Brescher wasn't happy. Not a bit. But Malcolm had suspected that he wouldn't be and stood, nonplused, with his hands clasped behind his back. Fitzgerald looked uncomfortable, fingering a cigarette behind his ear as if unsure whether it would be appropriate to smoke.
"Couldn't you have disabled him? Shot him in the knee? Anything besides killing him?"
Malcolm didn't reply. He'd already explained his decision and refused to try and justify it further. Valentine wouldn't have let an injury bring him down so easily, not if he'd been the kind of man Malcolm had expected. They wouldn't have had the time to grab him and struggle with him back to the cars before the police arrived.
Fitzgerald, however, wasn't the type to stay silent. "Mr. Brescher, sir, we didn't have any choice. Like M said, the police were right on top of us. If we'd have stuck around any longer, they would've had us."
"I don't care!" Brescher paced behind his desk angrily. "Getting Valentine would've been worth it!"
"But, sir..."
"Shut up! And get the hell out of my office! Both of you!" He swore loudly. "Neither of you understand. Valentine deserved so much worse than just a couple of bullets. I would've made him pay."
Malcolm exchanged a glance with Fitzgerald. If the other man had had any doubts about the precariousness of Brescher's mental state, they were now laid to rest.
Brescher was rubbing furiously at his glass eye and cursing under his breath. He seemed to want to chastise them further, but after a few moments of wrathful staring he just pointed at the door. Both men left without a word.
Fitzgerald let out a sigh as they walked down the hall. "Man, he's losing it. If we're not careful, you know, he's gonna give us some order that gonna get us all arrested."
"I know."
"You must have something."
"It's in motion. I was sorry to have to kill Valentine. He would've made a perfect distraction."
"Just do it now, while he's like this. No one will defend him."
Malcolm shook his head. "Too much at stake right now. It would cause too much disruption, and I don't want to be leading all of you shitheads. Wait until the heat's off again, and then we can try it."
Fitzgerald swore. "All right, man, if you say so. Just don't leave us stalled here forever." They came to the elevator. "You hungry?"
"No, third floor." The tower had been arranged as if built from the top down, with the actual Saucer as the first floor and the sixth what passed for the basement. The third and fourth housed the barracks. At the third floor, Malcolm got off and headed for the room he had been assigned. He hadn't slept the previous night and it was starting to tell on him. He wasn't as young as he used to be. And, if he was truthful with himself, his heart wasn't in it like it had been when Racchus had been in charge. It had been a bit like family back then.
They had to get rid of Brescher and maybe Fitzgerald would take over. Malcolm could even teach him. And then they could drop everything that hadn't been a part of the original business and start anew in another city. But it would have to wait a little longer, even though he was starting to get as impatient as Fitzgerald. The timing had to be just right...
Nothing. Nothing, nothing, nothing! Yves Gunther swore softly at the microfiche and filed through a couple more useless articles before reaching for his coffee. After taking a sip he glanced at his watch. Still half an hour until his shift. Moving restlessly in his chair, he went back to staring at the screen.
Who was Vincent Valentine? If that was even his real name. So far, Gunther had had no luck coming up with anything, not even a birth certificate. The best he'd found was a marriage license and that meant diddly-squat as far as he was concerned. He wanted background information, a path to follow, but here there was nothing, not even scattered hints. As far as he could tell Valentine had just appeared one day in Neo-Midgar where he'd worked for awhile, and then he'd married and opened a gun shop in town where he'd lived and worked for thirteen years with his family. Nothing noteworthy. Nothing to give any clue about where he'd learned to fight, to think, like the organization.
Which made it more likely that what he had been involved with had been illegal.
Looking through past newspaper articles was a last ditch attempt, he knew, but what else was there? The Turks were disbanded now, ever since the destruction of Shinra and the original Midgar, but some of their more interesting escapades had been captured by the media. And who knew? Valentine could've been in the Turks. He would've been very young if his age now was any indicator, but he could've been there. And maybe, maybe, there would be some mention of him, or perhaps an unlikely photo.
A knock on the door brought Gunther to attention. "Come in," he called out.
His partner, Jorge Tesner, stepped into the room and closed the door behind him. "Len said I would probably find you here. What are you doing?"
"Oh, nothing much. Just some research."
Tesner walked around the table and glanced at the microfiche screen. "Shinra?"
"Well, the Turks, actually."
"Why?"
Gunther sighed a little, suddenly feeling embarrassed about his obsession with discovering the identity of their Phantom Vigilante. "Len said I should do a background check on Valentine," he fibbed. "I thought he might've been a part of the Turks, way back when."
"Isn't he supposed to be dead?"
Gunther gave a quiet 'hmph' and went back to reading the article. After a few moments of silence, Tesner shrugged and patted him on the shoulder. "Well, good luck. Tell me if you find anything interesting. I'll be in the break room until our shift."
"Okay."
Tesner left and Gunther went back to studying the articles. Shinra had been very often in the news, so there was a lot to sift through. Eventually, he started coming across news he recognized. He skimmed over a number of features concerning the death of the president and the succession of his son, Rufus, and then settled to reading particular paragraphs out of stories.
"...and members of the notorious terrorist group Avalanche were captured today by Shinra soldiers. They await trial and execution for their many counts of reckless terrorism and the slaughter of hundreds of Midgar residents who were living in Sector Seven when the plate fell..."
He shook his head. Shinra had always had a talent for putting people into the worst light. He flipped to the next article.
"...meteor is getting closer to the earth with every passing day. Astronomers estimate that it is now a mere fifty thousand miles from the planet's surface and that, at the rate it is falling, it will impact within the next seven days..."
The next article in the microfiche line-up wasn't from a North Corel paper. At first Gunther wasn't inclined to read any further than the date, but the black and white picture near the bottom of the page caught his attention. The caption said: A rare photograph of Avalanche passing through Rocket Town. Intrigued, Gunther glanced over the grayish figures. There was a woman with her back to the camera, a number of men, something that looked like a giant cat, and then a large white...something with what looked like a toy on its shoulder.
Only one of the figures in the picture was looking toward the photographer, as if he had sensed the presence behind him and had turned to look. He was dressed in dark colours and had black hair, some of which was bound up in some sort of a headband; for his left arm he seemed to have a metallic gauntlet or claw. Definitely not someone to meet in a dark alley. Most of his face was covered by the collar of the cape he was wearing, but his eyes were visible, dark and empty and penetrating, glaring daggers at the person who had dared to snap a photo...and sort of familiar...
Gunther sat staring back at those eyes for a few minutes as if waiting for reality to kick in and show him that the photo was obviously of someone else...and not him. Not Valentine. But that didn't happen. In fact, every second more he spent staring only further convinced him that it was Valentine. Was it possible? He looked here like something out of a nightmare... What in hell had happened to make him like that?
He had to get Len. Maybe this wasn't proving his point exactly, but it did prove that there were things Valentine wasn't telling them about his past; maybe he had also been a criminal before joining Avalanche. He certainly looked like he'd been some sort of killer. Gunther was a little apprehensive about saying anything against someone who'd had a hand in saving the planet, but it was necessary in this case. They just didn't know enough about him, no matter who he was or what he'd done. Who knew why he'd been with Avalanche in the first place? There was nothing saying he had been a good man. The photograph definitely didn't make Gunther think any better of him.
Len was in his office, as usual. Gunther knocked on the door before entering.
Neilson looked up. "Oh, Yves. What is it?" He looked like he'd been busy with something, but he'd folded the piece of paper in his hand.
Gunther eyed the paper for a second curiously before saying, "Len, you've got to come here. I've found something very interesting about our Mr. Valentine."
Neilson hesitated. "Yves, tell me again why you wanted permission to do a background check on him?"
Gunther stopped with his hand on the doorknob. He frowned. "Because I don't trust him. I thought we went over this before. You said I could do it."
Neilson ran a hand over his face. "I know, I know. Sorry. Okay, let's check this out." He got up from his desk, but then paused again. "You wouldn't have tried to go into the computer files we have on Valentine, would you have?"
Gunther raised an eyebrow. "No. By definition, a background check checks a person's background, not what they're doing at present."
Neilson nodded. "Of course. All right. Sorry. Show me what you were going to show me."
When they got back to the station's small newspaper archive, it took Gunther a few seconds to realize something was different. "Damn," he said, "my coffee." It had spilled over the table, narrowly missing the pile of dark microfiche slides. He began to clean it up. "I don't remember knocking it over," he confessed.
"Well, was there anyone else in here?"
Gunther glanced around as if expecting to find someone in the corner. "Just Tesner, but that was before I came to find you. I don't know who would've been in here afterward."
Neilson moved to the door and peered around the hallway outside before closing the door behind him. Gunther looked at him in confusion. "What's with all the secrecy and suspicion?" he asked.
"I don't want the entire station to know who Valentine is. The less people who know, the better."
"Is there something you're not telling me, Len?"
"Let's just see what you've found."
Gunther motioned for Neilson to sit in the chair in front of the microfiche. "Now look closely," he directed, "at that man in the picture, the one who's looking at the camera. Three guesses who it is."
"Oh my god," Neilson breathed after a few seconds. "It can't be. He's from Avalanche?"
"Apparently so. I wonder what else he hasn't told us."
Neilson glanced up. "You just won't let this go, will you?"
"C'mon, Len, look at him. He looks like the grim reaper's apprentice. Tell me you would've hired him on if he'd looked like that."
"That was more than ten years ago, Yves. He's changed from that. And how bad can he have been? He helped save the planet."
Gunther said nothing for a few seconds. "Well, now that I know he was in Avalanche I might be able to find out some more about him. Maybe you're right. Maybe he's clean. But I just want to know for sure before this goes any further. We might be digging our own graves by trusting him, you know. He could be working for the organization, leading us on while he prepares to stab us in the back and hand us to our enemies on a silver platter."
Neilson shook his head. "He took three bullets for us last night, Yves."
"In a bullet proof vest. Don't you think it's convenient that all of the bullets actually hit the kevlar?"
"No, I call that lucky." When it looked like Gunther was going to speak again Neilson held up his hand. "You're not going to convince me, Yves. Now, I've got some work to do in my office. I'll see you later." He stood and walked to the door.
"Should I keep you updated?"
"If you want. But remember, you've got a shift in a few minutes."
"Yeah, I know."
Neilson left the room and Gunther set about putting the microfiche slides away. When he stepped out into the hallway, Tesner was waiting for him. "You find anything?" he asked.
After Neilson's caution, Gunther felt a little uncomfortable about sharing anything. "No, not really. Not much to find, I guess."
"No, probably not."
There was a coffee stain on the top of one of Tesner's shoes. Gunther pointed it out. "Oh, must've stepped in a puddle of it," Tesner said, glancing down and pulling a tissue out of a pocket to wipe the drying stain away.
Gunther didn't ask the obvious question, about how the coffee could've gotten onto the top of the shoe if he'd stepped in it. If it had been Tesner who had spilled his coffee in the archive room, why would he lie about it? It wasn't like the microfiche was off limits. Gunther dismissed it with a shake of his head and headed outside with his partner to their patrol car.
"Do you think he could really be dead?"
Arick shrugged. "Maybe Marc was right after all." Classes had just finished for the day and the two of them were on their way to the lounge after changing into their uniforms. There was a half hour between school and training and they usually spent it with Lef and Marc, relaxing in front of the television until it was time to go. "I mean, who could've survived three bullets to the chest?"
Pegatha frowned in dismay. "I know. But they didn't find the body. Maybe he just pretended to get hit and then escaped."
Arick shrugged. "Or maybe the gang took his body. Or the police."
Pegatha continued to frown. "Why would they do that?"
"Who knows. The police might've so that the media wouldn't swarm all over it."
They walked in silence for a few moments as Pegatha thought about which was more probable, that he'd escaped or that he was dead. Eventually, she turned to look at Arick. "Do you think we're being trained to fight the organization?"
Arick shrugged a little, but the gesture was far from dismissive. He pursed his lips. "I've thought that more than once."
"I thought Mr. Brescher was the Phantom Vigilante for awhile."
He glanced at her. "He might still be."
"Yeah, he might've got away."
"Or maybe he's dead. We haven't seen him since then."
She glanced at him sidelong. "I think we'd know if he'd died."
Arick didn't reply. They were coming up to the lounge. Pegatha could hear the television. A moment before they stepped into the room, she turned to Arick. "Whoever he was, if the Vigilante is dead, we might be the only chance North Corel has now."
Arick didn't stop walking. "I know," he replied quietly. "That's why I'm not leaving."
Pegatha wanted to protest the obvious dig at her wanting to return home but Arick was already in the other room. With an exasperated sigh, she followed him.
Though Vincent wasn't completely happy about taking a break, having to stay away from the police station gave him ample time to look for Pegatha. And telling Elira had ended up being one of the best things he'd done so far. While at the desk in the front room she was able to make some small talk with a few of the customers, and one of them eventually knew the whereabouts of a small dojo that had just opened up not long ago. That same day, Vincent went to check it out. On the lunch break he changed his clothing, put his hair up in a quick ponytail, and went for a walk.
The old clothing store on the east side of town was easy enough to find, and inside Vincent could see children of a range of ages training in some martial arts reminiscent of that practiced in Wutai. But neither Pegatha nor Arick were anywhere to be seen. Vincent swore softly under his breath and considered entering.
He changed his mind, however, when two men came into view from another room, one of them in the traditional garb of a sensei, the other in a suit and uncomfortably familiar. But it wasn't until he pulled a small silver pistol out of his pocket and proceeded to light a cigarette that Vincent recognized the man he had only ever seen under the cover of darkness. Quickly, he ducked out of sight around the building. Perhaps he wasn't exactly dressed as he had been while he'd been the 'Phantom Vigilante' but that didn't mean the man wouldn't recognize him.
So the dojo did have something to do with the organization. If only the police had had some success in locating this place earlier; if only they'd known who to ask. If only he'd confided in Elira earlier. Oh well. There wasn't any point in worrying about what hadn't happened, and in any case he had other things to worry about. Was Pegatha still here? If she was, for the moment she was out of reach. He couldn't go in there asking questions about her without rousing suspicion, and that would put them both into trouble. For now, he'd just have to wait. Perhaps if he came back at a different time...
But there was nothing he could do right now. With another soft curse, he turned around and headed home.