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The Bigwigs had a name for it.

They who had a name for everything—although this one was especially noteworthy—referred to it as the Civilian Readjustment Process via Passive Deterrence against Future Acts of Organized Terrorism (otherwise dubbed Rule 242c).

He knew it as drowning cats.

Maybe it had started out as 'rats', maybe not, but somewhere amidst the lines of barrack talk spreading through the ranks, the lingo had evolved. Drop an r, add a c and about eight more lives.

Appropriate, given the rumors that kept popping up in the city.

Organized crime. Take one down, face five more. Kittens, even. Women. Children.

It wasn't all that unusual. Even the gentlest creatures had claws when they were fighting to survive and feel in control. Kids pelted stray dogs with stones. Starving moms sold their babies for a hit. Others left theirs behind on doorsteps without even a bushel basket or a note.

Not that they had any choice. Everyone in their right mind knew that.

It was like They said: Choice was an illusion.

Of course there were pamphlets that said otherwise, the kind that stuck to his boot all damp from the sewage leaking by the side of the road. Under orders he was supposed to pick them up and burn them immediately, not that doing so stopped anything. For all the trouble ShinRa went through to keep the insurgents at bay, information still got out about mako reactors and what they were doing to the planet: global warming (or was it freezing?), sucking Mother Gaia dry. Something like that. A couple of hooligans occasionally tagged a building with graffiti, and technically he was supposed to report or shoot at the various offensive claims and names (even if he had foregone the standard gun in favor of a sword), but most of the time he didn't bother. Within the hour they'd be up again on walls so pockmarked with bullet holes that it really didn't matter if he shot at them or not.

Even ShinRa had seemingly decided that it was a waste of bullets, which explained the extra thick glow emitted from the reactors and the subsequent brown-out in the slums as he patrolled that evening. It didn't happen too often, but still often enough that he knew what it meant.

Someone was drowning cats.

It occurred to him that maybe the name had come from one of those distant memories people had—either theirs or someone's else's—of sticking a cat in a bag when they were trying to deflea it. They tied it in some burlap, leaving its head out in the air (supposedly), and dunked the critter in the nearest body of water. It was a slow torture method, one that traumatized the cat far beyond the prospect of fleas, and not without good reason. Those who were careless or cruel ended up killing everything. Passively—as it wasn't human hands that flooded lungs or human legs that refused to tread water. It was survival of the fittest in its finest hour: man playing god with all of nature and winning.

ShinRa had more or less the same idea. Stick a bunch of insurgents in mako tanks to get them to talk or reform. Some would rat each other out, some wouldn't, and those who didn't lost their minds or their lives. It was a cheap and effective method of deterrence. Today's power from yesterday's terrorists, someone had said.

At least that's what he'd heard. Gossip was the only semi-reliable source of information anymore. Appearances deceived, reports lied. The news told half the story if it told it at all. Even if he had the clearance to view the tanks, he doubted it would make any more sense to him than what he could hear from the drunks in a local hole-in-the-wall bar.

Besides, the truth wasn't nearly as important as majority opinion. People acted on what they thought, and despite the fact that most people in the slums had an immunity to death, there was a distinct sense of self-preservation, even if it was based on a lie. It controlled their actions, manipulated their fears. Paid his rent. It was his job to maintain that status quo. If he had learned anything, it was that true or false, the situation never mattered as long as it was predicted and understood.

Hence his problem with Mystery Girl.

Two of the last four nights had been spent with a stranger in his bed. A stranger who, for all he could discern, served no practical purpose for his existence. If anything, she made it more precarious, batting around his thread of fate the way she did.

But yet for some stupid reason he didn't even know, he helped her. Night after night he cared for her. Made sure she would live to be found in trouble another day.

He still hadn't gotten a damn thing for it.

And now she had a kid.

That same familiar kid—still catless— now flung into his arms with pleading teary eyes and a silent cry for help.

He stood in shock, glancing between it and where Mystery Girl was standing between two guys in tacky leisure suits and an excess of gold jewelry. She raised her gloved fists, while they circled her, grunting to each other and cackling, "Here, Kitty, Kitty."

Mystery Girl swung her leg around, knocking one assailant in the head. He fell into an oily puddle, and his crony with brass knuckles and mohawk assaulted her from the back. Clanking a steel chain in one hand and taunting her with a switchblade in the other, he swung the chain around her throat, and she kicked out the chest of the man in the green jacket, as he stumbled up. A hook around the knee, and she ducked to flip Mohawk over and under her, releasing her from the chain. Green Jacket tossed a night stick between two hands and the child wailed when something crashed out of nowhere into Mystery Girl, but still no one advanced.

From his position near the mouth of the alley, he thought that he probably looked real stupid, a guard standing there holding a kid while a possible damsel in distress fought two against one. But she was good, injured and strong as she was. And job or not, it wasn't his fight.

That was until he caught a glimpse of a holster.

He didn't bother to think where this second death wish had come from—although again he was positive he didn't like it—but he ripped off his helmet and rushed to set the kid behind the garbage bins. He stuck her hands over her ears and his helmet over her eyes, before he slipped silently into the fray, jamming his sword between the girl and the blunt blow of a club.

He turned just enough to see her swing out to use the alley wall as leverage and flip behind her assailant, before he abruptly hacked his sword into the other's knife.

The switchblade whirred out of the guy's hand to stick in a patch of dirt, and Mohawk cursed, grinding a hand through his neon hair. "Look, look, we're on your side," he said, then dropped and rolled to grab his weapon and turn it on the girl who had spun into his vicinity.

Her eyes had gone wide and then there was the crash of a stick against her ribs and a knife poised at her heart.

He didn't waste time. In a second the hand was severed bottom up, and Mohawk screamed in pain before getting kicked into his companion and they fell on the ground.

Mohawk was still writhing and spitting demands for the bitch's head, when the blunt edge of the sword crashed into his skull, bruising the pavement with his blood.

Mystery Girl sprinted to cover the kid's position from the remaining attacker, and Green Jacket scrambled back to where his friend lay oozing brains on the asphalt and slammed a bloody fist on the ground. "Fucking ShinRa dogs!" he shrieked and then there was a click of a gun aimed at him or the girl or someone and then more blood and a sword from his chest and blood dribbling off Jacket's teeth.

The gun clattered to the ground, while Green Jacket fell back to sputter his last breaths in road sewage.

Vaguely he registered the sounds of the kid's frightened tears and Mystery Girl telling her it was okay but to keep her eyes closed. He made no effort to comfort either.

Instead he followed standard ShinRa procedure (or innate human curiosity) and nudged one head back with the tip of his sword for identification. It lolled to the side, and the tongue rolled down to the sidewalk. But on the bottom of the chin unstained with blood, he spotted the small telltale tattoo of a bumblebee burned into the flesh. A member of the Honeybees, the organization run by the infamous sleaze and whoremonger Don Corneo.

He turned to Mohawk, ratcheting him over, and spotted the same thing.

The mafia was after this girl.

Or more likely: ShinRa had the mafia after her.

He swallowed, blinked, and leaned down to wipe the blood off his sword on one guy's pants. Then he went over to Mystery Girl, who had picked up the kid and was pressing her helmetless head into her shoulder. She handed the headgear to him, and he slid it on without a word. He snapped his sword onto his back, then grabbed her hand to lead them to the edge of the alley.

He held it for a long moment at the curb, and after nodding and adjusting the child in her arms, she slipped into a nearby abandoned building. Presumably to take a short cut away from the eyes and ears in the public markets.

He walked away and headed the opposite direction to finish his patrol. He was determined not to be the one to report the bodies, and it would be stupid to follow her. Besides, he was almost sure they'd meet up again.

It was inevitable. Even if there had been no smiles this time.

Perhaps it was because both realized Shin-Ra was coming at her from all sides, throwing everything but their million-man army at a single girl. A girl who had somehow tangled with trained assassins and notorious gangsters and still come out alive.

All he could figure was that it was a game. A deadly one. Somehow she was getting played.

And not a word of it had leaked out to a guard in the slums.

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