Final Fantasy VII 100 Word Challenge

Whatever it was, it had to have been stranger than usual, and that was saying something. When SOLDIERs capable of breaking Nesa Conway in half with one hand saw her heading down the corridor and attempted to make themselves inconspicuous, it was a sign something was up. Given none of the SOLDIERs looked as though they were planning a raid en masse on the Biological Science division, it ruled out Professor Hojo as the source of whatever-it-was, and put the blame firmly back on the usual Number One Suspect.

So, the two questions Nesa wanted the answers to were: firstly, what the hells had Zack done this time; and secondly, why hadn't she already heard about it from Kunsel?

"I knew taking the day off yesterday was going to be a mistake," she muttered to herself as she keyed in the code to the Director's suite. As expected, Zack Fair was sitting on the "to be disciplined" bench, bracketed by two of the Turks. One of them was Rude (or, as their mutual great-grandmother addressed him, Rudolphus) who just nodded in her direction. The other was a young kid with bright red hair barely restrained by a pair of goggles and an elastic band in back.

"Hey, doll!" he said to her, smirking. "Nice tits!"

Nesa looked across at Rude. "New partner?" she asked.

Rude nodded.

"Fresh out of training?" Nesa continued.

Rude nodded again. Behind his dark glasses, he was probably casting his eyes upwards as he implored the gods for patience, Nesa decided.

"Right." She looked at the pile of paperwork in her In-tray and sighed. "Damn, take one day off, and this is what happens."

She pulled out her chair, grabbed the stack of papers from the tray and moved them into "Pending", pulled the first item off the top of the stack and got to work. The item in question was a medical leave request for Kunsel, which at least answered the second of her queries. She read through it. Kunsel was one of the few SOLDIERs whose healing processes hadn't accelerated thanks to the treatments, so he healed as slowly as anyone normal. This was why he'd been back in Midgar, convalescing from a sword swipe to the stomach received in Wutai. He'd only just reached the point where he was up and mobile. Or at least, he had earlier in the week.

Now he was back in the infirmary, due to busting his stitches. From laughter.

Nesa decided not to ask.

After processing the leave request, and making the appropriate notes on various files in Personnel and Accounting, Nesa moved on to the next item. This one was a formal reassignment of a cadet trooper. So were the next twenty. Nesa processed the reassignments, all without looking up at the prisoner and escort. From the corner of her eye, she could tell Zack was fidgeting. By now she was due for a coffee break, which she took. "Would you like a coffee?" she asked Rude.

Rude nodded again. "Black, no sugar," he said.

"Easy fixed," Nesa said, grabbing her purse.

"Hey, get one for me, too," Rude's new partner demanded as she headed out the door in the direction of the canteen.

Nesa was gone for fifteen minutes, and returned bearing two cups of coffee. She handed one of them to Rude, and sat down at her desk once more.

"Hey!" The redhead sounded aggrieved. "What about my coffee?"

Nesa ignored him, and went back to processing paperwork. There were twenty updates to personal files to be made, and these tended to be painful, simply due to the amount of sheer bureaucratic mumbo-jumbo the Personnel and Logistics departments had each insisted be shovelled into their systems. Each update required her to log into two different mainframes, and there was no way of just running through all of the updates on one system before switching to the other, due to the rather baroque and hyper-paranoid security structures in place - the two systems checked with each other, and if the changes on one weren't paralleled in the other system within ten minutes, it meant starting all over again. In theory, it was meant to ensure both Personnel and Logistics knew where all military staff were. In practice, it meant about fifteen minutes per update, which meant she had only eight done prior to lunch.

Lunch break was heralded by a different pair of Turks coming in to relieve Rude and his new partner. The redheaded Turk shot Nesa a poisonous glare as he left the room. Nesa just looked at Rude.

"You'll talk to him?" she asked.

Rude nodded. Nesa nodded back, grabbed her purse, and headed off to lunch, ignoring Zack, who was still sitting on the bench.

~

After Nesa returned from her lunch break, the processing went on as before. Occasionally, the door to the suite would open, usually followed by someone adding an item to her In-Tray. The remaining sixteen updates took the rest of her workday, and she still had to enter and file the disciplinary report against Zack before she could pack up and go home (it was one of her iron-clad rules: try not to get more than a day behind in the paperwork, otherwise it rose up and swallowed her). She looked through the report. It was about ten pages long.

The door to Executive Lazard's office opened, and the man looked a question at her.

"Two hours overtime," she said.

He nodded. "Two weeks in the archives for Mr Fair," he said to Rude. "Then guard duty for the next three months."

Zack opened his mouth to protest, then shut it again, looking over at Nesa's desk shamefacedly.

"Next time you get the urge to spontaneously alter training procedures, Mr Fair," Lazard continued, "please think about the amount of paperwork it would generate."