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The Turks are in an uproar.
A silent uproar.
Or an uproar Turk style, more like.
Meaning they're freaking out so bad that if they were normal people they would be running to the hills screaming their lungs out so high that even the wutaians would hear it clearly. But since they're not, they're just petting their guns a lot, drinking obscene amounts of coffee (and the cafeteria's coffee at that, even though only SOLDIERs can stomach that sludge without suffering the consequences afterwards) and narrowing their eyes threateningly at every person they cross paths with... SOLDIERs included.
Which in turn is making everyone else go ballistic too, because they don't know what the hell is happening and surely nothing less but the apocalypse is coming if it's making The Turks freak out this badly? People have actually updated their wills or made them if they didn't have one. Not that it would matter if the apocalypse was coming, but it seems to give them some sense of control?
Tseng would scoff at the absurdity of it (certainly not sit and enjoy their squirming like Reno says, he has better things to do than that, thank you very much) if he actually had time for that. But since he doesn't even have a moment to eat or sleep or Gaia forbid, even go to the toilet, he certainly has no time to spare a thought for their idiocy. Over the course of last week, too many things have happened and they're struggling to do damage control, he doesn't have time to scoff.
For starters, on Monday, he received news of the ShinRa mansion going up in flames and of some kind of disturbance in the Nibelheim reactor. Just in case, Comander Angeal assigned a couple of SOLDIERs to go along with the Turks Tseng had decided to send there. They found evidence of some monsters having broken into the reactor in some kind of scuffle, so they simply secured it and made sure it didn't happen again. As for the mansion, it seemed that thunder had struck it during a storm and evolved into a fire that couldn't be managed by the locals. The President wasn't too happy about the news but there was nothing else they could do, since he didn't care enough about it to bother rebuilding it.
Then, on Tuesday, Professors Hojo and Hollader died in a laboratory explosion. As in both of them at the same time. Never mind that they both had their own private laboratories and they hated each other and made a point to avoid the other by any means necessary. They even had a system for that! Their assistants made sure to learn their schedules to make sure that didn't happen, and even called each other when any change happened because no one wanted to deal with them (especially Hojo) after one of their lover's spats. But no, because life likes to fuck with Tseng sometimes, the explosion had to happen just when Hojo had gotten into one of his rare gloating moments and had gone to seek out Hollander. And in less than a minute, the whole science department became a headless chicken, because the head, whom would have become the head after him and all of their most close assistants had been reduced to fried chicken.
On Wednesday, the President was screaming at everyone at the conference room about the whole fiasco, when he suddenly had grabbed his own chest, gone pale before becoming a horrible puce, and then proceeded to collapse heavily on the chair. According to the doctors he'd had a heart attack because of all the stress and needed to take it easy or he would die for good. Tseng had braced himself for more responsibilities thrown on his shoulders as the Head Turk and he wasn't wrong. Except nothing would have prepared him for what came over him like a tsunami, because the man suddenly wanted to change everything. From the way each department was lead to their external policies, nothing was safe from him. Rufus tried to perform a coup d'état and was batted away like an annoying fly. If he hadn't been so busy thinking contingency plans, Tseng might have even found it funny.
On Thursday, AVALANCHE implemented a terrorist attack that blew the entire 70th floor into smithereens. Tseng, who had been inhaling scalding coffee on the way to the elevator with Zack, had sighed, looked heavenward and then pressed the button to the floor resignedly. Zack had looked a little incredulous at his attitude but Tseng was out of fucks to give at this point. Either the President was dead or not, whatever the case was, Tseng would adapt. As it turns out, the attack had failed only because the man has been bedridden since the day before and had decided to stay on the 69th. Tseng upped the security and went back to his contingency plans.
Then, on Friday, the SOLDIER elite went missing for exactly nineteen hours, twenty-seven minutes and fourteen seconds. Just like that, they disappeared from the 49th floor, no sign of struggle at all and with nothing captured by the security cameras either, and then they came back walking through the front door. And what was worse, not only they said they didn't remember a thing of what had happened, but all of them were soaked to the bone and fake moustaches had been drawn on their faces with permanent marker. For a moment Tseng's mind was blank, unable to process the incoherent information, then he ordered a physical evaluation for the three of them. When it came back clean, he mentally filed it under the no-harm-done section, upped the security once again on the whole building and went back to manipulating Scarlet's department into some semblance of order, leaving a gaping Zack behind. Tseng didn't have time for that kind of shit, thank you very much.
On Saturday, because of course, why not at this point, Tseng got called to the President's suite and his brain screeched to a halt once again, because if finding there a beaming Aerith Gainsborough wasn't enough, the Turk legend Vincent Valentine (who was listed as dead, Tseng was one hundred percent sure of that) was there too. And then, while his mind was still trying to understand the how or the why of the whole situation, Aerith had finished the flower crown she was making and placed it on the head of a short blond man whose sword was bigger than Commander Angeal's or anything that Tseng had seen in his life. And Tseng hadn't even noticed him there. And then the President, noticing his attention on them, had explained that both Strife (the blonde) and Valentine were part of his private security and apparently had been since the week had started and hadn't Tseng seen them around? How strange! and then proceeded to inform him of the new system that was going to be implemented for the sectors bellow the plate that basically changed everything of the way they had been doing things before dismissing him.
Which leads to today, Sunday, in which the President is talking about turning off all the reactors around the world, about consulting Cosmo canyon about energy alternatives and about peace talks with Wutai. Tseng takes out his clipboard, notes it down under finding a new head for the Science department, stopping Heidegger's embezzlement, manipulating Scarlett into producing something useful or at least less expensive, finding if he can convince Cid Highwind to take over so he can kick out Palmer (or eliminate the Space Exploration department altogether otherwise), continuing squashing Rufus' coups and implementing all the new security measures very calmly and makes plans to have a steady supply of coffee brought to his office every hour.
"Where did you say you were before again, Valentine?" Tseng asks directly when they leave the President's suite, because he knows better than to try to manipulate a Turk god and because now that sleeping has become a myth he doesn't give two shits about anything anymore.
"Sleeping," Valentine answers laconic. Strife blinks exactly just once and Aerith beams, reaching to place the flower crown she has just finished over Valentine's head. The man doesn't even bat an eye.
"And you, Strife?" Tseng continues, because at this point he isn't surprised by anything.
"I've done a lot of time travelling," the blonde offers, equally impassive. Valentine blinks exactly just once and Aerith beams again.
"SOLDIER let you do that? How strange."
"Not a SOLDIER." And when Tseng pointedly looks at his glowing eyes, he adds. "Fell into Mako a long time ago."
Valentine blinks, Aerith beams and Tseng needs coffee right now and for this damn week to be over already.