Unwanted Revelations. [Junon] (Raines)

[Cloud]

Junon was alive, with a massive overhall of the city’s infrastructure taking place, the population swelled from all the opportunities for work. Nobody knew the real reason behind Shinra’s project, except for what the papers called a long needed upgrade. Even those within the company itself were kept in the dark, whatever the administration was doing; it was going at great lengths to keep it to itself. Aside from the mystery of it all, there didn’t seem to be many who were bothered by it. Times were uncertain, work was scarce and people were looking for some form of guidance to cling to. Despite the mistakes of the past, Shinra was making good on its promise to help restore the planet, from the substantial cleanup in Midgar to generous donations to the WRO, it seemed to be taking the right step forward. People took notice, and even though they had their reservations, in this new world what choice did they have but look up to an old enemy as their shepherd once again.

No one knew this any better than perhaps Rufus Shinra himself. As the company’s popularity slowly started to rise back up, it had to take on numbers of personnel not seen since before the fall of Midgar. The reinstatement of the SOLDIER program, a bit limited, meant that scientists had to come in, large public works projects required engineers and architects, even doctors and scholars had their place. If Shinra wanted to remain a driving force in this new world, it had to be on top of things, no matter where or what they were. Sure, the company would keep to its name sake and provide energy, but like before it’d be more than just that. Rufus was not a man with small visions; he was a man with big ideas who had the means to see them though in some capacity. It seemed like nothing was to stand in his way.

Nothing perhaps but a small mark that had been forcefully placed upon his forearm. A mark that still continued to be a mystery, yet its origin was well known to the blonde. It had only been two weeks since Ark had banded Rufus, yet the inquisitive man had no opportunity since to question its purpose. Aside from the obvious, he had no clue what the thing meant for him in the long run. It caused a level of irritation often found on the highest order. Nevertheless he knew very well that his problem was that of his own, Ark didn’t just hand out brands every day, did he? At least not that Rufus knew of. He had more pressing and urgent matters to attend to that had been manifesting in the weeks before his encounter with the fal’Cie. Today was his monthly inspection of the progress on Junon, soon to be biweekly, and in five days time there is to be a meeting of world leaders to discuss a peaceful solution to their ever present problem. Nations forcefully thrown together with conflicting ideologies and customs did not bode well. With overpopulation now being a real risk, food, energy and security was Shinra’s primary concern and most likely that of others as well. Problem was that people like Shinra were never taught very well how to share their toys with others.

Rufus stepped off of the helicopter as the rotor whirled away above his head, the resulting wind madly throwing about his formerly well kept hair. Quickly he was ushered away from the noisy aircraft by a couple of Turks and led into the nearby administrative building. Itself a newly constructed wonder of Junon, the Shinra Electric Power Company Administrative Office Zero-Zero-One was a grand gesture to the architectural ability of their people. Situated just off of the airfield, it’s reflective glass façade, mighty entryway and technological advancements made it the perfect place to hold the first meeting of world leaders. World leaders, Rufus scoffed at the idea but had to cooperate nonetheless. Survival of his world depended on it. He gave his customary greeting to the employees in the lobby before making his way to the ‘executive elevators.’ They ran the entire span of the city, from top to bottom, and were off limits to everyone but those who had the proper clearance. Even though he had just arrived, Rufus wanted to get the inspection done and out of the way before he went about making preparations for the coming week. It took several minutes for the elevator to reach the designated floor, no doubt much to the relief of his secretary who appeared to be getting claustrophobic.

Level two of Junon was still under heavy renovation, work being expected to continue for another eight months before being completed. Junon after all was a military instillation; it was more than just infrastructure being upgraded. Defense systems were all being put into place, the number one priority in Rufus’ mind. As a construction supervisor and engineer approached the President, he looked up and around at his surroundings. Just a short number of years ago was the cannon removed and sent to Midgar. Now its replacement was being constructed in its place, the weapon’s skeleton erected out from the city’s ocean view side. For now it only used conventional artillery as its main source of firepower, but with a rail gun prototype in the works, it was only a matter of time before the system would be fully operational.

“Good Afternoon, Sir.” The engineer named Clayton Fields had greeted Rufus with an outstretched hand and welcome smile. A family man and self proclaimed workaholic, Clayton had been working on the Junon project for over a year and a half, having moved his family to the city for a sense of safety.

Rufus didn’t bother too much with the pleasantries; he needed to go straight to the point. With a quick shake of the hand, Rufus greeted Clayton and took the report on the technicalities of the operation. Two months prior they had a worker lose his life by pure negligence, last thing the company needed was more bad press. Because of this Rufus had been a pain in their side, constantly checking up on every aspect of their work. It wasn’t like he was to be blamed for such stringent regulations; it was his name on the line. It was never, “Nondescript worker dies today in freak accident, supervisor under investigation,” it was always “Nondescript worker dies today in accident, Shinra under investigation.” The company didn’t have the same control over the news like it used to; for now.

Satisfied with what the report had to offer, he handed it off to his secretary and went about his visual inspection. Rufus found the entire process of construction fascinating, and often enjoyed seeing the various stages of projects going on around him, from the laying of a foundation to the instillation of the various cables, wires and pipes that gave a building life. It was a pretty amazing thing when given some thought.

It wasn’t until the streetlamps started to bask the streets with their soft glow did Rufus decide to call it a night. For the men and women heading the construction effort, their inspection was a success; he was rather impressed with the progress made since his last visit. If they kept up their current pace, the work on Junon itself would be finished ahead of schedule. All that’d be left would be the task of cleaning up the slums.

Feeling rather satisfied with this revelation, Rufus bid Clayton farewell and started to make the journey back towards the executive elevator. Deep in conversation with his secretary and a nearby Turk, he misjudged a step and fell forward, his sleeve catching on a sharp ledge and tearing it from his jacket with a loud seam ripping tear.

“Sir! Are you all right!?” A Turk exclaimed as he rushed over to help Rufus up off the ground.

“Yes, I’ll be fine. Just a little stumble, that’s all.” With the assistance of the Turk, Rufus got back up onto his feet and brushed himself off, pausing for a moment to look at the blood slowly oozing its way through the scrapes on his palms. It had been so long since he had seen his own blood, it felt strange to him, almost…. foreign in some way. “Come, we have things to attend to. Kathryn…”

“Yes, Sir?”

“How are you with stitches?”

“….”

“Ah, I thought so...”

Rufus chuckled to himself and walked around Kathryn (his secretary) to carefully make his way up the stairs before him, that was until he was suddenly stopped by an observation she found startling.

“S… sir! On your arm! What is that… marking?!”

Rufus nonchalantly looked at his bare arm, the l’cie band completely slipping his mind. “It is nothing for you to worry yourself over. Just a little souvenir from an acquaintance. Now please, we have work that has to be done…”

[Griever]

If he was honest, Cid Raines didn't like Junon. It was a dull, bleak sort of place, all industry, but no life. In some ways, it seemed more fortress than town, with its high walls and its coldly militaristic bearing. Not like Eden, heart of Cocoon, with its countless lights and its people - its very lifeblood - pulsing through the streets, always in constant motion.

But, then, Eden's lights had faded, and its people were gone, a broken city in a broken husk of a world, fallen reminder of the folly of the fal'Cie and those who had so blindly followed them, coddled and comforted and dancing on their strings with perfect obedience. It sickened him to think of it all.

Maybe Junon did suit him just fine.

Cavalry soldiers didn't come through, not often, at any rate, so here he was no more than a stranger, just one more unfamiliar face in a land where he didn't belong. For all intents and purposes, it made him invisible, one small part of an ever-changing backdrop. No more soldier, no more Primarch, no more l'Cie - just a man watching things go by.

Watching, he found, was infinitely preferable to acting. Cocoon had sustained heavy losses when it fell from the sky, but the fal'Cie were gone, and that, he thought with a certain amount of bitterness, was worth any price. No more would they toy with the lives of men, twisting them to their selfish will and then discarding them once their use ran out. Free to make their own lives...Rygdea had inherited that dream, and he carried it far better than Raines ever could have. Cocoon was in capable hands now, and his own role was ended.

Ended in death. He remembered that, his request, Rygdea's reluctance, then finally his compliance. He remembered hearing the sound of that gun firing and then...what? That sudden sensation of drawing breath and knowing, instantly knowing, even before his awareness fully stirred, that it was wrong, that he didn't belong...? He raised one white-gloved hand and put it to his head, exhaling a breath he scarcely realized he'd been holding. None of it made sense, and it was futile to ask why, because there was no one to answer. Lifting his head slightly, he let his hand drop, and his silver eyes followed its descent, locking onto the fabric. No brand there. Every trace of that black stain was gone, and yet, when he shut his eyes, he still felt that leash tightening inexorably around his throat. Maybe he always would.

But here was a place where all of that was no more than a memory, foreign in this land, meaningless. Raines found his eyes once again drawn upward to the towering structures around him, to the skeleton of steel and glass reaching toward the sky in the distance, dominating the Junon skyline. Shinra Company’s new office, he’d gathered from conversation about town. Whatever disparaging terms some of the locals used when speaking of the company, the concept had caught his interest immediately. What had started as a small corporation had grown into a worldwide empire, a driving force behind their world’s politics and economy, a government truly built and shaped by the hands of man. So vastly different from Cocoon. It made him feel suddenly displaced, when he thought about it, a strange, but not altogether uncomfortable sensation.

Above, a light flickered to life, flooding his place on the sidewalk with its dull orange glow as it signaled the onset of evening. Off to his right, some distance down the street, a crowd had begun to gather, and now the crescendo of voices rising from it was enough to draw his attention to it, as the pace of speech quickened and the volume rose in excitement. At this distance, he couldn't make out the words, but now the object of their attention stepped into view, a man dressed all in white, escorted by a small group in black suits. From somewhere near the back of the crowd, the word "president" floated back to him, and suddenly he understood - this was Rufus Shinra, head of the Shinra Company and, by extension, of the nation.

Moved by a sudden interest, he made his way to the back of the gathered crowd in time to catch a glimpse of the blonde man's face before he turned away. Surprisingly younger than Raines would've expected, for one of his position - but something about him gave the impression that he wasn't a man to be underestimated because of it. Far from it, if the stories gained from his inquiries around town were to be believed. His manner seemed to echo that, calm and focused as he appeared to be, unfazed by everything around him even after he disappeared from view and came up with blood on his hands.

And a black mark on his arm.

Even at a distance, there was no mistaking that snakebite of a brand, and Raines tensed as he unwittingly caught his breath and pushed forward through the crowd, heedless of the looks and remarks hurled in his direction. Breaking through the front rows, he was stopped short by a pair of the suited guards, as they drew weapons and stepped together to bar his way. He lifted one hand, calmly placating, though his attention went beyond them, to the president himself. "I mean you no harm. I only wish to talk. Do you know the meaning of that brand?"

Not Barthandelus. It couldn't be. He was dead, had been since Cocoon had fallen from the sky - but a cold undercurrent of logic ran through him, even as the thought entered his mind. It wasn't only Barthandelus that had died.

If it were true, if it were even possible, there was no way he could let it go until he was absolutely certain. "Allow me a moment of your time. If you have questions, I can answer them, and if you think you know the fal'Cie, I can assure you that you do not. I won't ask you to trust me, but at least hear me out."

[Cloud]

It didn't take long for Rufus to casually push aside one of his escorts, wanting to see the man addressing him. This person before him offered answers, answers to questions he had long since pushed to the back of his mind, yet there they lingered in his subconscious, popping forward in the most inconvenient of times. This man, whoever he was, was now a great source of interest, and perhaps a gold mine of answers waiting to be exploited. The blonde glanced from one side to the next, as if sizing up the Turk's opinions to that of his own just by the expressions on their face. “Let him come.”

To anyone else, the answer was instantaneous, as if he gave it not thought what so ever. Without saying anything else, he turned away and headed back towards the street, followed by his entourage of guards, one of which grabbed Raines by the arm and pulled him along. “You're not from around here, are you? You are certainly not dressed like anyone else I've seen. Then again, no one is really from around here anymore, are they?” His displeasure with the merge very evident in the sharpness of his tone.

Raines would soon find himself stuffed into the back of a blacked out car beside Rufus, along with a Turk who sat facing them. “We survived Sephiroth, we survived Meteor-fall, and we will survive the merge...” He mused as he looked out at the buildings as they buzzed by the window. “However, there are uncertainties within this new world. Everyday we're faced with a new challenge. Mako energy mixing with the Farplane, and other life forces from the various worlds, are starting to poison the population at an alarming rate... And then there was this.. a marking presented to me by a very unusual man, if he could even be considered human. You claim you can shed light onto this matter, something I'd be very much grateful for. Poisoning I can handle, but a marking that has so far had no effect on my well being is, for the lack of a better word, unnerving. It was not just given to me for no reason, was it?”

[Griever]

Automatically, Raines tensed at the hand on his arm, his first instinct - bred from a long career of military training and battle - to pull away and defend himself. But these people were not his enemies, strangers though they were, and this...Shinra...had questions that they both needed the answers to, so he checked his distaste and went along without complaint, taking the opportunity to study this unfamiliar leader and those who accompanied him. "No," he replied slowly, cautiously, looking over the Turk who led him, serious-faced and devoid of any visible emotion, "I come from Cocoon. Cid Raines." It felt strange, introducing himself so briefly, without the accompanying titles, but...well, that was in the past now. For the best.

"I've heard of the resilience of your people. An admirable quality." Talk in Junon frequently drifted to the things its residents had endured - the destruction of Meteorfall, the subsequent death wrought by the illness they called Geostigma; even the name of Sephiroth wasn't entirely unfamiliar to Raines, spoken in hushed tones by the Shinra soldiers when they thought no one could overhear them. "In our world, we depended on the fal'Cie. They sustained us in every aspect of our lives, and in return, we never questioned them. We didn't have your strength...not even the will to make our own order. I suppose you could say that we were all slaves under the illusion of freedom." There was a deep, underlying bitterness behind his otherwise calm tone, well-masked by the softness of his speech, but sharpening the words a little, reflecting in the hardness of his eyes.

"It was a fal'Cie who gave you that mark. Make no mistake, they are not human at all, no matter what guise they may wear. They set themselves as gods above us, and they will gladly twist and manipulate men toward their own ends, whatever those may be. I'm afraid there is much more to that brand than you realize..." His eyes flicked briefly to the Turk that sat watching him, "Much that should be discussed in private. The brand of the l'Cie is not an idle thing."

Cie'th or crystal, it was a choice of damnations that faced him now, though he didn't yet realize it. Raines watched the President, cool and composed as ever, wondering vaguely if he would believe it all, the scope of what had fallen upon him. That he would resist it, Raines had no doubt. At least at first. At least until the futility of the effort came crashing down upon him, later, when the slow progression of the brand corroded his will and his desire to fight away, and every line seemed to drain away a piece of his life with its appearance.

But he wouldn't speak on that. Rufus would see for himself, in time.

"Before I say any more, though, I have questions of my own." A Sanctum brand... "The fal'Cie who branded you. I need to know which it was, how it happened. Anything you can tell me." Though his voice was quiet as ever, there was a certain undercurrent of intensity about the way he spoke, an abrupt, if faint, rigidity to his manner as he turned his silver eyes directly onto the President.

"Consider it my price."