intend to do so. How, that does require resources, which in turn requires me to rebuild Shinra company.”
 
Strife’s scowl only deepened further. “I have no reason to believe you.”
 
“You have no reason to doubt me,” Rufus countered.
 
“I do. Shinra Inc has done nothing but lie to us in the past. Why should it be any different now?”
 
Rufus tapped his fingers against the armrest, a move calculated to draw Strife’s attention to the wheelchair. Let the boy really notice it. Let the boy see the difference; let his better sense draw the right conclusions.
 
“Everything is different now. Diamond Weapon and Meteor made sure of that.”
 
“But you’re still Rufus Shinra.”
 
Rufus snorted. “Hardly. The name remains the same, but people change.” He chuckled, deprecatingly. “I was young and arrogant and foolish back then. I apologize. You could say I’ve seen the error of my ways.” He rummaged in the stack of files, squinting at the titles, and pulled one out. “Hydroelectric power for the Nibelheim region. Geothermal from the Northern Crater. Wave power for Junon and Costa de Sol, and, of course, solar and wind power. We’re looking into alternative energy sources now. There may have to be some fall back on coal in the interim… alternative energy sources are notoriously inefficient, but a great deal better than mako, you’d agree.”
 
“I wasn’t talking about mako energy.” Strife shoved the file aside. “I was talking about Shinra’s world domination.”
 
“Cloud.” The fatigue that leaked into his face was not feigned. “Do you remember why Shinra became so powerful?”
 
“Money,” Strife supplied immediately. “And force. You controlled—“
 
“—Shinra was a company. Publicly listed, incorporated, guaranteed by shares. There was no way a mere electric company could gain that much -- excuse the pun, power – unless people allowed it into their lives. And they did. Willingly. With open arms.”
 
“And then you lied to them. Before killing them,” Strife growled, clearly losing patience.
 
Rufus made a tired gesture towards one of the chairs. “Sit down.”
 
“I did not come here to hear your excuses.”
 
“Sit down, please.”
 
There was a long silence, before Strife, with obvious reluctance, pulled up a chair. He pulled the Buster Sword from its scabbard across his back before sitting, placing the blade across his knees in a clear gesture of threat. Rufus gave it a slightly disgusted glance. “Ruling by fear?”
 
Strife had the decency to look slightly abashed. “Coming from someone who quoted that in his inauguration speech?”
 
“Like I said before, everything has changed.” He flicked his fingers at the surroundings. “Shinra no longer has an army. It will not have an army so long as I am President. And I’m quite certain that, should I meet an untimely demise, you will continue to ensure that my successor will not go the way of my father. And without an army, it is hardly possible to rule by fear.” He smiled, briefly. “You taught me that much. Fear doesn’t take you very far, because there are always people who don’t know the meaning of it.”
 
“You still haven’t told me why I should believe you.”
 
“I’ve been trying to tell you.” Rufus leaned forward slightly. “Perhaps you fail to understand my situation. I have never had the martial prowess that you have, Cloud. And now, if I were to try and walk across this room unaided, I would fall even before I was half way across. When Diamond Weapon hit my office, a piece of metal the size of your sword lodged itself in my spinal cord. Do you think that, lying in the flaming wreckage of your room, completely blind in the aftermath of the blast and choking on the smoke and on my blood and unable to even crawl for safety… do you not think that that would change a person rather drastically?”
 
Strife obviously thought that his face was a study in inscrutability. It was quite far from that, actually. Rufus could see him wavering.
 
“It wasn’t the Turks who saved me. It wasn’t even any of the top Shinra executives. It was a bunch of junior employees and non-Shinra rescue teams who dug me out of there before I bled to death. It was a husband and wife doctor team that nursed me back to health in a free public hospital, not caring a whit if I couldn’t repay them. People who owed me nothing. People who didn’t care what my last name was, or what I had done, or what I would do if they put me back on my feet. People who saw another human being suffering and rushed to help out of the goodness of their hearts.” Simple words, Rufus. Don’t confuse the boy. And keep it short.
 
“But they must have known who you were.”
 
“Of course they did. And yet they chose to save me. They could have well let me die. Would you have let me die?” his gaze sharpened, focused, on Strife’s eyes.
 
Strife looked away. “I…”
 
Rufus let him squirm in the agony of indecision for a long minute, before speaking again. “I never found out who they were. They may have died in Meteor’s fall; I know that they refused to leave their patients and evacuate to safety.” Rather, I know that they’re still around and enjoying the sudden anonymous donation of a wealth of Restore materia, but it sounds rather more dramatic this way, don’t you think? “But I, and Shinra, owe them a debt we cannot repay. I can only hope that, by bringing aid to Midgar, and by working as fast as we can to switch to non-Mako based forms of energy, that we can at least ensure that their sacrifice was not in vain.”
 
He was tempted to sit back, now that the important words and phrases had all been said. But some instinct warned that to move now would be to break the spell that his words had woven, and undo all his hard work in the face of Strife’s – unwarranted and excessive – suspicion.
 
“You… could have used another name, at least,” Strife said at last, and only then did Rufus feel himself relaxing, in the knowledge that half the battle was won.
 
“Would it really have made a difference when people found out that it was Rufus Shinra at the helm of the company anyway?” he smiled gently. “I admit to a certain amount of selfish desire to redeem the Shinra name as well, while I’m getting Planet back on its feet. After all, the only reason why we’re actually in a position to help anyone know is because of all the money we made as the old Shinra Inc.”
 
He could almost see a strange thought flicker across Strife’s mind, as the other’s face darkened abruptly. “But you’re firing up Mako reactors! That’s the whole reason I came here in the first place. If you were really into alternative energy and all that, you would be abandoning the reactors.” Strife’s grip on the sword’s hilt tightened slightly. Rufus could practically see the word ‘You lying bastard’ hanging in the air between them.
 
Oh brilliant. And he said earlier that he wasn’t talking about mako. I should call him on that. He massaged a temple, feeling one of those mind-splitting headaches coming on. “Have you been back to Midgar recently?”
 
“Of course. The 7^th Heaven is there. Or at the Edge, at least.”
 
“And do you have any power?”
 
“What?”
 
“Do you have any electricity?” Obligingly, the tiny lamp on his table flickered unsteadily for a few moments, then died completely.
 
“No, of course not…”
 
In the sudden darkness of the room, Cloud’s pale skin and hair stood out in stark contrast to his black attire. That and the silver gleam of the unsheathed sword across his knees.
 
“The hospitals need power, Cloud,” Rufus said tiredly. “We’ve survived too long in a society run on electricity to live without it. But right now we’re supplying it only to people who desperately need it. Like the hospitals, and secondary sectors that support them. And the transport sector, because they’re the ones charged with shipping in supplies and shipping out refugees. And we’re supplying that power for free. You’d also be interested to know that we aren’t drawing from the Lifestream either. We’re using whatever residue processed mako we had stored before Meteor hit, and research indicates that we may be able to use materia.” He was speaking almost on autopilot now, his tired eyes glued to Strife’s face, watching every expression, every muscle that twitched, every move of those elegant gold eyebrows. The ability to read people had been a skill he had been forced to learn early, necessary as it was to survive in Shinra politics.
 
“We’re in a transition period,” he continued, when Strife made no comment. Stoicism. How very typical of him. “I have people working around the clock to bring wind turbines online, because there’s no way solar powered systems could work in Midgar. You know what the weather there is like. But in the meantime, we can’t just let people die.”
 
“And using mako that’s already been harvested can’t deplete the Lifestream any further,” Strife said thoughtfully.
 
Good boy. Think with your brain, not with your sword.
 
 
His vision chose that moment to go, splintering into a hazy blur that he had to pause and scrub his eyes to restore. He could sense Strife stiffen up again, the moment lost, ruined, careful negotiation coming undone. Once, that would have had him spitting with rage. It would have had his father spitting with rage.
 
But Weapon taught you patience, didn’t it?
 
“We’ll be keeping an eye on you,” Strife was saying, his voice rekindled with renewed suspicion.
 
By all means, Rufus thought acidly. Flounce in at insane hours and disturb my work as you will. He blinked, and the world came slowly back into focus, revealing one ex-Soldier standing tall before his desk, his face unreadable in the shadows. Like one of those nameless, faceless internal auditors that his father had sent to plague each department—
 
Auditors.
 
A stray thought flashed into the beginnings of an idea.
 
“Actually, I would like you to do that,” he said.
 
Strife’s sudden shift betrayed his surprise. “What?”
 
Rufus shrugged, wincing as stiff shoulder muscles protested. “This office has the entirety of Shinra Inc’s files. You’re welcomed to inspect them whenever you wish.”
 
“This is a trick, isn’t it?”
 
“Public accountability. Obviously, the first step to gaining the people’s trust is transparency. Obviously, it would be terribly disruptive to allow any idle passerby to wander in and rummage through my files, but if you, a hero of the Planet and the de facto leader of Avalanche took upon yourself the role and responsibility of keeping this company in check, I’m certain that most everyone would be quite happy with that arrangement.”
 
“You want me to…”
 
Rufus resisted an urge to throw a file at him. “…audit our files, yes. Naturally, I’d request that you keep our exact plans and business arrangements in confidence. For the other parties’ sake as well, you understand.”
 
“I’m not qualified,” Strife mumbled.
 
Rufus had found the back up batteries in the meantime, slotting one into the lamp. Both of them blinked as the desk was flooded with light again.
 
“You hardly need a degree in accounting for this. You’re simply interested in knowing whether Shinra is up to something or not. Oh, if you must. You could ask Tuesti along.”
 
“Reeve?”
 
“Yes.”
 
Strife had taken that as an open invitation to start flipping through the files piled on the corner of the desk. Obviously, the man thought that if he turned his back, the totally untrustworthy President would remove all the important bits and manipulate all the data and start fooling the world all over again.
 
Rufus leaned back, closing his eyes and listening to Strife read his way through the mountains of paperwork on his desk. Lying only works once. Or twice. Or when you have something more than invalid President and a bare handful of loyal staffers to back it up. No, Strife. You should have realized merely offering to let you inspect our files shows that we have nothing to hide…
 
-
 
He might have drifted off for a moment. He wasn’t sure. All he knew was that he blinked awake to the sound of flipping paper. Strife had, apparently, disappeared.
 
Tseng would have nagged. After flipping out. Falling asleep in the presence of someone who, at last count, might have been an enemy. Or an executioner. No amount of fatigue was excusable for that.
 
A quick peep over the other edge of the desk revealed one blond ex-Soldier seated on the floor, having apparently abandoned the chair for more working space. Files and papers were strewn around him in an every increasing circle, and his face was the very picture of intense concentration.
 
Rufus glanced at the clock. A quarter past four. Fantastic.
 
“I do hope,” he said at length, “That you know how to put all of that back together again.”
 
Strife jumped, the experience of surprise on his face almost comical. He glanced at the paper trail, glanced back at Rufus, glanced back at the file he was currently massacring, then said, almost plaintively, “I thought you were sleeping.”
 
Rufus folded his arms across the desk and nearly smiled. “You could come back another time, you know. You don’t have to read everything at one shot. Besides,” he glanced at the clock again, “Having read for approximately four hours straight, I doubt you’re processing anything any more.”
 
Strife tried unsuccessfully to hide a yawn behind a fist. The Buster Sword had been kicked to one side and was currently serving as a giant paperweight. Rufus idly wondered how heavy it actually was. Certainly, Strife wielded it like it was weightless.
 
“Do as you will,” Rufus said, when Strife continued to pause in indecision. He paused to scrub his hand across his eyes again. “Just know that I’m placing a great deal of trust in you. Most of these are files that would not even pass into the hands of my senior executives.”
 
“I don’t abuse people’s trust,” Strife snorted.
 
“See that you don’t. I’m going to bed.”
 
-
 
He didn’t breathe out until the door of the bedroom clicked shut behind him. Leaving Strife like that, with the liberty to take any of those files and leave, or worse, change vital data… that was a risk, a huge risk that set every nerve afire. Rufus hated risks with a passion, and had tried to dance around them as much as he could in his younger days. In his naiveté, he had genuinely thought that ruling the world with an iron fist was the way to go – it kept everything neat, predictable, and therefore controllable.
 
Avalanche had come like… well, an Avalanche, and put an end to all of that.
 
Even if I’d covertly sponsored them to engineer the downfall of the old man…
 
He abandoned the wheelchair to limp to his bed, one hand resting against the wall for support. Walking was getting easier. Albeit slowly. Day by painful day. And even Tseng had started express hope that one day he’d be rid of the hated wheelchair entirely. But for now, emphasizing weakness as yet another way to draw a contrast between the new Shinra Inc and the old one was a fairly effective campaign ploy. And even Strife would hesitate a little before striking down a helpless enemy. Hesitate long enough to listen, at least. And that was good enough.
 
He literally collapsed into bed, shoulder hitting the mattress with enough momentum to allow him to hoist his legs over the edge. And lay there, staring up at the ceiling. Plans and designs danced briefly through his mind, as he tried to select a problem to mull over.
 
Need to send someone to check up on Corel, see what the sentiment there is like now… and that pompous fool Dio has been whining about his precious Golden Saucer again… have to find that surveyors’ report as to the situation of the oil refinery… need to remind engineering that there’s nowhere enough cooling for the natural gas plant…
 
But the schematics for the power plant were dissolving before his mind’s eye, black lines turning to gold and the fine strands of gravity defying hair. And the scribble handwritten notes by the side were lengthening to form the lines of a profile in a dark room, and a pair of glowing mako eyes.
 
-