( closed ) let me wrap my teeth around the world

[nonvoting]

WHO: tseng & rufus permanent catchall
WHEN: all at once
WHERE: everywhere
WHAT: everything
NOTES/WARNINGS: the usuals for ff7: parental death, mass murder, unethical human experimentation, less mass-y but still severe murder, ecoterrorism (both ways) etc. etc.

Comments

( march event ) — drinks

[nonvoting]

— let me see the heat get to it;
MISSION PREP.

[ the room reminds tseng of his old apartment in midgar, the one he'd lived in before he took up residence in the shinra building: bare, nondescript, nothing at all to indicate that a person was meant to live there. really, the only difference is the static on the television, and that's a difference mostly because tseng had never bothered to own a television in the first place—what was the point, when he was never home to watch it?

the good thing is that the size of the room means it's easy to clear, which in turn means he can push the door the rest of the way open to let rufus into the space behind him.

"first mission," and it's sitting in a room together? ]

I expected the stakes to be higher, [ tseng says, wryly.

if what aurora says is true, then the stakes have in fact never been higher—and yet, at the same time, there's no real sense of urgency to this. or maybe it's just that tseng has lived such a high-stakes life for so long that anything less than critical feels boring by now. ]

[unionized]

[It's entertaining to give Tseng grief, at times, about his strict adherence to protocol even in moments where it's almost certain to be unwarranted — it's a reasonably ordinary room in a reasonably nondescript hospital that hasn't tried to kill them yet, so why wait to spring a trap now? — but that doesn't mean that Rufus doesn't still appreciate the familiarity of it, on some level. There's a natural cadence to it, that way: they arrive in an unfamiliar circumstance, Tseng does his job, Rufus takes command. Strategy and execution, mind and arm. It's how they work.

He doesn't end up waiting as long as he might otherwise have expected, and sees why when Tseng finally permits him entrance — the room was easy to clear because it's small and empty, reminiscent of a holding cell or an interrogation room, but for the little touches of comfort furniture that understandably wouldn't be present otherwise.]

Well. We could always introduce house rules of our own.

[To say he's unimpressed by the chairs, table, and cot would be an understatement; he surveys them all a minute with the precise affect of an affluent matriarch disapproving of her daughter-in-law's manners, then pulls one of the chairs out and sinks into it before gesturing Tseng to the other.

There's a piece of paper waiting for them in the middle of the table; he reaches for it, idly curious.]

But let's see which ones our host has set out for us.

[nonvoting]

[ rufus can give him grief all he wants, but tseng knows too well how easy it is for a single lapse in caution to be a bullet in someone's skull, so even here, in a place where there's (probably) no one who wants to put bullets in rufus' skull (yet), tseng insists on clearing rooms and checking for bugs. there's a ritual to it that's appreciable in its familiarity, and a comfort from the knowledge that they're safe, the combination of which allows some of the tension to leach from tseng's shoulders as he joins rufus at the table. ]

I'm not sure there's a need for that yet, sir.

[ house rules, that is. depends on what the game is. rufus has never been one to back down from a challenge; neither has tseng, for that matter, but rufus approaches these things with the recklessness of someone confident that his back is being watched, and tseng approaches them with the caution of the one doing the watching.

he undoes the button of his suit jacket and sits in the chair across from rufus, back straight out of habit. there's no need to ask what the card says; if tseng needs to know, rufus will read it out.

instead, tseng casts his gaze around the room, no longer with the critical eye of a man looking for danger, but with the curious one of someone trying to figure out what the aim might be. after a second, he leans over to adjust the channel of the television; unsurprisingly, the static is the same on every frequency. ]

[unionized]

[He skims the note card briskly, letting the choicest words and phrases stand out and soak in to the degree that he almost laughs: time to get to know your partner, the note reads, and discuss your lives together, and moments that defined the person you've become. In other words, this could easily be the most brainless and phoned-in activity anyone could've possibly asked them to do — and, perhaps, precisely why they're going to have to be extra careful about it, lest the ease of it be designed to lull them into a false sense of security in their hubris.]

Hah. We're to chat over drinks.

[He tosses the card back onto the table with enough momentum that it skids, spinning lightly, across the surface to rest in front of Tseng. Let Aurora think he's already dismissive of it all, that he's deemed it beneath him. Making a spectacle of himself will keep eyes on him, and off of Tseng, buying him the time he needs to appreciate what they're evidently being asked to do.]

Indulge each other's burning questions, apparently.

[nonvoting]

[ tseng catches the flung card under one finger, his brow already furrowing faintly at rufus' summary of its contents. it's a look of bewilderment that stands out on his ordinarily-collected features—tseng isn't one to let his emotions reflect so clearly on his face, but the idea of their first mission being talking over drinks is... well, it deserves at least one frown. ]

"Time to get to know your partner."

[ time to get to know your partner, and they've paired rufus and tseng together? for the past fifteen years it's been tseng's job to know everything there is to know about rufus shinra—his tastes, his desires, his inner workings, his aspirations—and tseng has always been very good at his job. he wonders how much there could possibly be for him to learn about rufus that he doesn't already have in a file somewhere in the back of his mind.

of course, the inverse is not entirely as true. there's plenty about tseng that rufus doesn't know, but it's never been rufus' job to know. tseng is the weapon and rufus is the wielder; he has no cause to know much about tseng the man, so long as he can use tseng the turk. ]

I see, [ is all he says. however straightforward the task seems, it would be unwise to be complacent about it. ] Should we start with the chat or the drinks?

[unionized]

The chat.

[Opting for the drinks first would imply stalling, he muses, or possibly the implication that there are things he wouldn't want to discuss without the benefits of a little liquid courage. And the thing is, there are, but admitting as much would be a sign of weakness. Not something he's willing to play into, so early in the game.

They are, after all, here as supposed representatives of their worlds of origin. And there's no indication of the selection process that went into this, for better or for worse — but anyone identifying Gaia as a world to save or destroy surely had to have heard of the Shinra Electric Power Company either way, and whatever they might've heard, he's not inclined to let their reputation be founded on other people's commentary and speculation.]

Though I'm not opposed to multitasking. Tell me about the day you were hired. Now there's a moment that defined the person you are, hm?

[nonvoting]

[ given how cognizant he always is of facts as well as appearances, it comes as no surprise to tseng that rufus chooses to start by talking. he's likely imagining how it would look to choose drinks first—like stalling? like gettingt he easy thing out of the way first? or perhaps there's a desire to put off the revelation of how well they actually know each other. whatever the reason, tseng nods once in response, acquiescing to rufus' orders.

that's not to say, though, that he's expecting the question when it comes. leave it to rufus to get to the heart of things, but the idea of discussing his past makes tseng shift almost imperceptibly in his seat. after all the pains he's taken to avoid this exact question coming up, it only figures that rufus would be the one to ask him right to his face. ]

I was thirteen years old. [ tseng speaks in the same tone he uses to deliver reports on turk missions: even, unsentimental. ] My file says I was surveilled for six months before recruitment efforts began in earnest.

[ of course he read his own file. it was the first thing he did, once he had clearance. tseng sits back in his chair and crosses his legs at the knee, his posture too casual. ]

They expected that I would decline, at first. I had never been to the Eastern Continent and they expected that the relocation to Midgar would give me pause. It was a surprise that I accepted on their first offer.

[unionized]

[He's read Tseng's file as well, of course; only an idiot wouldn't know everything he possibly could about the people tasked with the preservation of his life day in and day out. But it's one thing to see numbers and statistics on a page and another thing to hear it coming out of the individual's own mouth. It makes him wonder, idly, what the contingency plan would've been, had Tseng not defied expectations and taken the offer at thirteen damned years old. Come back in another few years? Abduct him outright? Whatever the playbook of options, one thing remains universal: if he'd been identified as a candidate, all roads were going to lead to Midgar eventually.]

You knew a good deal when you saw it.

[The irony is palpable.]

As did your recruiter. An eye for value.

[nonvoting]

[ another nod of acquiescence, this time accompanied by a slight twitch at the corner of his mouth, almost a smile. tseng does know a good deal when he sees it, it's true. ]

It was half practicality, half calculus. The job interested me, and I had very little to tie me to my hometown. And even at thirteen I understood that a company doesn't come to another continent to recruit face-to-face if they intend to give up easily.

[ whether it was then in that moment, or a year later, or two years later, or five, one way or another tseng would have made his way to midgar, by choice or by force. of course, the shinra electric power company hadn't been quite the behemoth in 1990 that it is today—but to anyone who knew how to read it, the writing on the wall was there.

tseng spreads his hands in the universal sign for "what can you do?" ]

I went through training and was onboarded just before my fourteenth birthday.

[unionized]

A meteoric rise.

[Now there's a figure of speech that a person can only use in good faith when taken from very specific canonpoints of critically acclaimed adventure hit Final Fantasy 7.]

Tell me you spent your first paycheck on something ludicrous and indulgent. I'd hate to think you were already forty years old by age fourteen.

[nonvoting]

I'm afraid I'm going to have to disappoint you, sir. My first paycheck had sixteen hours on it, and my second paycheck went to necessities.

[ by now, they've known each other long enough and are familiar enough with each other's features that rufus will surely be able to read the amusement on tseng's. ]

My third paycheck, however, I spent mostly on clothing, which at the time felt exceedingly indulgent.

[ a pause, and then, conversational, ]

Of course, it was only in retrospect that I realized it was unwise to spend so much on clothing only two months before I grew six inches and didn't fit any of it anymore.

[unionized]

And before you realized you'd spend the rest of your life living out of the same suit. Poor Tseng. Your hubris got the better of you.

[But this, he muses, is a comfortable groove for their conversation to ride along in, for the moment. They're adhering to the requirements of the ask while giving up nothing of any particular consequence. This memory of Tseng's is certainly a moment that defined him; it's also utterly useless as leverage and lacks any influential value.

He'll have to be careful, when it's his own turn. Everything about being a Shinra carries leverage, in one way or another. Most people are just wise enough not to exercise it.]

I had a party for my fourteenth birthday. All of my father's business associates, plus a number of influential, acceptable families with children of similar age. I remember they ate in a separate room. I was put to my father's left.

[nonvoting]

[ they are learning little things about each other, following the letter of the instructions while also giving almost nothing away. it's a comfortable space to occupy, despite tseng's initial misgivings on the matter—the back-and-forth of it is familiar in its own way. this is how rufus has always been, impenetrable, putting forth so much while giving up so little. ]

Did you feel any older at fourteen than you had at thirteen?

[ tseng has, of course, memorized the timeline of rufus' life, marked the most influential events along its axis. it's one thing to read the words, and another entirely to hear rufus speak on it. ]

look at your life, who do you want to be before you die;

[unionized]

[It's April 8th in the first year of his reign, and the companion bots of Etraya have made progress on the facsimile of Shinra Headquarters they've been constructing since his arrival.

He hasn't quite decided how he feels about it, all told. On one hand, there's the ever-present question of how the automatons even know what to build to begin with, compounded by the secret he'd received as a part of the recent mission, the scrap of blueprint delineating the president's office with faded lines on colorless paper. On another, the headquarters in many ways still feels like his father's castle, a fortress that his conquering heir has yet to carve his name into. And on another still, it's...reassuring, somehow. It's familiar. It's home.

He's been away from home for a long time. It's hard to say whether an imitation will ever live up to the original.

(Hard to say whether a son will ever live up to his father, a low, haughty, smoke-deep voice taunts in the back of his mind. He brushes it away, like he always does; it never quite leaves, like it always doesn't.)

It's funny to think that in some ways, the building is more Tseng's than his. Oh, his Director of the Turks would never cosign it — not when everything Shinra is his and everything that isn't Shinra yet is soon to be — but it's been a long time since he personally spent any significant length of time there, his absence explained away by "business trips". For the Turks, the Department of General Affairs is their epicenter, the beating heart of their circulatory system. That feels strange, too — like the whole of it is a hand-me-down suit he's found himself waiting, made for someone else, as yet untailored to his own exacting specifications.

Not this one, though. This one is a recreation, as yet untouched by anyone but the robots. There's something appealing about that, too. The chance to put his fingerprints all over it without having to sterilize everything his father left behind.

That's the motive he'll tell Tseng, when he informs him that they're going to examine the building today. He'll say he wants to get away from the apartments, to examine the recreation the companion bots have done, to judge it through two sets of exacting eyes. What he won't say is the reason they're going today in particular, or how he knows that this is the only semblance of a gift he can possibly hope to offer because it's the only one that Tseng could ever even indirectly accept: something familiar, in this place of oppressive uncertainty. Something theirs, on a world they don't own where all they get is what they win.

There's an irony, maybe, that he's forcing Tseng to the office on his birthday. Mostly because he suspects Tseng wouldn't have it any other way.]

We're going out tonight.

[He says, almost from the moment he first lays eyes on Tseng after searching him out in the apartment. Certainly well before there's any chance to interject with a greeting at minimum.]

They've made progress on the tower. Let's go have a look.

FINALLY flings myself into this

[nonvoting]

[ construction on the city of midgar, and with it shinra tower, had begun in 1976, a year before tseng was even born. as a result, he hadn't witnessed the steel behemoth emerging from nothing and stretching up toward the sky; tseng had only ever seen its renovations from the inside, looking out over the vast metropolitan expanse of the city. to see its hulking mass appear on the etraya horizon is, therefore, a unique and extremely odd experience. he watches it emerge like a phoenix from the ashes, this building where he'd spent more than half his life, and wonders what it might be like inside. a home, like the general affairs offices had been to him since his arrival in 1990? or a hollow facsimile of the building he used to know, there only to mock them?

at the very least, rufus seems to like the idea. tseng can understand, he thinks, not with the empathy of experience but with the depth of his knowledge of rufus: this is an iteration of the company that his father's touch has never sullied, a place that belongs entirely to him. the people here don't know that there was ever anything different. his will be the first warm body in the chair in the president's office; from this castle rufus can rule unimpeded by the life and legacy of someone who came before him.

there's comfort in that idea, despite tseng's apprehension over the building itself. it might not be exactly like the building they knew before, but it can still be theirs, regardless. the thought is a comfort and a welcome one at that. tseng has lived more than half his life in service to the shinra electric power company—now, at least for a time, he can live his life in service to rufus, which is one and the same, except in the ways it's not.

so when rufus finds him sitting in the living room and tells him they're going out to see the new construction, tseng welcomes the proposition. ]

Yes, sir. [ he looks up at rufus. ] Right now?

[ but even as he asks the question, tseng is already moving to re-holster his guns and fetch his jacket from where it's hanging over the back of a chair. it doesn't occur to him that this might be a gift rufus is giving him; in fact, it doesn't even occur to him, right now, that it's his birthday at all. ]

[unionized]

Now. Since there's no transit to speak of, we're going to have to factor in — [He lets the faintest expression of distaste drift over his features.] — travel time.

[What he wouldn't give for a helicopter right about now, and Reno and Rude in its cockpit. What he wouldn't give for Darkstar at his side. What he wouldn't give for a lot of things, but at the end of the day they're still just conveniences and comforts. What he has right now is Tseng, and that's what matters. He's not alone to cope with all of this, and that's what matters.]

Arriving to headquarters on foot. Now there's something new and unheard-of for you.

[nonvoting]

[ as tseng lives and breathes, rufus shinra walking somewhere.

in truth, though, it's strange for tseng too. he's much more used to being on foot on the job than rufus is in daily life, but the prospect of trekking across the city to see the construction of shinra tower does make him feel a phantom pain in the place where the turks and their helicopters used to be. in a thousand years tseng never would have guessed he'd miss reno's smart mouth so much. ]

It's been many years since I saw the ground-floor entrance. [ while rufus' modes of transportation are typically a little fancier than tseng's, he still tends to come and go from the helipad rather than through the front door. ] Perhaps the reminder will be refreshing.

[ although there's a wryness in his voice that suggests he's not entirely convinced.

at the very least, the walk isn't long, and the rain has let up briefly such that there's no need to carry an umbrella—although tseng still carries one, just in case. the building occupies a fairly large swath of land, essentially its own private island, and is somehow even more imposing approached on foot than it is approached by air. was that the intent? did the late president conceive of the company's headquarters as a monolith that would strike fear and awe into the hearts of those who saw it?

honestly, tseng wouldn't be surprised. the late president was, if nothing else, a man keenly aware of appearances; it would be more of a shock if he hadn't somehow accounted for the visual impression that the building would make from the street in front of it. he remembers days when the clouds and fog over midgar had made landings a challenge for the birds; from the street, the topmost levels of the building would have been swallowed up by clouds, much as it is now. ]

[unionized]

[The tower was never beautiful. Very little about Midgar was built for beauty, and even the interiors of the building were constructed with a different aesthetic angle in mind — a different psychological message to send to anyone who might set foot in it. Shinra Headquarters is sleek, is industrial, is cutting-edge, is powerful. It's a building so pristine and sterile that it makes its visitors feel like pathogens to set foot in it, their presence only tolerated but for the grace of the organism that surrounds them.

And yet, as their walk brings them closer and closer to it, he can't help but feel something...lift, just a little, in his chest. For all that the tower might house a host of dour memories, there's still a part of it that will always be home. He may have hated the regime that ruled from within it, but Shinra Headquarters is the centerpiece of Midgar, the focus around which everything else revolves. He couldn't love Midgar without loving this building. The two are inextricable from each other.]

If it's a good rendition, we may have to put these companion bots on the payroll.

[It's a joke, however slight of one it might be. It also serves well to cover up the fact that, as they approach the foot of the building, there's a wholeass moment in which he genuinely can't remember where the street-level entrance is located. It can't possibly be that hard to find; tour groups and middle management do it every day of their lives. It's just — different, not to drop right in from the helipad and be exactly where he needs to. Different, to see it like a citizen would.]

...The signage is passable.

[He says, and means, over there by the sign, I spotted the fucking door.]

[nonvoting]

[ of course tseng picks up on the momentary hesitation as rufus tries to figure out where the front door is. unfortunately, he can be of no help whatsoever—because tseng, too, has forgotten where exactly the ground-floor entrance is located. were they located in midgar, at least tseng would have a sense of which face of the building they ought to approach, but oriented on this island and without the other contextualizing buildings, tseng feels himself momentarily adrift as he studies the facade and tries to make a decision.

in the end, it's rufus who points it out. once tseng notices it, he wonders how he ever missed it, the entryway under the sign that literally denotes the entrance to the shinra company headquarters. gods help them both, truly. ]

It is within your purview as president to update it, should you so desire.

[ he says, and means, please make it a little less obvious so we never have to have this embarrassing conversation again.

stepping inside the lobby of the building sends a shock through tseng's system for how perfect the rendition is. if it weren't for the fact that there are no salarymen or wide-eyed visitors milling about, he could be forgiven for thinking they had stepped through a portal straight back to midgar; it's an excellent, faithful replica, right down to the details, the way the lobby smelled in the mornings before anyone else had come to work.

tseng pauses, right in the center of the ground-floor carpeting, and looks over at rufus. ]

What do you think, sir?

[unionized]

[Your purview as president, Tseng says, and on that last word, Rufus's breath hitches in the barest of ways, a tell so slight it almost isn't even there to begin with. He'd suppressed it well when Heidigger was within earshot, when he'd expected it for the sake of making a point. It's still different, he finds, when it comes out in casual conversation like this. It's still different when Tseng says it without any special emphasis at all, as natural as if it were like breathing to him, too.

He doesn't let it interrupt his stride, but the thought lingers on his mind anyway as he and Tseng make their way into the lobby — the way it makes this all feel more tangible than before, that for all this building might only be a replica of the one they'd left behind in Midgar, he's still the only president of Shinra to ever have set foot in it.

It's not just his purview as president to update the signage. It's his purview to update everything. No board. No inertia. No shadow of his father's legacy casting over the office. This is his — every least bit of it, down to the last screw and switch, is his and only his.

Maybe that's why something seems to soften in him when they find themselves in the center of it all, swallowed up by the marble and glass and holograms as though they'd never left Gaia at all. He'd thought, in passing, that stepping inside here might feel like he was looking at the still-standing corpse of a once-living thing. But this building isn't a corpse; it's a sentinel, standing vigil until its errant prince found his way home.]

...

[What he thinks isn't fit for words; it doesn't require them. He simply looks at Tseng instead, and knows that the subtle tells in his expression will say everything he isn't voicing — the bright glimmer in his eyes that hasn't sparked since their arrival in Etraya, the enthralled eagerness masked behind the faintest upturn of the corner of his mouth. For a second, he doesn't look like a man tasked with all the responsibilities that dominion of this building demands; he looks like he did a decade and change ago when Verdot put a gun in his hands and vowed that he'd learn how to use it.]

See if the elevators work.

[nonvoting]

[ fifteen years ago, tseng had laid eyes on rufus for the first time and known that one day he would change the world. he had been wary of rufus at first, had found him brash and charismatic and too bright to look at, much like the sun after too long in the dark. but even in his occasional annoyance tseng had understood one thing: that rufus shinra, for better or worse, would irrevocably reshape the course of his life.

they were too different to be friends, even if their stations had allowed for it. rufus was, and still is, a sunburst, a beacon, the flash of a lighthouse on the shore; tseng had been dark and too quiet, a storm, a starless night. but they had been similar in some ways, too, maybe even the ways that mattered. like tseng, rufus had a fire in his eyes that nothing could quench. like tseng, he had been halfway between boy and weapon, too beaten down to be tender but not yet hardened into the blade he would eventually become.

over time, the boys they had been had vanished into the men they are. more weapon than person by far, these days. rufus, the lever that will move the world; tseng, the fulcrum that supports him. no tenderness left, only the old scars of circumstance, of duty, of desperation.

but in this moment, rufus looks at tseng with a lightness in his gaze and a smile in the corner of his mouth, and tseng sees a flash of the boy he was, before the world was really able to sink its teeth into him. ]

Yes, sir, [ he says, and goes ahead to the elevators.

they work, as it turns out. and they're just as fast as tseng remembers them being, descending soundlessly from the upper floors in a matter of seconds before the doors slide open with a soft, pneumatic hiss. tseng steps back, making room for rufus to board first. ]

Your offices first?

[unionized]

[The natural answer is yes. Where else should he want to go first, than the seventieth floor? He should want to step into that office, take that chair, establish himself — settle into the command he's coveted for years, or at very least the facsimile of it in this place where Shinra's foothold is limited only to this building and not to every corner of the world.

It's as he's considering it, though, that he notices a curiosity about the floor directory, and gestures to the panel with an idle flick of his gloved hand.]

Yours seem to have gotten a promotion.

[What could have motivated the companion bots to relocate General Affairs to the sixty-eighth floor? Questionable as it is, he's a little hard-pressed to say he minds it. Not least of which when it means his Turks have been positioned like a barricade between his domain and the rest of the building — between the executive floors and the labs, especially.]

Let's have a look at General Affairs.

[nonvoting]

[ following that careless gesture, tseng lets his gaze drop to the directory. he's not entirely surprised to see an incomplete listing of floors, considering how large the building is and how comparatively little time the bots have been at work on it; the fact that so many of the floors are accessible at all is already a victory. he is, however, slightly surprised to see that instead of being assigned to b3, general affairs has evidently been moved up to floor 68, tucked in neatly between the president's suite and the laboratory.

it's a good change, as far as tseng's concerned. would that he could always be such a buffer between rufus and hojo's corrupting influence. ]

I'm sure the view will be much improved. [ that's a joke. get it? because there's no view from the basement, ha ha.

tseng presses the button for the sixty-eighth floor and the elevator whirs to life, bearing them up at speed toward the topmost levels of the building. the view through the exterior glass is quite different than it would have been in midgar, but the thrum of the elevator machinery under their feet is reassuringly familiar. and when the carriage draws to a halt, letting them out into the familiar hallway leading to the general affairs auditing offices, tseng feels something similar relax in his own chest, a tightness around his lungs easing and allowing him to breathe.

home sweet home, he wants to say, but he swallows the words down. ]

It does seem to be a faithful recreation.

[unionized]

What view? You never look up from your paperwork anyway.

[If his mood wasn't already buoyant, it would be now, on the heels of the discovery that even Tseng is willing to crack a joke at a time like this. That's a rare thing for this environment in particular — while Tseng might certainly loosen up enough to have a little fun on the range or in the field, at headquarters he's always correct to a fault, unless he's absolutely certain that he's someplace secured.

Under his father's regime, there were very few places that could truly be called secured. Not so, anymore. This building is his. This building is theirs.

And the 68th floor is Tseng's, enough so that Rufus doesn't seek to stride several steps ahead the way he might otherwise be tempted to lead; he keeps himself just a half-step in front, enough to pay lip service to the idea that Tseng is flanking him as always, but more than near enough that they're all but walking side by side, this time.]

If it's as faithful as the rest, there'll be a stack of it waiting for you on the corner of your desk, just like always.

[nonvoting]

[ tseng quirks a faint smile. ]

The view of the paperwork in natural light, of course.

[ there is a certain lightness about this place that he'd never felt at the real headquarters back in midgar. an absence of certain influences, perhaps—or an absence of certain ghosts haunting the space. it makes it easier to release some tension from his shoulders. they're the only two who have ever made their mark here. it isn't secure, not until tseng has had a chance to get to work on whatever the companion bots have cooked up as a cctv and security system, but it's more secure than the tower back home had ever been.

flanking rufus half a step behind and to the right, tseng looks around the space as they enter it. it's a familiar room: large screens, long table, expansive desk behind which tseng can do as much paperwork as his heart desires. even the potted plants are the same. still alive, despite the fact that tseng knows for a fact not a one of the turks ever watered them. ]

Will you expect them on your desk by end of day or end of week?

[ there is actually not any paperwork on the desk, which is somehow both surprising and exactly what tseng expected. he still doesn't understand how the companion bots knew what to build at all, but it wouldn't have entirely shocked him if they'd been able to replicate the forms in triplicate. ]