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Rufus blinked at the little blond child, freezing halfway through his office door. The little blond child glared back from the wall, a knife clenched between his teeth. Slowly, he slid back into the vent he was hanging out of and pulled the cover closed behind him.
“Huh,” said Rufus. He picked up the phone on his desk and dialed Veld’s office.
The child was back, this time raiding the break room for food at the asscrack of dawn. He paused when Rufus came in, eyes briefly flitting down to where Rufus’s guns were holstered, before apparently dismissing him as unimportant and going back to rooting through the fridge.
Rufus narrowed his eyes, a little insulted but more than curious enough to set his annoyance aside for the moment. He realized what he hadn’t the first time: the tiny little thing had mako in his bright blue eyes. The tiny little thing had a SOLDIER’s enhancements. So Rufus leaned against the wall by the door and crossed his arms over his chest, observing as the child picked up a container of leftover wutaian noodles, sniffed it, made a face, and put it back.
Had his father handed one of his bastard children over to Science? It didn’t seem like something he’d do, but at the same time it didn’t seem like something he wouldn’t do. And if the little thing was an experiment, why was he running amok like this? Veld hadn’t had a clue that a blond child was loose in the vents when he’d first called, though Rufus and the Turks in general were starting to think the kid had something to do with the many mysterious happenings around the Tower.
The kid finished his raid as Rufus watched thoughtfully, standing up with an apple in his mouth and a half-eaten sandwich in one hand. He kicked the fridge door shut, cast Rufus one last uninterested look, and scrambled back into the open vent, closing it behind him with his bare feet.
“Huh,” said Rufus.
He mentally dubbed the child Tanuki and set the coffee to brewing before he went back to his office and called Veld again .
The Turks weren’t making much progress on tracking Tanuki down, which was, frankly, hilarious. Some wild theories were being thrown around, mostly for entertainment and venting frustration that they were somehow losing to a child whose age wasn’t even in the double digits. The most popular theory was that Tanuki was actually a very lifelike robot.
Rufus’s personal favorite theory was that Tanuki was the hellspawn of Scarlett and his father. Scarlett, being a heartless bitch, had dumped her newborn baby in a reactor, from which he had then emerged filled with the wrath of the gods and spite enough to kill all of Shinra by a thousand petty cuts.
Considering how often the coffee makers in the executive floors had been mysteriously sabotaged, it seemed about right.
Rufus came back to his office from an executive meeting that had lasted well past 9pm, exhausted and determined to pick up Darkstar so that they could go home immediately. He found his dog, certainly, curled up in the corner of his office on her bed.
He also found Tanuki, sleeping like a pup against the barrel of her chest.
Starry raised her head and whined very very softly, short tail wagging as if to say ‘look what I have!’ Rufus toed off his shoes and crept over to crouch just out of arm’s reach, observing the boy’s sleeping face. Of course his murderous (pushover) guard hound would be the first to pin the child down. He shook his head and patted her flank. Her tail wagged harder.
The child woke all at once, eyes flying open and landing squarely on Rufus. It was impressive. He’d seen Turks who had far less control over themselves so soon after waking.
“Oh. You,” said the child in a sleep-roughened voice. He rubbed briefly at his eyes, yawning without actually opening his mouth. “Tell Darkstar to get off me.” One of her heavy forelegs was laid over his waist, keeping him trapped curled up against her. Mako strength or not, it was probably difficult to wiggle out from under a heavy, stubborn dog.
A little smile curled at Rufus’s lips. The kid was fearless. He liked it, especially in a maybe-possibly little half-brother. “Why would I do that instead of, say, calling a Turk while you’re stuck here?”
The kid shot him a wry look that didn’t quite fit his soft young face. “I could kill either or both of you instead,” he said with not an ounce of false bravado. Pointedly, he tapped the hilt of the knife at his waist with one finger.
“Then why don’t you?” Rufus was curious. What exactly were the kid’s goals here? Based on his preternatural skillset, he could probably have killed every single person in the Tower and gotten away with it.
“Too much trouble. I’d prefer you alive.” He reached up and scratched Starry behind the ear. She leaned into it, tail and tentacle waving happily. “And Darkstar is the most tolerable out of all of you.”
Fair enough. Rufus was satisfied for now. He whistled and Darkstar got up with a deeply reluctant whine, slinking sulkily over to his side. Tanuki got up too, stretching fluidly, and headed for the vents.
“Do you have a name?” Rufus asked impulsively.
The kid climbed up and slid into the vent feet-first, pausing to look at Rufus. A tiny, shit-eating grin curled at his lips. “All things considered,” he said, “I think the nickname you gave me is good enough for now. I’ll tell you when you’ve earned my name.” Then he closed the grate and vanished.
Rufus huffed. Alright then.
The tiny acts of sabotage continued apace, much to the Turks’ frustration. Veld still had yet to see Tanuki himself, though a few of the younger Turks had caught glimpses. That might have been deliberate on Tanuki’s part—he seemed to be something of a little shit. Rufus himself had semi-frequent, if unpredictable, conversations with the child, mostly when he caught him stealing food from the break room.
Or from his desk. Tanuki was shameless.
The child would pass on information when it suited him—flash drives, printed files, occasionally physical evidence. It all seemed very random, but Rufus guessed that there was some kind of connection between everything. Whatever it was, it was inscrutable, even to Veld.
Or at least, it was until nearly all of Science was demolished in one fell swoop.
The chaos was incredible. As the reports rolled in, it seemed that dozens upon dozens of small events had neatly lined up to kill the top scientists and send the whole department screeching to a halt. Hojo was dead, killed by one of his own experiments. Hollander was dead, drowned in a vat of mako. Every fire sprinkler in the whole building had gone off and didn’t shut off for nearly thirty minutes. The physical damage was incalculable.
And Rufus had a feeling it was all Tanuki’s doing.
Oh, he had no evidence. But arranging something so grand in scale would certainly explain why someone of his skills had been doing nothing but relatively harmless sabotage for nearly three months. Veld agreed, when he voiced his thoughts. No one had any idea where the little gremlin was, or how he’d done any of it.
Rufus got part of an answer when he retired to his executive apartment at the top of the Tower, unwilling to go to his preferred home in the city proper when there was still so much work to do. Starry perked up the moment the front door opened, whining and bounding away from his side. Eyes narrowed, Rufus drew his weapons and crept into the apartment. If Starry was whining instead of growling, it was probably fine, but one could never be too cautious.
He followed the sound of Starry’s whines into the master bedroom. There was a trail of blood leading from the windows to the en-suite bathroom. When he entered, he found Tanuki curled up in the bathtub, head pillowed on a folded-up towel with Starry nosing at his hair. His hand was pressed over his stomach. Bright crimson soaked into his shirt and dripped into the bathtub, flowing steadily down the soft incline and into the drain. His lips were tinged blue, cheeks pale, the dark circles beneath his eyes stark.
“Shit,” Rufus breathed, fumbling to holster his guns and pull out his PHS as he quickly crossed over to kneel by the tub. “Kid.”
Tanuki didn’t open his eyes. The corners of his mouth twitched slightly. “Did you know...that…Hojo is...actually a...good shot?”
“Was,” Rufus corrected, hitting the speed-dial for Veld’s personal phone. It was the first time he’d ever used it.
Tanuki huffed a laugh. “Was,” he agreed. “Sorry. Tried not to bleed too much on your fancy expensive carpet.”
“Oh, make no mistake,” Rufus said, shucking off his white jacket and shifting the PHS to his other ear, “you’ll be cleaning it up later.”
“Sure,” the kid agreed, breezily enough that it made Rufus’s stomach twist strangely.
Veld picked up. “Rufus?”
“Tanuki is shot and bleeding out in my bathtub. Executive suite. Send medical assistance.” He paused. “SOLDIER kit, a surgeon if you can manage it.”
“Understood.” Veld hung up.
Rufus got another towel and pressed it against Tanuki’s torso, gently moving aside the little hand that could no longer press down with mako strength to staunch the bleeding. “Hold on, kid,” he told his maybe-possibly little...no, his definitely little brother. Because Rufus said so, and what he said went. “Help is coming.”
Tanuki didn’t say much of anything.
The kid lived, though it was touch and go for a while. They couldn’t risk taking him down to the non-science medical floors just yet, so Veld came personally escorting one of the Turks' own medics. Assisting in emergency surgery on a mako-enhanced child on the floor of his bathroom was certainly not something Rufus was ever going to forget.
Eventually, though, long after his knees had gone numb and his back started cramping, the last bullet was fished out and the wound closed with a Cura, cast by Veld because the medic was exhausted. Rufus washed the blood from himself, then helped the medic wash the blood off the kid. They put him in Rufus’s bed, covers tucked up to his chin with heating pads (and Starry) around him to help as he recovered from blood loss.
The medic left, escorted back to her own floor by a younger Turk. Veld and Rufus both watched Tanuki sleep, lost in their thoughts.
“Did you know that Hojo was actually a good shot?” Rufus said abruptly.
Veld looked at him from the corner of his eye. “...no. That, I did not know.”
Rufus fished a bloodied USB drive out of his pants—the same USB drive Tanuki had been clutching in his free hand. On its side, a neat label read ‘ For Verdot: Valentine & Gast.’ He handed it over.
“I have a feeling he wasn’t just being glib about his own injuries,” he said, a wry, tired smirk pulling at his lips. “He’s a little shit like that.”
Veld read the label and slowly—so slowly—slipped the drive into his inner suit pocket. “Hm,” he said, a strange tightness in the corners of his eyes. It softened a little when he looked back at the kid. He leaned over, briefly resting his hand on top of Tanuki’s wild blond hair. “Get some rest,” he told Rufus, standing upright and straightening his suit jacket. “We have a lot of work to do tomorrow.”
On that cheerful note, he left.
Rufus glanced at his newfound little brother and sighed. Great. Now he had to sleep on the couch.
When Rufus woke up the next day (late, because he deserved it for once, goddammit) he found Tanuki mysteriously missing and his fridge quite a bit emptier than it had been before he’d gone to sleep. He shambled around a bit, checking to make sure the kid hadn’t gone and holed himself up in a closet like a real tanuki or anything equally ridiculous.
There was a note on one of the pillows on his bed. In a surprisingly elegant hand, it read ‘call me Cloud.’ When he flipped it over, the other side had the name and number of a carpet cleaning company. Rufus threw his head back and laughed, startling Starry.
Yeah. Tanuki— Cloud —was going to be just fine.