At the moment, several people stood on the only path leading to the upper floor.
There were three people at the front. In the middle stood Rufus Shinra, son of Shinra's president.
To his right was a man with long black hair: Tseng, the leader of Shinra Company's General Affairs Department Investigation Division—the Turks.
On the left was a middle-aged man whose expression looked somewhat weary and gloomy. He was Reeve Tuesti, the head of Shinra Company's Urban Development Department.
As one of Shinra's executives, Reeve knew that the company hid unimaginable darkness. He despised that darkness.
The reason he had not left Shinra was because he wanted to use his own abilities to stop the company from committing even more sins wherever he could.
When he learned that Rufus planned to speak with the intruders face-to-face, Reeve could not simply stand aside, so he followed him.
Because Rufus was currently the person most likely to change Shinra. Rufus was different from his father. He was not someone who would do anything for profit.
Suddenly, the thick metal ahead of them turned red-hot in an instant. Then it melted like candle wax, forming an entrance, and the intruders stepped through.
The instant the man at the front turned his gaze toward them, all three felt as if Death itself had swept its killing stare over them. It was as though they had been judged, and for a moment, they had the illusion that they had already been killed.
Then, just as suddenly, that deathly gaze vanished.
It felt as if they had been judged innocent.
For a moment, their bodies nearly relaxed into complete weakness.
"Long time no see, Tseng."
"It has been a long time. I didn't expect our next meeting to be under circumstances like this, Aerith."
Tseng replied with a bitter smile and looked at her with complicated eyes.
At first, he had thought Aerith returning to Shinra was simply walking into a trap, seeking her own death. But now, it seemed he had been mistaken.
The mysterious man's displayed strength felt like something even Sephiroth could not defeat.
If he had not been concerned with Aerith—if he had not been dealing with those strange black shadows attacking her—this man would have slaughtered his way up even faster.
And if a man with strength surpassing Sephiroth's did not attack head-on, but instead chose assassination or something similar, it was hard to imagine anyone surviving him.
He did not need to completely destroy Shinra. All he had to do was assassinate the company's upper ranks, and Shinra would collapse.
"You must be Mr. Rufus. Could we talk?"
"Of course."
Rufus answered the woman without hesitation, though he was somewhat surprised by her words.
He had come here intending to talk in the first place. He had not expected it to be this easy.
Soon after, in a reception room on that floor, their conversation had nearly concluded in less than ten minutes.
"Mr. Rufus, please. The Mako reactors won't be a problem, will they?"
Aerith pleaded with him.
One of the goals of their invasion of Shinra was to meet Rufus. According to Mr. Kain, Rufus was someone who still had some conscience.
If Rufus took control of Shinra, it would be a good thing for this world.
Before meeting him, Aerith had not known whether he truly had a conscience. But now that she had seen him, while she still could not confirm that he was a good person, she could at least be certain that he was not a bad one.
Because she had heard voices.
Those voices told her Rufus was not evil.
The voices had never deceived her before. Combined with her own instincts, that meant he should not be a bad person.
But asking him to help them—and even to overthrow his own father's rule—was still difficult.
"We can believe that Jenova is an extraterrestrial life-form. After all, you said so yourselves as Ancients. Logically speaking, since the Ancients could reproduce normally with modern humans and produce Aerith, that means the Ancients were ultimately a branch of humanity. They simply possessed the ability to use the Lifestream. If Jenova's cells came from the Ancients—if they were human cells—they shouldn't cause those monstrous mutations in humans. So yes, we can believe that Jenova is an alien life-form."
Vice President Rufus still seemed not to have fully recovered, so Tseng spoke first.
He had not expected Jenova to be the true culprit behind the destruction of the ancient humans, a being that threatened the entire world.
And now, Shinra Company was trying to revive Jenova—the very thing the ancient Cetra had sealed away at the cost of near extinction.
They were releasing a demon.
They were setting the world on a path toward destruction.
As for the so-called Promised Land, perhaps it was simply the place where that demon had been sealed. It was not some ideal land of infinite energy. It was not a utopia.
But even with all that, getting Shinra to stop developing Mako would be almost impossible.
"However, do you have clear evidence regarding Mako?"
They said Mako was the power of life. That it was the resting place of human souls and spirits after death, and that when the time came, it would become new life and descend into the world again.
They said extracting and using Mako was the same as pulling people's souls out and burning them as fuel, eventually causing all life to go extinct—including the Planet itself.
If they wanted Shinra to stop, they needed real proof for such an outrageous claim.
Of course, Tseng chose to believe Aerith.
After all, Aerith was half Cetra. The mysterious man who had appeared beside her also claimed to possess Cetra blood, which explained how he could display such unbelievable abilities, as well as why those strange ghost-like things called Whispers had appeared.
According to them, this man was a Cetra warrior the ancient Cetra had placed into sealed slumber as a safeguard against Jenova's return. When he sensed Jenova's reappearance, or when a problem with Mako placed the Planet on a path toward extinction, he would awaken from his sleep.
But returning to the matter at hand, without tangible evidence, the president would never give up the development of Mako.
No. Even if there was evidence, the president would probably continue development anyway.
Because that was the kind of man he was. A selfish opportunist.
Even if Mako extraction truly would exhaust the Planet, he would never abandon it as long as the crisis had not yet reached him.
And the evidence they needed was not meant to persuade the president.
He could not be persuaded.
It was meant to persuade Rufus.
If they could move Rufus, then Rufus might cooperate in overthrowing his father's rule.
Suddenly, an abnormal chill spread rapidly through the room.
It was not a physical cold. It was a fear born in the mind, and Tseng's expression changed as he turned toward the door.
The next second—
"Well, well. If it isn't our dear president's son. Why are you negotiating with the enemy?"
As that gloomy voice drifted in, darkness so thick it seemed almost material seeped rapidly through the door.
In the blink of an eye, the door itself was swallowed. The darkness was about to devour the entire reception room.
Tseng's face turned grim at the sudden change.
The one who had arrived was Nero, one of the elite Deepground SOLDIER unit known as the Tsviets.
A 1st Class-level fighter.
"So you're the target, are you? Then let me see what you can do."
The instant those words, filled with pleasure, fell, a storm of darkness engulfed the conference room. It sought to physically dissolve everything into darkness and turn it into slumbering shadow.
Boom!
A massive blast rang out, as if the entire Shinra Building had been shaken.
At that very sound, the darkness seemed to evaporate in an instant. The conference room that had been swallowed was spat back out.
When Tseng's vision returned, he stared at the scene before him in disbelief.
The 1st Class-level SOLDIER who had seemed invincible only one second ago was now being held by the head in that man's single hand and slammed against the wall.
No.
There was no wall anymore. It had been blown apart.
And the SOLDIER lifted in one hand was convulsing as if being electrocuted. His power seemed to be getting absorbed by the other man.
More precisely, Nero was releasing his power to resist, but the moment it emerged, this Cetra warrior absorbed it.
"Is this proof enough?"
The Cetra warrior said.
Proof of what?
Tseng's pupils shrank.
From the look in the man's eyes, he understood what kind of proof he meant.
Proof of absolute power.
If they refused to cooperate, then he would simply destroy Shinra directly.
The result would be the same.
(End of Chapter)
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