Emerald Crisis--Final Fantasy VII--Disc One, Mission 9

The Ruins of Midgar: Shinra HQ Top Floor\

            Daisy stared out the fractured window.  From where they were, she could see the stars clearly.  The dirty remains of the plate gleamed in the night.  Far below, she knew there were people gathered around fires, hunched in the cold, wrapped in dirty rags.  From the top floor of Shinra’s HQ, however, she couldn’t’ see them.  Suddenly, it made sense to her how people at the top can be so callous.

            She turned and regarded the office.  They found it thick with webbing, and Yuffie used her materia to burn it away.  Then, she cleared a spot on the floor and started fiddling with the files on her bracer’s holographic interface. 

            “Find it yet?”

            “I’m looking,” Yuffie said.  “I’m trying to find some older blueprints, maybe see if I can figure out where the hidden door might be.”

            “How hard can it be? Find a hollow wall or something.”

            Yuffie frowned at her.  “You’ve obviously never infiltrated a place before,” she said while sifting through more files.  “Most walls have wiring behind them, especially in a place like this.  It isn’t about hollow walls.  It’s about looking for something that doesn’t belong.”

            “What doesn’t belong, huh?”  Daisy folded her arms in front of her and approached the wall.  The paint was chipped, the wall fractured.  An old bookcase was folded in, the glass desk melted and warped.  She walked a small circle and then came to a stop.  The webbing had been burned away and soot was gathered on the walls.  From where she stood, she could see a small gash in the wall.

            Her brow knitted, and she leaned forward, and she listened.  Beyond the wall, she could hear voices, indistinct whispers that were, undoubtedly, human.  She stood straight and readied both pistols, and she whispered Yuffie’s name once, twice, three times before getting her attention.

            Yuffie looked up.  “What?”

            Daisy nodded at the wall. 

            “The wall?”  Yuffie frowned, then went wide-eyed.  “Oh, the wall!”  She closed the files on her bracer and stood.  Reaching back, she readied her shuriken.  “And we’ve got company?”

            Daisy nodded.

            Yuffie smiled.  “Then, let’s go introduce ourselves.  You first.”

            A nod, and Daisy leaned into the wall, throwing it open.  There were four Lotus soldiers, standing huddled in a narrow hallway thick with dust.  At the very end was the rounded shaft of the elevator, the doors worked open.  The four soldiers reacted immediately when they see them.

            All four wore masks and the green military uniforms of their organization.  There were two men in the fore, ready and waiting, one being tall and wiry and the other stout around the midsection.  Behind them were two women, one small but toned and the other being a big woman with strong shoulders.

            Daisy kneeled and readied her pistols while Yuffie stepped in and hurled her shuriken.  It spun through the air and landed between them.  A wall of ice swelled around them, spreading from the shuriken and pinning two, small-but-toned and stout-around-the-midsection, to the walls.

            “Your turn,” Yuffie shouted, and Daisy took two shots.  The gunshots echoed down the hallway, but the bullets came into contact with a blue flash and a hexagonal barrier that formed from the air.  Materia glowed brilliantly in the darkness from armbands they wore.

            Shoulders drew two daggers and ran along the wall, twirling through the air as she came to landing.  She attacked from the side, stabbing at Daisy’s torso but being met by Yuffie instead.  Yuffie caught the woman by the arms and fell back, tossing her into the office.  Shoulders hit the ground hard and lost hold of her daggers as she slid across the glossy floor.

            Tall-and-wiry staggered forward and swung down at Yuffie, who met his fist with her arm guard and then knocked him away.  She planted a kick to his gut and then another to his chest.  He stumbled back, and she leapt up, pushing off the wall and driving both feet into his chest again.  He fell backward into the ice and then slumped to the ground.

            Flipping overhead, Yuffie yanked her shuriken from the floor and the ice disintegrated into slush.  The Lotus soldiers fell free.  Tiny-but-toned grabbed hold of the shuriken and pulled Yuffie down into a kick.  Her knee met Yuffie’s gut and sent both women into the slurry.  Beside them, thick-about-the-midsection drew a gun but had it shot from his hands by Daisy, who was then grabbed from behind.

            Yuffie coughed and pushed herself up.  Tiny closed distance, using a series of swift jabs to drive Yuffie to the wall.  Pinned, Yuffie tightened her posture, pulled her arms close to her torso and darted around the quick strikes.  When she saw an opening, she punched Tiny in the solar plexus repeatedly and then elbowed her in the face.  Then, seizing the small woman by the shoulders, Yuffie flipped over her head and used her momentum to toss the other woman into the wall.

            Daisy choked and clawed at shoulder’s arms.  She coughed and watched as Yuffie ducked under a punch from thick and grabbed her shuriken.  Without even a glance, she spun about and drove the shuriken deep into the steel panels of the wall, wedging it in around his neck and holding him in place.  Then, she tossed a shining green stone that flashed with light as it approached.

            A roar of fire sounded from the entrance.  Daisy put her head down and closed her eyes.  The woman behind her was blown forward, uniform smoking.  The smell of burnt flesh filled the room.  Before shoulders could recover, Daisy was on her, striking her repeatedly in the face with her pistol butt.  She kept swinging until the woman stopped but took care not to kill her.

            After, Daisy and Yuffie stood together.  They were mostly unharmed, though Yuffie was holding her side.  “You okay,” she asked, and Daisy nodded, so Yuffie turned to the thick, who was trying to pry the shuriken from the wall.  He stopped when he saw Yuffie staring.  She put her hands on the shuriken and kneed him in the crotch, then she pulled it from the wall and let him crumple to the floor.

            Daisy picked up her pistols and held them at the ready as she approached.  Yuffie stood over thick, foot pinning his head to the ground, and rested her weapon perched on her shoulder.  “Okay, let’s do this fast: there’s more than you four here.  Talk.”

            “Greene,” he coughed.

            Yuffie smirked and glanced at Daisy.  “And here I thought all the Lotus folks were too stupid to do this easy.”  She tapped his chin with her shuriken and pulled his mask off.  He was crying on the floor.  “It’s okay, sweetheart.  You’re okay, so long as you give us more.”

            “He was a doctor, worked for Shinra, works for us now.  He’s crazy but smart.”

            “Sounds like Shinra’s M.O.,” Yuffie said.  “And how many does he have with him?”

            “Twenty more.”

            “Soldiers?”

            “All of them,” he said.  “When you join Lotus, you get trained.  We’re all soldiers,” and with a hint of pride she added, “We’re fighters.”

            Yuffie looked around the hall, at his three friends.  “Not very good ones.”

            He gritted his teeth, his rage getting the better of his fear, and started shouting.  “The W.R.O. will fall, and we will be free to live as we like.  No more corporations to run us, no more governments to collar…”  He went quiet when Yuffie kicked him across the face.  His nose was bloodied, but he was breathing

            Daisy stared at Yuffie, who blinked in response and asked, “What?”

            Daisy shrugged and safetied her pistols before holstering them.  She tiptoed over the water on the floor and the bodies around it to stared down the elevator shaft.  “I think there’s power,” she said, and she looked back at Yuffie, who followed.  “What’re the chances we can take this done.”

            “They took it down it looks like,” Yuffie said.  She fastened her shuriken to her back and then felt along the darkened elevator interior.  When she found the cords leading down, she took hold of them.  “We won’t be using it, though.”

            Daisy frowned.  “And why not?”

            “Can’t let them know we’re coming.” 

“More climbing?”

“More climbing.” She met Daisy’s frown head-on.  “Look at it this way, we won’t have to hit the gym for a week.”

            “Fine, fine!”  Daisy smacked herself in the cheeks and took a deep breath.   In front of her, Yuffie stepped away from the floor and hung in the center of the shaft.  Daisy adjusted her ponytail again.  “How is it holding?”

            “Good,” Yuffie said, and she started shimmying down.  Above her, Daisy followed.

            “I’m really, really starting to regret my decision to come along with you.”

            “Aw, don’t be like that,” Yuffie said as they descended into the darkness.  “Someday, we’ll laugh about all of this.”

            Daisy groaned.  “That’s assuming we survive.”