Omake Zone 04: Please Stand By
SHINRA TOWER, MIDGAR
UPPER HELICOPTER HANGAR BAY, 45TH FLOOR
DISC 02 - FEBRUARY 2007
The four danger-red warning lights of the hangar bay spun angrily in their enclosures as warning buzzers sounded in a steady, blaring report. The massive armored doors of the Shinra Tower chopper hangar unlocked and slide apart on tired hydraulics and the harsh white light of the overcast day outside spilled in from below. Cold winter winds flooded into the hangar bay, stinging the eyes and exposed faces of all the support maintenance staff and MPs in the hangar. Everyone except Evan Oris. She stood casually on the receiving gantry leading to the helipad in her suit, hands in her pockets, her eyes locked intently on the Shinra Blackhawk transport chopper now rising into the hangar bay. Being that the chopper hangar of Shinra Tower was situated underneath the part of the tower which jutted forwards outward from the main sub-structure, the main chopper hangar was placed at the very bottom of this upper part of the tower. As such, the hangar bay doors opened on the bottom, and incoming choppers would ascend upward into the bay from below. As she watched the Blackhawk rise into the hangar, she noticed the battle scars first--the dotted lines of holes from anti-aircraft rounds that criss-crossed the fuselage; the char-blackened front and back end of the starboard engine which indicated a total engine flame-out; the inside of the co-pilot cockpit windshield smeared with a bloody sunrise. Judging from these outer indications alone, Evan assessed that this Blackhawk was on the verge of complete in-flight failure. Riwin was in the pilot seat, half his face covered in blood, though whether it was his or the enemy’s was unknown. As the hangar doors closed again and he put the chopper down haphazardly, he powered down the rotors and gave Evan a hard look as he leaned back in the pilot seat and lazily undid the safety belts. Evan gave a firm nod to the young Turk. The port side doors of the chopper popped open, but refused to slide completely ajar. Evan could see Shizune inside, trying to force the door open with bloody fingers. The maintenance crew rushed to the chopper to help pry the door open, the slide rails apparently bent out of shape by impact damage. As soon as the doors were open, Shizune helped the crew bring a stretcher out of the chopper. Valerick Goodliffe, Evan’s second-in-command, was strapped down to the stretcher, his suit shredded and scorched in several places. His entire left arm seemed to be drenched in blood, and as the crew rushed the stretcher past Evan, she saw that Valerick was still conscious. In the moment before they rushed him to the ER, Valerick made eye contact with Evan. She saw the extent of his injuries in that split second, and gave him a meaningful nod. Valerick’s eyes were slightly creased--he was smiling underneath the oxygen mask the EMTs were pressing against his face. In the next second, Valerick was being rushed away, the wheels of the stretcher rattling loudly against the speed at which the EMTs were running it. Riwin, bloodied and battered, sat wearily on the lip of the chopper passenger area where the door was open. He produced a cigarette and a lighter from his torn suit and lit up, taking a long drag on the cigarette with closed eyes. Shizune stumbled out of the Blackhawk and approached Evan on unsure legs. “Mission Accomplished,” Shizune managed to say, though her voice was raw from yelling in the chopper for extended amounts of time. Evan closed her eyes and nodded to Shizune. “Do you have the data?” Evan asked. Though her voice was firm, Shizune could hear the regret in it. “Yes, ma’am,” Shizune replied, “Resistance was much heavier than initial intel indicated, but we got it.” Reaching into the inner right breast pocket of her suit coat, Shizune produced an unusually intricate-looking USB thumb drive. She offered it to her commanding officer.
Evan took the USB drive and regarded it for a moment. “You all...” Evan began, pausing. She shook her head and started again. “You should all be commended. Your efforts today--you’ve all done a huge service for Shinra.” Shizune nodded, and coughed exhaustedly. Evan could tell she was trying to hold her composure. “The company cannot acknowledge you all, but I do,” Evan said proudly. Shizune tried to hide a smile but failed. “You hear me back there, Koucha?” Evan yelled. Riwin, head still tilted back against the chopper fuselage, cigarette hanging lazily off his lower lip, gave a weary thumbs up to their boss. “Damn fine work,” Evan said as she turned to leave, data in hand. Shizune called out to Evan a moment later, just before Evan boarded the freight elevator. “It was worth it, wasn’t it?” Shizune said. “It was for the greater good,” Evan said confidently as the elevator doors slid closed.
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Evan sat impatiently at her office desk as she watched the progress bar on her screen fill slowly, but steadily. The tally light on both her computer and the USB were blinking in the synchronous pattern of data talking. This information has come to us at great expense, Evan thought. If Shizune and Riwin’s reports are correct, R0-414 won’t be operation ready for another month, at the least. That should be enough time. Maybe. The monitor showed a completion message, and Evan snapped out of her ponderings. “Data transfer and conversion complete. Would you like to open the program now?” Evan moused over the “OK” button and clicked. The screen of her monitor went black for a split second, then concentric circles of grey in a bullseye pattern emerged with the words “Please stand by” written in bold white in the very center. A moment later, the scene of a post-apocalyptic garage appeared. There seemed to be some kind of powered armor hanging on a maintenance rack in the garage, and the scene seemed to be slowly transitioning to focus on various things in the environment--the powered armor at first, then to what looked like an arm-mounted computing device of some bulky design, then to a rack of old-looking comic books and back again. The entire time, the tiny words “Press any button to start” were written in antique-computer-green at the very bottom center of the screen. Evan pressed the Enter key, and a green menu appeared over the scene that had several options: Continue New Load Settings Crew Quit A strange gear-shaped logo appeared in the lower left hand corner of the screen that read “Bethesda Game Studios.” Warning text opposite this logo in the lower right hand corner read, “PRE-RELEASE COPY--DO NOT DISTRIBUTE.” “Finally...” Evan said with a sinister kind of satisfaction.
