Chapter Two: First Steps

For the first time in twenty years, Tseng wore stolen clothes. The black leather pants didn't breathe – they suffocated, trapping sweat against his skin. The shirt was plaid. The harsh cotton chafed at his collar. He was naked without his dark tie knotted at his throat. He'd pulled his glossy black hair back, tucking it under a billed hat to shadow his features.

He drove to Midgar by himself in a stolen grey pickup truck that rattled and backfired and sputtered going up hills. Getting Rufus out of Edge had been a test of his considerable skills. Before Sephiroth destroyed Midgar, driving thousands of refugees from the city, Edge had been an affluent suburb of the sprawling, dirty metropolis. ShinRa had a beautiful office building along the edge of the city. Most of the top floor executive offices had ceiling to floor windows to showcase the vista view of the sea.

Tseng's old office hadn't been that high up. Unlike most of ShinRa's key departments, Administrative Research had always preferred to be low key. That was the only thing that saved them. Most of the building had constantly wary security guards, motion sensor cameras, and security bots. But they were on a relatively unsecured floor in this version of the building. And it was always easier to sneak out of a building than to sneak in.

For his part, Rufus was completely unconcerned with the position he'd put Tseng in. He was, in most ways, the same petulant teenager who inherited his father's company and proceeded to run it into the ground. Although, to be fair, it wasn't entirely Rufus's fault. Still, the President gave impossible orders. Stop Sephiroth. Find the Promised Land. Capture Cloud. Destroy that barrier. Get Jenova. It fell to Tseng to execute those seemingly simplistic orders. Of course, he'd never been ordered to kill himself before. But in all honesty, it should have been one of the easiest to execute orders ever.

Only it wasn't going to be as simple as sticking his gun in his mouth and pulling the trigger. No. Tseng would get the dubious pleasure of first breaking into his own apartment, torturing himself for information, and then watching the light fade from his eyes.

And that was just the first step. He'd mapped it out in his head. Step one: Kill yourself. Step two: infiltrate the Turks – because of course that wasn't going to be easy. Step three: Kill the teenage Rufus. Step four: Kill Rufus's father. Step five: Become Director of the Turks, which probably meant killing Veld. After all that . . . then he'd be able to focus on actually changing the future, which would most likely involve killing and recruiting the right assets.

He ditched the truck on the outskirts of Midgar and slipped into the city through the sewers. As a Turk, he was no stranger to traversing nasty places. The Midgar sewers were some of the worst on the Planet. But even years after Midgar's destruction, he still knew them better than his own mother's face. He knew every twist and turn in the passages, every sinkhole, every storage room, every rusting ladder. Everything.

He'd forgotten the smell though.

By the time he emerged in the Sector Seven slums he was ready to scream. Since that wasn't advisable, he gritted his teeth, pushing his tongue to the roof of his mouth. He strolled through the slums, forcing his shoulders into the casual, rolled look Reno made look effortless.

He loitered in the slums for a couple of hours, listening for clues as to exactly when he was. Then he rode the train around the city for a couple more hours, still listening. From a gaggle of young teenage girls he learned that LOVELESS was opening this weekend, and that Commander Genesis Rhapsodes would have been going if he were still alive.

So it was after Genesis's desertion then.

He changed his posture when he left the train, forcing it into the steady, confident gait of a cocky Midgar citizen. One that lived above the Plate. Possibly a low-level manager for ShinRa even. His black eyes analyzed everyone he passed, ears straining for any hint of a conversation to narrow the timeframe.

Surprisingly he saw Zack before he heard him. The SOLDIER was wearing a dark purple uniform, his black hair spiked. Tseng felt a twinge of emotion. The last time he'd seen Zack, the boy's uniform was tattered, his body riddled with bullets. Tseng stopped making friends after that.

But was he friends with Zack in this time? Had the mission to Banora taken place yet?

He didn't know what he was hoping for. Ideally it would be post-Banora. That way he could try and do something about Angeal Hewley's desertion.

Zack started waving his hands vigorously. "I found another Wutai spy!" he hollered. A woman he was standing beside took off running, pulling a forest green uniform from her massive purse. She yanked it on, snapping a collapsible spear from a holster on her back.

The Wutai were getting stupider – why was her uniform in her purse and even more importantly, why the hell did she put it on? It just made her stick out in the crowd. He was glad he'd left the country before he was inducted into their madness. Of course, a Wutai ninja in Midgar meant the war with Wutai was officially over. ShinRa was in mop-up mode. In fact, now that he thought about it, hadn't he interrogated a female ninja that Zack caught?

He watched Zack chase the ninja spy into an ambush. The woman was taken into custody. Tseng shadowed the SOLDIER Second bringing the woman for interrogation. SOLDIER's were notoriously bad at detecting a shadow. It made it easy to keep an eye on them. Zack would have been an exception, but thankfully he didn't have this mission. He just helped out like some overenthusiastic puppy.

The woman was brought to Level 19, the Department of Administrative Research. This was the dangerous part. The SOLDIER put her in a room and handcuffed her to a chair. Tseng went to the observation room. A lone Wutai ninja wouldn't get a supervised interrogation.

He rubbed at his chin, feeling the beginnings of a 5 o'clock shadow. It irritated him almost as bad as the leather pants and cotton shirt. The plaid cotton shirt. Still, he didn't have time to shave. He was doing his own reconnaissance for the first time in over a decade. Well, discounting that disastrous trip to the Northern Crater to find what remained of Jenova.

After a while, his younger self walked into the interrogation room. Tseng's breath caught. He'd forgotten being that young. His black hair was pulled back in a severe ponytail. His younger self wore the suit and tie of the Turks, but it was black instead of blue. Tseng briefly tried to remember when they'd changed to blue.

But it didn't matter, did it?

Younger Tseng didn't speak to the spy. He opened a manila folder, arranging the contents.

She spit at him. "Traitor. Leviathan will drown you in your own blood! Your poor, poor mother took her own life for shame. You disgrace your country, your people -" She tried to lunge at younger Tseng, but her restraints held her back and the chair was bolted to the floor.

The Turk's black eyes flickered from the file to the woman, impassive, and then back to the file. She continued ranting, calling him every dirty and loathsome name she could think of. Finally he looked up. "Rosalie Kino –"

"Do not speak my name –"

"You are the second daughter of Wutai General Ryu Kino. You fought at Fort Tamblin. You're part of the useless Wutai remnants."

Her scowl deepened, eyes boring into his. "You're the useless one, Tseng Kisaragi." Her eyes, Tseng remembered, were the color of freshly tilled earth, ringed by heavy black lashes.

He leaned back, evaluating her. "I do not go by that name. And honestly, I'm surprised to hear you refer to me as such. Did Lord Godo change his mind about disowning me?" He paused, watching her reaction. "No. I didn't think so. So, let's start over. I am Tseng of the Turks. You have information you're going to give me. You can start talking now or we can move to more . . . painful methods of interrogation. But I feel it's only fair to tell you that you don't have information worth sparing your life."

Rosalie gasped. "My father is the General. He leads the resistance while your father wallows in defeat. The information I could give you is worth more than your petty, traitorous life –"

"Unlikely." Tseng shut the folder, glancing at his watch. "I don't really have time for this, Rosalie. I have a dinner appointment scheduled with a co-worker. If you're sure that your information is enough to spare your life, you better hurry up and speak."

"I won't tell you anything."

"Ah. Aha," Tseng said. He unholstered his gun. "That's too bad." He made a show of checking his clip, brushing his fingers across the bullets. "Well, please give my regards to Leviathan" He aimed the gun and pulled the trigger.

Rosalie screamed, terror making her eyes white. "Wait!"

There was no gunshot. Tseng scowled, removing his clip to reveal the gun had jammed. "Lucky you, I guess you'll have time to pray now."

Rosalie simpered. "Wait, Tseng, wait."

He pushed the clip back in, pointing the gun at her. "I don't think so. In fact, I think that my father arranging my marriage with you was . . . fortunate in the sense that it made me leave. Still, I'm in the process of erasing my previous life and, to be perfectly frank, since you're a part of that, I'd like to erase you. No hard feelings, right?"

Rosalie started to talk, tears streaming down her cheeks. She told him where her father's base was, promising that, if he killed her, she would be avenged. She told him information about what kinds of supplies they had available. She told him who was leading the resistance and who was just accepting ShinRa rule. And once she started repeating her story, Tseng put a bullet between her eyes.

In the observation room, Tseng turned away. He'd gotten what he needed today. A rough timeline and a rough gauge on where he was in his life. Apparently he was still upset with getting disowned. Apparently he still was cleaning up his past so no little piece would wiggle to the surface.

He left the ShinRa building, heading into the slums. At a cheap hotel, he showered, shaving his face with a straight razor. He didn't look like he was nineteen. That was potentially a problem. He closed his eyes, exhaling through his nose. Rufus didn't look like he was a teenager either. But that was just another wrinkle in this change the past plan that he was going to have to iron out before they could actually change the past.

Author's Note: Thanks to everyone who's shown interest in this story. I hadn't actually thought about the effects of Tseng killing himself and Rufus in the past, but now that it's been brought up, I have some pretty good ideas regarding that. Please continue reading - and leave a review. It always makes my day :)