[FF7-AU] Dance of Dragons, Chapter 1
[FF7-AU]: Dance of Dragons
Incomplete. AU. Elena. Post-game. Word count for the day: 687 + 1465 = 2152

For amandaw ^^.

Dance of Dragons
 
I: Treasure in the dark
 
She moved as one with the darkness, gliding through the shadows.
 
It was always dark here, now, in the aftermath of the twin calamities: Diamond Weapon and Meteor. Once, the eerie green glow of the mako reactors would have cast sickly looking shadows against the walls after lights out, the lifeblood of the city that never slept. But those reactors were silent too, hulking blackened shapes against the night sky.
 
She adjusted the close fitting black hat, ensuring that not a strand of hair escaped its close confines. In the blackness, the blonde sheen would be a liability, were it not hidden from sight. She could not afford to be seen. Not here, not now.
 
 
There is treasure in the Shinra building…
 
 
She smirked dryly to herself. She didn’t know who had started that ridiculous rumor, but it had certainly attracted treasure hunters and the desperate and destitute in vast quantities. And the dumb, she couldn’t help but think – surely it was common sense that the Shinra Company would have dealt in electronic funds, storing all the gil in the bank instead of stashes throughout Headquarters. Nevertheless, the people kept on coming.
 
And kept on dying.
 
It was a fatal attraction, this rumor; Shinra might have fallen, but the deadly security systems lived on. And they did not take kindly to intruders.
 
But some people were skilled fighters, and they destroyed a few guard robots, disabled a few traps and unlocked a few doors before they were taken down, paving the way for the next generation, and leaving a thin trail of hope behind them. No one had found anything, but everyone was thoroughly convinced that they would be the next one to unlock the mythical safe and walk away a millionaire.
 
Only to die at the hand of the mob, most likely.
 
Something moved in the gloom ahead. She tensed, drawing on the sense materia nestled in her armlet, only to relax again. The object neared, crunching debris under foot. Laser beams pierced the darkness, flashing quickly over her, then the security robot chirped a “Good evening ma’am” as it trundled past.
 
She nodded out of sheer reflex, then frowned at it for the noise. It was perhaps fortunate that her target was nowhere near here, for that would have been an excellent way to blow her cover. And while she had no problems with the security systems, she also could not afford to be seen.
 
 
There are ghosts in the Shinra building…
 
 
She suppressed a shudder at that particular thought. Another fancy rumor that had originated on the streets. Some lucky treasure hunter had gotten away, it was said, and had seen someone moving on the top floors of the Shinra building, on the levels where the access codes had not yet been cracked, much further in than anyone had been able to reach.
 
It was easy to believe the common folk when they said that it was a ghost, or several. It was easy to believe that this building was haunted, with blood splashed on the walls or pooled in dark puddles on the ground. Some of it from unfortunate intruders who had been gunned down. Some of it from the injured and dying who had not been able to flee after Weapon’s blast.
 
She was past the point where the last of the most aspiring treasure hunters had fallen, and the blood was solely from the latter group. The cleaning robots had long since disposed of the bodies, but the bloodstains remained. With the cleaning bots having run out of power, the corridors had assumed a dusty, deserted air, with old printouts gathering along the sides. It was definitely creepy. It was definitely easy to believe that it was haunted.
 
But she rather hoped that the subjects of that particular rumor weren’t the deceased members of the executive board gathering for tea to reminiscence over the good ol’ days. As nice as it would be to see Rufus again, the rest of the board had creeped her out even before they’d been relegated to the Lifestream. Not having to see them ever again had surely been her reward for surviving Shinra’s downfall.
 
More than that, she hoped against hoped that it was a real person. Because only a fellow Shinra employee would have been able to make it past the security systems without a hitch, getting into the keycard locked areas.
 
Perhaps it would even be Reno or Rude. Oh, how she hoped it would be.
 
But if it wasn’t… if it was some ambitious ex-employee trying to make off with classified data and corporate secrets… then she was duty bound to eliminate him.
 
Reno would have shaken his head and called her a rookie who was way too enthusiastic for her own good. The Company was long gone, and the world had moved on, leaving Midgar a burnt out wreck and a reminder of the folly of the past. She shouldn’t have cared less about company secrets falling into someone else’s hands – after all, the competition had won, and won completely, hadn’t they?
 
But there were things on the upper floors of Shinra that she firmly believed should never see the light of day again. She hadn’t been to Hojo’s lab all that often, but she had seen the Jenova specimen, and she had heard the dark rumors, and after Sephiroth’s descent into madness, no one was going to deny that that creature was evil.
 
 
It had been four years since Sephiroth’s fall, since Meteor. Four years since Cloud and his Avalanche friends had returned, battered but triumphant, and the world had hailed them as conquering heroes. Four years since Shinra had bitten the dust, and since all of them had been exiled into anonymity.
 
Meteor had split them up, the three of them that remained. In the subsequent confusion, they’d been torn apart, separated by the fleeing crowds stampeding out of the city even as Rude insisted on returning to HQ. The burning hatred of Shinra that the world had developed sealed her into isolation, running from city to town to city in search of sanctuary, trying to leave her former identity behind. She didn’t know what had become of Reno or Rude. She hoped, in her heart of hearts, that her senpai-tachi were still alive – it would take far more than that to kill them. She couldn’t imagine Reno being taken down by Meteor. He was a cockroach, capable of surviving anything, including getting diced up by Cloud Strife. Several times. And Rude was so stoic and steady as to seem immortal.
 
But if any of them had truly seemed immortal, it had been Tseng. Only he hadn’t been.
 
The pain that that particular thought usually elicited had faded over the years, leaving behind instead a grey wistfulness, a longing that seemed to fall on her shoulders like quiet autumn rain, causing a melancholic ache to bloom in her heart.
 
She smiled -- a small, sad smile -- and gently pushed the thought aside.
 
 
Her road had brought her to Kalm for a while, where she had taken up a job as a sales assistant. For a little while, she had honestly thought that she could rebuild her life and live again in this new world. Yet for all that she had tried her best to fit into this new life, there had been little joy, and less laughter, only a restlessness that stirred in her whenever she contemplated the road out of town.
 
What are you doing with your life? that restlessness had asked, on quiet nights.
 
And she would recall drinks with the others, or recoil of the gun in her hands as they hunted down Shinra’s enemies, or Reno’s cocky smile. Rude’s silent smirk. Tseng. Tseng.
 
And one night, she had set off down that road and never looked back.
 
 
Her feet brought her back to Midgar, the city of ghosts and shadows. Haunted by those who refused to leave. Once, no one would stay under the plate because they wanted to. Now… the only ones who stayed in what remained of the slums were the ones who didn’t want to go.
 
This was where she had been happy, she had recalled, staring up at the twisted wreckage of the Shinra HQ. This was where her life had taken on a focus and a meaning, where her hopes and dreams had taken shape and form. She had joined the Turks for a reason, had been so honestly glad to be part of that motley crew… and all of that had been snatched away from her in the blink of an eye. Before she could even settle into her new family. Before she’d even had a chance to call them home. And now she didn’t know where she wanted to go any more.
 
 
But ghosting silently through the corridors, concentration glued on her sense materia… it recalled bygone rounds of covert-ops training... and made her feel more alive than she had in ages.
 
-v-