Chapter Text
Cloud had to hand it to Hilda – she equipped her crew well. Gone were the old jumpsuits that Highwind's crew used to wear – no, the crewmembers wore uniforms these days. Fancy uniforms. With all sort of lean lines and lapels and striking designs. And while the fit might've not been quite perfect – Cloud had to roll up the trouser legs a bit – he still had to say, the neat cut of the thing wasn't that bad. It wasn't leather, maybe, but hell, at least it wasn't a ShinRa infantry uniform. Those things sucked.
Hilda was less than impressed when he arrived at the bridge wearing the thing, though. "That's a respectable uniform, you know. For respectable people. Whom other people respect."
"You saying I'm not respectable?" Cloud asked, snorting. "Do you have any idea how many people salute me when I walk by?"
"Longwinded brainwashing," she snorted right back at him. "Shame that uniform and I'll… do something about it," she added, waving a haphazard hand at him.
"Terrifying," Cloud said flatly. "Truly I have never felt such apprehension in my life. Look at me shaking in my boots. My stolen boots. Which I stole."
She narrowed her eyes at him. "Just gimme a fucking moment, you geezer – I'll figure out something that will embarrass even you."
"Trust me, little wing – if there's something embarrassing to be done out there I've already done it, and I probably even enjoyed it," Cloud answered and looked around. "Everything good here?"
"Define good. We're flying, we have fuel to stay up in air for the next thirty nine hours, all systems are working at optimal levels… We've all had to turn our phones off," Hilda answered with a shake of her head and gave him a look. "There's a lot of people out there who want to talk with you – and you seem to be conveniently out of reach. So now they call me. And my crew."
Cloud shrugged, uncaring. He'd turned the phone off right after meeting Reno – who had the habit of calling and texting incessantly until he got his way. Plus he had no intention of dealing with reporters just then. "Probably better that way," he said. "The clones situated okay?"
"We've handed in the hammocks, mattresses and blankets – some of them rigged up make shift beds from their own gurneys and some grates. They've all got places to sleep. Setting up a rotation for them to wash up too, though we've already had to put up a water ration – we're not equipped to deal with this many people needing a shower," Hilda said and turned to one of the monitors. "Thankfully the clones who were in full armour when they went swimming seem to do well with just gear maintenance. Still. We'll need a restock soon if you guys are going to stay for long. Not just for water, mind you – food's going to have to be rationed, too."
"Hmm," Cloud hummed, thinking about it. If he got his way they wouldn't stay at Edge for long and then restocking wouldn't be an issue – as long as Hilda could get them to his place, he'd have everything settled for the clones. "What's the most time we can manage without landing?"
"Two days – then we'll need more water. Never mind fuel," she answered.
"Well. Hopefully it won't be an issue by then," Cloud said and then looked away as the doors to the bridge hissed open. Ren stepped in with his helmet under his arm. "Your men settled in okay?" Cloud asked.
Ren, if he thought anything about Cloud in a Highwind uniform, said nothing about it – his expression didn't even twitch. "Yes, sir, we'll make do. It's more comfortable than some other accommodations we've had to deal with," he said and glanced out of the front window. The Highwind was idly circling around Edge, and the city was on its right hand side, giving them a nice view of the area of decay around the city.
"If you and your men need anything, don't hesitate to tell the crew," Hilda said, looking the lieutenant over. "Cloud is being a paranoid bastard so we can't restock just now, but anything we can offer is yours."
"Thank you, ma'am, we'll do for now," Ren said and then turned to Cloud. "You intended to brief us on the topic of… interested parties."
"Yeah, sure," Cloud said with a shrug. "Now? Because you really don't need to hurry on their account – they can wait, trust me."
"The sooner the better, sir," Ren said with a slight, stiff smile.
"Alright then, after you Lieutenant," Cloud said and glanced at Hilda. "Keep us flying and if you see a helicopter, shoot it down with extreme prejudice. Especially if it's a Bank chopper."
"Piss off," she answered and with a little grin Cloud turned to follow Ren out of the bridge.
"Helicopter, sir?" the clone asked curiously.
"A small aircraft that gets its lift from rotors," Cloud shrugged. "They're faster and more manoeuvrable than airships, but can't carry as much weight or go as long distances. And the interested parties are known for using them."
"Right," Ren nodded thoughtfully. "You do not use any sort of rocket based thrusters then?"
"Not as such no – well, some of the newer airships have rocket thrusters for extra speed, but overall they're only used in emergency situations. Airships aren't really optimised for those speeds," Cloud said and dug out his phone from the pocket of his Highwind issues jumpsuit. "Anyone else coming to our little debrief?"
"My sergeants, Gunny, Strike, and Yazoo," Ren said with a nod and glanced at him. "We're not all expected to attend to the meeting, correct?"
"Well… our interested parties can expect whatever they damn well want. You don't have to comply any of their expectations," Cloud shrugged and flicked through the programs on his phone to get to his photos. "Bring everybody, bring nobody – it's really up to you guys."
Ren nodded, and they entered the meeting room. The Sergeants were already there, sitting down by the table – they stood up when Cloud and Ren entered, though it was hard to say which one they were standing for, Ren or Cloud.
"Alright," Cloud said, walking up to the video projector and tugging out a wire. "I'm going to give you the short and nasty of it – do you want recent Planet history to go with individual bios?" he asked while hooking the wire into his phone and turning the projector on. "It's not precisely necessary information, but we all have long lived grudges that stem from what happened twenty five years ago."
Strike cleared his throat. "How long is the local year?" he asked. "And how long is the local day and hour?"
Cloud blinked at that, a little surprised – but really, he shouldn't have been. Planets, different orbits and rotations, right. "Our year is three hundred and fifty two days. A day is I think technically just a little over twenty four hours or something. And an hour is sixty minutes, a minute is sixty seconds, a second is how long it takes you to say airship. One airship, two airship, three airship and so on."
"So your year is sixteen days shorter than ours," Gunny mused. "Twenty five years for you would've been just under twenty four for us…"
"Oh I'm going to love this," Cloud muttered. Maths wasn't really his thing. It was one of the many things he'd failed back at SOLDIER trials and he'd quite happily not looked back to it since. "Wait, how long is your week?" he then asked.
"Five days, a standard day is same as yours," Strike answered.
"Five. Okay – ours is seven," Cloud said, scratching at his neck and then walking to pull the projector screen down. So, when the clones said that it might take them a week to make the transmitter they meant five days, not seven. "Right. Are we all set for time then?"
"I think we've got it now, sir," Ren said, looking thoughtful as he sat down. "Concerning the recent history of this planet, how much of it should we know? From your previous comments I've gotten the bare bones impression of what happened, but I know I am missing some key details."
"Hm. Well, like I said, it's not precisely important – it's just that we all, every politically powerful party these days, we all started from there. I'll give you the quick and dirty of it, I think, better to be safe than sorry," Cloud shrugged and walked back to the projector and his phone. After flicking through his pictures, he turned the projector on – it projected a picture of Midgar onto the screen, as the city had been before the Meteor. "This is how Midgar used to look twenty five of our years ago – the old city that Edge circles now. It was ruled by ShinRa, the tyrannical corporation that pretty much ruled the Planet back then…"
He didn't dwell on what ShinRa had been at it's prime, that didn't really matter – just summarised how it had been shortly before it fell, corrupt and largely inept but by then far too powerful to topple over no matter how incompetent the head on it's overly massive body was. He brushed over the experiments, didn't bother to go over Sephiroth at all just said that one of ShinRa's biggest human experiments had gone mad, killed the former president and that it had started the snowball that had ended up avalanche.
The clones made for good students – they listened attentively, memorised everything and asked just the right questions. Cloud got the feeling it was part of how they'd been made. As if the clones and their Grand Army wasn't bad enough, now it turned out someone had given them all near perfect memory. They might not be enhanced like SOLDIERs were, but as far as simple military prowess went… that was fucking terrifying.
"I dunno how it is with other worlds, other planets. But ours is…" Cloud trailed off, not sure how to summarise the WEAPONS. In the end he decided not to, it wasn't important. "Anyway. Lots of shit happened, you could even call it a war between ShinRa and the Planet in general. It was a very interesting year for everyone and we all almost died. In the end, Midgar was destroyed by an artificial meteor summoned by our lovely madman, and we were all saved by… I guess you could call it a conscious immune response from the Planet. Anyway, that's how ShinRa fell."
The clones stared at him. "Right," Strike said slowly. "What?"
"How do you summon a meteor?"
"With great and terrible powers," Cloud shrugged. "It doesn't matter now, it won't happen again. It was something of a one-off."
"And a conscious immune response from the planet?" Yazoo asked, running a hand over his chin.
"Also a great power – just not as terrible," Cloud said and shook his head. "It's all very complicated and confusing and doesn't really matter in this situation. Shall we move on to our interested parties?"
"Yes, lets," Ren said and leaned forward. "You were part of ShinRa yourself – I suspect it was the same with others?"
"Yes, it was," Cloud agreed and with ShinRa and its fall from power – and indeed, existence – summarised, he moved on to their individual interested parties. "Let's start with Reeve," he said and flicked through his pictures to a recent one. It showed Reeve in the Seventh Heaven, talking with Barret who was almost off the screen – he had a wine glass in hand and a smug look on his face because Reeve was a generally smug bastard.
"This is Reeve Tuesti," Cloud said. "He's the leader and the founder of the WRO - the World Regenesis Organization. He was one of the executives of ShinRa before of its fall, he was the head of the Department of Urban Development. He designed most of Midgar and had hand in designing other ShinRa cities and structures – and while he was one of the less corrupt leaders of ShinRa, that doesn't mean he wasn't at least a little bit corrupt."
"I think I saw him at the clinic," Ren said, frowning. "Weren't you talking with him in the garden, sir?"
"Yes, I was," Cloud agreed with a sigh. "He's an asshole and sadly also a friend. Anyway, Reeve and through him the WRO is our interested party number one. The WRO started as organisation of do-gooders – they tried to undo some of the damage ShinRa caused, tried to help people, do your usual general good things. Back when they started, though, it hadn't been that long since the last of our disasters and a lot of people wanted to do good – they wanted to be better than they used to be, so a lot of people joined in early on and the WRO got very powerful very fast. It wasn't really the best thing that could've happened to them."
The WRO had been a bit twisted over the years. It didn't help that a lot of it's early funding had came from Rufus ShinRa and pretty much all of it's early employees had been former ShinRa people. What had started out as an honest bid for a better future had gotten agendas – and all those agendas had been spotted with the individual agendas of individual workers. It was a mess writhing under the banner of a Better Future for Everyone and no matter how Reeve had tried to make it better… it just wasn't feasible. Now days the WRO hoarded old ShinRa tech and raced to develop new tech and while they technically didn't benefit from the release of that tech back to the public, they damn well didn't suffer from it either.
"The WRO isn't bad, really. They do help a lot of people – they build houses, they fix roads, they fight monsters, they offer aid, they do charity work," Cloud shrugged. "Problem is that they do a lot of other things on the side, too. And they're basically that moral busybody who will help you regardless of if you want their help or not, because they think they know better. If it was anyone other than Reeve heading the WRO, it would basically be ShinRa point two, just under nicer wraps."
"Right," Strike said and leaned back. "I'm sorry, sir, I can't quite get read on this – do you hate this Tuesti or not?"
Cloud groaned at that. "I… don't… actually hate him," he admitted very, very begrudgingly. "He's a smug manipulative bastard with his nose all up everybody's business, but… he could be worse. And he's not stupid. He's idealistic and has his own agendas, but he's not an idiot and he does honestly have the best for everybody in mind."
"Thank you, sir," Strike said, arching his eyebrows at him. "That clarifies it right up."
"Piss off," Cloud sighed. "If he tells you the building is on fire it probably is, but if he asks to use your gun to fix it, he probably just wants to steal your gun. Alright?"
Strike smothered a laugh at that.
"Moving right along," Cloud said and then quickly backtracked. "Actually, back to Reeve for a moment," he said and flicked through pictures until he got to a picture of Cait Sith. "This thing," he said and motioned to the screen, "is Cait Sith. He's a semi autonomous robot sometimes controlled by Reeve – it's his spy and how he deals with shit at long distance. Reeve doesn't use Cait Sith much anymore, but he does sometimes and if you see him, know that it's Reeve behind him."
"You have AI?" Gunny asked, eying the furry robot.
"And droids," Strike muttered, scowling
"Cait Sith is the only one of his kind, really. Reeve made him before ShinRa fell – and it's one of the few techs he's not released to the public. Which just says what a bastard he is – wanting to keep a monopoly on Cait Sith," Cloud shrugged. "Right. Now moving right along to this douche."
He flicked through the pictures again, until he got to the next interested party. An elderly man with white hair, sitting in a wheel chair and scowling at something off screen. "This is Rufus Shinra," Cloud said. "The former president of ShinRa Electric Power Company and current president of the Bank of Midgar, and the head of Turks, pretty much. He's an asshole and I hate him with actual hatred."