CHAPTER 26
To say that the Shinra building was huge would be a gross understatement. At its base, it extended outward for several city blocks, and had several of its own mini Mako reactors surrounding it, just for its own power. It rose up for roughly 59 stories, and looked like an otherwise normal building in that respect. However, above that chunk of the building was a nonsensical yet aesthetically pleasing arch of metal which rose up another twenty or so stories which housed no offices or anything of the sort, and only served to hoist the remaining ten stories even higher. Two pillars with domed tops which served as SOLDIER barracks and training facilities, as well as vehicle and weapon storage, stood adjacent to the Shinra tower. They rose up to the 62nd floor, connecting at various places, their bluish tint contrasting with the orange-yellow lights flooding out of every office in the Shinra tower. Shinra apparently either had lots of workers who loved working late, or no one ever cared to turn off their damn lights.
Flood lights slowly crossed the dark sky above, further glorifying the goliath monster of a building. Either that, or a new movie was playing at the Cineplex across the street.
"Cloud, look, they came out with a new 'Server' flick! It's called 'Server: Rebooted'!" Zack explained, eyeing a poster for said movie.
"I don't care. I've already told you I didn't like the first one," Cloud responded.
"But wait... if they 'Rebooted' the Server, wouldn't all the people hooked up to it die?" he asked, directing the question towards Jessie.
"I dunno, prolly, it's just a title though I think," the hacker offered as an answer.
"-AHEM-" Dyne coughed. "Hey, guys... Shinra building, save friend, avenge evils, hello?"
"Oh, right," Zack replied with a shrug, beginning to walk away from the poster. "I find it funny that I used to work for these guys, and now I'm the kinda person that I used to have t' fight against... It's kinda trippy!"
"Zack, you find people's phone numbers funny," Cloud reminded his friend.
"No, just ones with funny combinations in them... like if there's a 6 and a 9.."
-SLAP!-
"..OW! Darn it, Tifa!"
Dyne sighed and bowed his head, continuing towards the Shinra tower, not really caring if his four companions were following him or not.
The group stuck to the shadows of the large pipe-like structures which branched out and away from the Shinra building like... uhm, branches. Zack took a gander up at his former place of employment...
"Is it just me, or is this whole building nothing more than an over-sized phallic symbol?"
"You're an over-sized phallic symbol, now shush," Tifa responded.
Zack put his arm around the busty ninja and pulled her to his side. "Well now, that's one thing we can agree on!" he replied with a smile, while holding up a peace sign with his free hand.
Tifa sighed, shaking her head and putting a hand to it. "Why do I even bother trying to talk to you?"
"Cuz you're a masochist," Zack pointed out, letting her go.
They were all near the entrance to the main lobby by now, but did not proceed much further.
"Why aren't there any guards?" Dyne mused, glancing around.
"Probably because no one's supposed to be stupid enough to try something like this," Cloud pointed out.
"They could all be busy elsewhere," Jessie suggested with a slight shrug.
"So what do we do, just waltz through the main door?" Tifa asked.
"We'd have better luck not causing a ruckus if we can find a way to sneak in undetected," Dyne said. "We'll have to fight our way out, I'm sure, but it would be easier if we didn't have to fight our way IN."
"The only real way to sneak in would be to climb up 59 flights of stairs that run all the way up the side of the building," Zack pointed out. "And besides, we'll still need a key card to access the upper ten floors. The jail is on the sixtyyy.. seventh or sixty eighth floor, and uh, yeah. We'll have to hit the 58th floor first, that's where the security office is, and where we can make ourselves a key-card. 'Cuz it's not like we'll just happen upon people willing to give us theirs or anything..."
"So the immediate question becomes how do we get to the 58th floor undetected?" Dyne asked somewhat rhetorically.
"Leave that to Cloud and me!" Zack declared, thumbing to himself and sticking out his chest.
Cloud blinked and shrugged, and tailed Zack mindlessly, who was strutting towards the building. Zack came to a halt at the steps, and looked up at the building before him. He then produced a gun-like object, along with a small grappling hook. Attaching the hook to the nuzzle of the gun, he looked over his handiwork, and with a nod of self-approval, handed the device to Cloud.
Cloud stared at the grappling hook for a long moment in disapproval, then looked up at Zack, who was beaming him a wide, expectant smile. "God, you're puerile..." he said, realizing that Zack's only intention here was yet another bad attempt at a movie-spoof. Shrugging, he aimed the device up at the 58th floor balcony, and fired it off as Zack looked on, sticking out his tongue and displaying a gangsteresque hand symbol.
The hook, now attached to a thin, yet sturdy cable, sailed through the air up towards its target... but didn't make it. It lost inertia at about the 22nd floor, and started falling back to earth. Zack's pupils shrank as the grappling hook came bearing down right towards him, threatening to introduce him to a whole new world of pain.
However, comedic convention would not prevail this day, as Zack simply snatched the deadly hook out of the air when it came close enough. He looked it over and smiled to himself.
"Oh Zack, you're so cool!" Tifa said, giving him a big, tight hug.
Jessie did the same. "You're t3h l337!"
His companions began to cheer for him: "Zack, Zack, Zack, ZACK!"
However, his vision began to blur as his companions voices faded out a bit. After a moment of darkness, he heard his name being called again. Opening his eyes, and feeling like he had practically had his skull fractured, he began to focus on what was in front of him. He was flat on his back, looking up, his companions surrounding him. Jessie was kneeling down, looking over his head.
"Zack, can you hear me?!" she said in a somewhat worried tone.
"Ow... Yeah... Wha' happ'nd?" Zack managed to mutter.
"You tried to catch the grappling hook," Dyne informed him. "But you only managed to glance it, and it smacked you square in the head. If you hadn't, you'd probably be dead."
"Way to get yourself killed before the real fun even starts," Tifa commented. "I mean, you had time to move out of the way, you know..."
"Tifa, not now," Dyne reprimanded quietly. He then turned back to Zack. "Do you think you're going to be okay?"
"He will be in a second!" Jessie proclaimed, producing one of Elmyra's elixirs. But Zack sat up, and raised his hand a little bit to stop her from using it.
"I'll be fine, just gimme a minute..." the raven-haired fighter insisted. With a shrug, Jessie hesitantly put the one-use healing Materia away.
"Any other bright ideas?" Cloud asked a bit snidely, leaning against a wall. The companions were resituated near the entrance, but off to the side so they wouldn't be seen. "I mean, I'm sure we could climb up fifty-some stories if we really HAD to, but I don't think any of us are really partial to that idea."
Zack then got up, still holding his head, but didn't seem much worse for wear otherwise. "We could try the service entrance," he humbly suggested, having just thought of it.
"Any drawbacks?" Dyne asked after thinking it over for a moment.
Zack shrugged. "Beats me, most of the cooks and janitors, if they're even here this late, are most likely underpaid, and/or foreigners. I don't think they'd be too willing or able to rat us out if we're seen. 'Sides, Cloud an' me are still in our SOLIDER togs, so it's like, the perfect disguise! And from there, we can probably access an elevator..."
"Okay, let's get moving then," Dyne said, cutting Zack off. He turned around and began to walk, Cloud, Tifa, and Jessie following.
"Uhm, guys?!" Zack called out after a moment. "The service entrance is this way," he said, thumbing behind himself. Dyne stopped and gave Zack a cold stare for a moment, but then walked in the direction Zack had indicated, ignoring the former SOLDIER's cocky smile as he passed.
Tifa grabbed Zack by the collar as she passed him, saying, "C'mon, lets get this over with..."
***
The large, pristine office of President Shinra was cloaked in semi-darkness, the only significant source of light coming from the outside. The only sounds were of an old concerto titled "The Creation" by a long-dead composer named Joseph Hayden, and of an occasional muffle that would exit President Shinra's mouth. He glared out his window with glassed-over eyes, a nearly empty bottle of rum in his hand. He could see the ruined debris of what was once sectors Six, Seven, and Eight far below him. Doubt and worry began to plague his mind, emotions he was unused to. Of course this was AVALANCHE's fault, he knew that. It was AVALANCHE which caused so much trouble to begin with. It was AVALANCHE who linked the plates together, causing three of them to fall instead of just one.
The President's predominantly omnipresent red blazer was hung over his chair sloppily, which he eventually turned back towards to put back on. Hobbling over, even his cane could not support his weight in his drunken state, causing him to fall flat on his face. The bottle he was holding smashed against the floor, spilling what little was left of its contents mixed with the glass shards which had once made up the container. Shinra struggled to get up, and managed to force himself into his chair. Breathing deeply, he rested his head on his desk for a moment, and fumbled around sloppily for his intercom button.
There was a moment of static, but his secretary finally answered. "Yes sir?"
"Shet up a meetin' with alla my executives... make it in an hour," the inebriated President managed to slush out.
"Yes sir. Oh sir, Professor Hojo has requested an audience with you..."
"Tell 'im t' come t' th' meetin'," Shinra replied with a yawn.
"Yes sir. Will there be anything else, sir? You sound kind of strange..."
"Yeah.. jush' wake me up in time f'r my meetin'..."
...and with that, he passed out.
***
Getting in through the service entrance was uneventful for the AVALANCHE members. The green metal door was open, and they snuck in unseen while a fourteen year old boy was trying to dispose of a bag of trash bigger then himself. They walked quietly down the long, mostly white corridor. The floor was composed of white and green square tiles, and was nearly spotless. This changed as the AVALANCHErs marched across it, spreading the dirt and grime from their boots and clothing that had accumulated on them from when the plate went down. When the hallway "T"ed off, Zack led them to the right, towards the kitchens, explaining that they most likely had service elevators. The industrial-sized kitchens were empty, and cleaned near-spotless. Zack took a small detour and grabbed some chips, fruit and soft drinks, as nothing else seemed too readily edible.
"Well, it's nice to see that you think of other things besides sex," Tifa observed as Zack tore into a bag of chips and began munching on them. He looked at her blankly, and offered her an unopened bag. She opted for an apple instead.
While the others snacked, Dyne had found one of the service elevators. It was large and plain, and seemed designed to facilitate deliveries of large carts of food to the above floors. The AVALANCHE leader called the others over, informing them of his discovery. Zack was about to go in when Dyne put his good hand on the former SOLDIER's arm.
"Wait," Dyne warned. He looked to Jessie, who nodded and peered inside the mechanical lift. She looked back to Dyne and shook her head as a warning, and put up a finger.
"Camera," Jessie explained, "...but leave it to me."
The hacker began to concentrate on her Water Materia, mentally focusing on a target she couldn't see. She was satisfied when the sound of water hitting delicate electric equipment was quickly followed by a spark. Confident that the camera had been disabled, she dared to look in the elevator. Up in the corner near the door, a small black piece of glass showed no signs of operation, its blinking red light which Jessie had seen before having gone out. "We're good!" she confirmed, stepping fully into the service elevator. The others followed without hesitation.
***
*blee blee blee!*
"Mwuh?"
A Shinra security officer stirred in his chair, being awakened by the sound which dared to intrude on his nap-time. He lazily looked at the twenty or so screens which circled in front of him, trying to discern which of them was trying to garner his attention. Off to his right, a red light flashed, but there was nothing but a black screen above it.
Raising an eyebrow, the man in a red variant of the MP uniform tapped the screen absent mindedly, not knowing what to make of this particular situation. He clicked a few keys on his switchboard, bringing up a menu on a flat information display screen which was integrated into the switchboard. It said that there was a malfunction with the camera in one of the service elevators. The man cursed to himself and picked up a phone, and dialed for maintenance.
He got an answering machine.
Shit, they must've all gone home... SHIT, what time is it?! Aah screw it...
Leaving a message to check out the elevator first thing in the morning, the security officer pulled his helmet over his eyes, laid back in his chair, and proceeded to fall back asleep.
...Shinra security at its finest. Seriously.
***
"Floor 58: Security, Policing, Turks offices, Bedware and furniture! Hope you enjoy shopping at Seers!"
"Zack, shut up and be serious for a change."
Accompanied by a cheerful "ding!", the service elevator doors on the 58th floor quietly slid open, allowing its five occupants to exit. The 58th floor was very plain, with gray metal walls, a green plastic tile floor, and a 12-foot ceiling composed almost exclusively of florescent lights. The hallway went to the right and left of the elevator, giving the team pause while they decided which way to go. Zack had to mentally figure out where the normal elevators were as a point of reference, then calculate where they needed to go to best get to the main security office. The whole floor was a small maze, and they could find what they were looking for eventually, but the time would be better spent figuring out the quickest way to their destination.
The sounds of footsteps from off to the left broke Zack's short-spanned attention. Everyone quickly piled back into the elevator, Cloud rapidly hitting the "close door" button, forgetting that "close door" never did anything. The twin metal barriers eventually slid shut with a hiss, as the AVALANCHE members held their breaths, waiting for whoever it was to pass.
The footsteps got closer and louder.. it sounded like there were two, maybe three people coming their way. Tense moments dragged by as the footsteps reached their closest possible location to the elevator... and stopped.
Shit was the unanimous thought among those inside the lift. Dyne raised his gun-arm, while Zack reached for his sword. A chime went off, and the doors re-opened.
Zack charged, but only made it a half a step before he was paused by what was in front of him.
He was a small, older man with a deep tan who wore faded blue slacks, a red tee shirt and a white apron. He was pushing a small plastic yellow cart containing several cleaning agents and supplies, such as bleach, window washer spray, a broom which would hit the ground as it was moved, a mop, a few rolls of paper towels and the like. He squeezed himself and his cart into the service elevator, and in a raspy voice requested Cloud to hit the button for the first floor.
"Uh, Actually, this is our floor, so, uh, you'll have to excuse me... us... yeah..." Cloud stammered as he tried to squeeze past the cart and out the door. The janitor just looked at the five intruders with ignorant eyes as they exited and shrugged to himself.
"Okay," Zack started as the elevator door closed, "I think we need to go this way," Zack said, indicating towards the left, which is where another series of footsteps began to emerge.
"You've gotta be kidding me," Cloud muttered, drawing the Hard Edge.
Two MPs turned the corner, talking to themselves, something about a cute new secretary, not even aware of what was going on. In less time that it would be worth to describe, they were completely knocked out.
"If someone finds these bodies, they'll know something's up," Jessie commented.
Dyne looked down the hallway to the right, and saw a door at the end of it labeled "Janitor's closet". "We can hide them in there," he suggested. Zack shook his head in disproval.
"Nuh uh, that's Tseng's office," The former SOLDIER explained.
"But it says.."
"Trust me, it's Tseng's office. As for these two hapless saps..." Zack said as he proceeded to pry the elevator doors open, "I think you get the idea..."
Cloud and Tifa dumped the unconscious (and probably soon-to-be dead) bodies down the shaft without hesitation, though Cloud did feel a bit guilty about it. He'd be damned if anyone realized that though, so he didn't say anything.
"So wait, Tseng's office is disguised as a Janitor's closet?" Dyne inquired.
"Nuh uh, they just stuck him in an actual janitor's closet cuz no one likes him," Zack answered.
Dyne smiled at this, and made a mental note to tell Biggs about that one.
The five companions slowly made their way down the hallway and turned the corner, looking and listening for anyone else who may have been coming, but there was no sign of anyone. Changing their pace, the AVALANCHEers hurried down that corridor as quietly as they could until they came to another fork. They could either go left, straight, or right. Zack peered off to the right, and watched as a bathroom door opened, and hate filled his eyes as a person with a rather familiar red mohawk and wearing a blue suit emerged and began walking the other way. Dyne saw this too and smiled, and was about to ready his gun when Zack waived him off.
With hardly a sound, Zack ran up behind Johnny and clocked him hard in the back of the head, sending him to the ground. The traitor began to groan as Zack picked him up and dragged him back into the bathroom, which smelled reaaallly bad. The others quickly followed him in, becoming assaulted by the stench in the process. Cloud stayed by the door to block it while Zack, Dyne, Tifa and Jessie pinned Johnny in a corner.
"Well, well, WELL, lookie who we have here!" Zack mused wickedly, pushing on Johnny roughly.
The punker came to his senses and was about to yell out when Dyne shoved the nozzle of his gun into the man's mouth. "Didn't think you'd see us again so soon, did ya, Johnny?" Dyne spat, though wearing a mischievous smile. Johnny gazed at Dyne defiantly and flipped him the middle finger.
Without warning, Tifa punched the man hard in the gut, forgetting about the small bladed claws on her knuckles and drawing blood. Johnny tried to buckle over, but Zack and Dyne held him up, so he had to make do with a groan. Jessie followed with a quick snap-kick to the nuts, causing the punker to buckle up his legs and letting gravity pull him down. Johnny found that his mouth had fallen away from Dyne's weapon, and took the opportunity to yell out, but was kicked in the mouth for his trouble by Zack, breaking a few of his teeth.
"Shut the FUCK UP!" Zack yelled menacingly, though not loud enough to alert anyone who may have been nearby. He roughly picked the former AVALANCHE member up, then threw his head into a near-by sink. Johnny snapped back as he collided and fell back to the ground, where he lay on his side. He made an absent-minded grab for the nunchucks in his jacket, but Tifa's foot intercepted his hand and pinned it to the ground with a disturbing crunch.
"I don't think so," Tifa said slowly, giving her former friend a hateful stare. He tried yelling once more, but was booted in the mouth again, this time by Dyne, who managed to break the Turk's jaw, then quickly moved his foot to the downed man's throat. Johnny choked and gagged, and tried to move, but was constantly getting kicked at. No one wasted any time or energy playing around, and made sure to kick the traitor hard enough to break a rib or cause some kind of significant injury. Finally, the assault ceased at Zack's insistence. He picked Johnny up and dragged him with little resistance over to a stall, where the odor in the room was strongest, Johnny's blood leaving a small trail on the floor. Zack motioned with his head for someone to open the door for him. Jessie plugged her nose and walked over to do so, but was still a bit overcome with the stench.
Zack smiled half-heartedly upon looking in the toilet, finding that it had not been flushed. "Someone had corn last night," he observed, looking at Johnny, who's eyes went wide with fear. He tried to grapple with Zack, but was kneed in the gut, had his head smashed against the seat repeatedly, and finally had his face plunged right into the waste-filled bowl. Johnny squirmed and threw his arms around wildly as he accidentally started to breath in absent mindedly from panic. Excrement and blood mixed inside the bowl as Johnny thrashed around, desperate for air. Zack then initiated the coup-de-grace as he flushed the toilet, forcing the punker's mohawk around in a urine and crap filled swirley. He dragged Johnny out of the toilet, who began to vomit up all over the blue and gray tile floor, the pain from his broken jaw increasing a hundredfold. When he was finished, he barely had the strength or will to resist as Zack's boot weighed down his head and forced it into the puddle of his own vomit.
Zack finally dragged the traitor out of the stall and threw him hard into the far wall, knocking him out.
"Should we kill him?" Tifa asked half-hopefully, cracking her knuckles.
"Naw, dead people don't suffer," Zack replied, washing his hands. "I don't think he'll wake up any time soon enough to give us any trouble."
"What if someone finds him?" Dyne asked.
"There's blood and shit all over the place," Zack responded, though not trying to make a pun, "it would take us forever to clean and cover up what happened, and we might get discovered while doing that. We're better off just leaving him here like this and hoping no one needs the bathroom any time soon."
This made a decent amount of sense to all present, or so it seemed as no one else had spoken up with any objections.
"Bet this brings ya back," Jessie commented to Zack, who gave her a confused look as he washed his hands. "You know, in high school, I bet you were the kind of guy who was pushing people around in bathrooms, giving them swirleys... Am I right?"
Zack shrugged. "I never went to school," he admitted, "My hometown was too poor to maintain one, or even afford teachers," he explained.
"O-oh, I... I'm so sorry," Jessie muttered.
"It's okay. Near as I can tell, I never missed out on much," Zack replied with a shrug and drying his hands.
"You coulda fooled me.. y'know, about never bein' in school. You seem smart enough," Jessie pointed out.
"Nope. I'm juuust smart enough to fool people into thinking I'm smart!" the former SOLDIER remarked with a wink and pointing at the hacker.
Satisfied with what they accomplished, and realizing they still had more to do here, the companions exited, though Dyne spat on Johnny's unconscious, bloodied and excrement-covered form on the way out.
***
Sector Five was a mess. Shinra MPs and AVALANCHE members were working side by side, trying to preserve as many lives as they could. While instinctively everyone knew that it would benefit all involved if the two sides actually worked together, no one was too willing, or had the authority, to make anything actually happen in that direction. So both sides pretty much silently agreed to just not get in each other's way.
There were fires, ruined homes, pieces of Sector Six which had fallen, and still occasionally CONTINUED to fall, creating very hazardous conditions, all of which had to be contended with. People were laid out in what were deemed "Safe zones", awaiting scarce medical treatment. Most of AVALANCHES supplies had been lost, and the Shinra were not authorized to "waste" company money and supplies on the denizens of the slums. This created quite a bit of a stir among the victims, and undue stress on their would-be saviors, who were in no real position to help them at all. Dox and two of his aids were the only people available with any real medical experience, leaving them to care for almost a hundred people all by themselves and having to shout out orders to anyone who could move to somehow help, which half the time went unheeded.
So it was not too surprising that amid this mild amount of panic and distress that no one cared about or noticed the young man known as "number one" --for the tattoo on his hand-- hobble out of his blue pipe. He looked around, though it was not he who saw what entered his eyes, but a powerful and malicious will which had just awoken inside of him which also controlled his actions. Wrapping a tattered black blanket around himself, and grabbing a long, thin and rusted shaft of metal, the mysterious stranger slowly began his trek to the upper plate...