[Shelke awoke with a groan, sprawled out on her side in the gravel and stone at the base of the mountains. Everything ached, even more than usual, and it took most of her energy to bunch up her hand against the ground and roll herself onto her back to look up at the...sky? A drop of rain smacked against the stones nearby, then another, but she ignored them, her attention focused on what was above it all.]
[She had been expecting a ceiling, there was always ceiling above her. Instead now it was a rainy gray sky. What was going on? She closed her eyes, forcing herself to focus. She had been...in Midgar. Under Midgar. Vincent had rescued her from Nero, and he and Yuffie had put her in the mako tube, and then...]
[And then she was here. What?]
[She forced herself to rise up into a sitting position, gloved hand brushing the stones from her hair absently as her unnaturally blue eyes scanned the horizon for a landmarks, only to find several. But none of them were right. Maybe she was dreaming? She rarely did, dreaming implied a deeper sleep than she trusted herself to get in Deepground. But she'd certainly never had one like this, either way. Maybe it was a side effect of the mako gas she was recuperating in. Or maybe she'd hit her head too hard fighting Nero and damaged something. Or maybe she'd just finally lost her mind.]
[Probably the third one.]
[She did a cursory check of herself, everything seemed intact, her sabers were still in her sheaths, a quick diagnostic of her neural net indicated everything was still ticking along like it should be. So, not broken, at least. Hopefully.]
[There wasn't any point in sitting here trying to figure things out, either. So after another minute or so of gathering up her energy she rose to her feet and started towards the closest thing she recognized. Midgar. Almost Midgar. The skyline didn't match her memory, or any of the images in her databank. The city of Edge, but the intact silhouette of the Shinra building? The Sister Ray? Well. She'd figure it out when she got there...]
[Not that she made it more than a quarter of the way before she had to sit down on a rock, hands on her knees as she tried to catch her breath, her tiny frame already feeling the strain from the walk. And the rain certainly wasn't helping anything. Useless body.]
This is going to take forever.
[She murmured to herself, her voice flat but tinged with frustration. Just two minutes and she'd get moving again...]
Midgar
[When she finally reached the city, the first thing she did was look for a terminal that would let her access the Shinra network. If the Shinra Tower was here, then they had to have information on what was going on, an explanation for this bizarre...well, everything. At least she was reasonably sure this wasn't some kind of mako-induced dream, considering how sore she still felt. Dreams weren't supposed to be this uncomfortable, right?]
[When she finally found an access terminal, she wound up having to drag a box over to it, climbing up so she could more comfortably reach the keyboard. A quick second to take in the screen before she was flipping down the keyboard...and away she went. Her fingers were practically a blur as she moved from screen to screen, bypassing the public security encryption without even hesitating before starting in on the deeper ones. There had to be a way to access the internal network from here...]
[Of course, she wasn't exactly hiding what she was doing, far too used to the privacy that being a Tsviet offered her in Deepground. Here though, she was a child in glowing clothing, with Mako eyes, seemingly hacking her way through shinra security like it wasn't even there. And anyone could just walk up and look over her shoulder to see.]
Shelke Rui : FF7 - Dirge of Cerberus
[Shelke awoke with a groan, sprawled out on her side in the gravel and stone at the base of the mountains. Everything ached, even more than usual, and it took most of her energy to bunch up her hand against the ground and roll herself onto her back to look up at the...sky? A drop of rain smacked against the stones nearby, then another, but she ignored them, her attention focused on what was above it all.]
[She had been expecting a ceiling, there was always ceiling above her. Instead now it was a rainy gray sky. What was going on? She closed her eyes, forcing herself to focus. She had been...in Midgar. Under Midgar. Vincent had rescued her from Nero, and he and Yuffie had put her in the mako tube, and then...]
[And then she was here. What?]
[She forced herself to rise up into a sitting position, gloved hand brushing the stones from her hair absently as her unnaturally blue eyes scanned the horizon for a landmarks, only to find several. But none of them were right. Maybe she was dreaming? She rarely did, dreaming implied a deeper sleep than she trusted herself to get in Deepground. But she'd certainly never had one like this, either way. Maybe it was a side effect of the mako gas she was recuperating in. Or maybe she'd hit her head too hard fighting Nero and damaged something. Or maybe she'd just finally lost her mind.]
[Probably the third one.]
[She did a cursory check of herself, everything seemed intact, her sabers were still in her sheaths, a quick diagnostic of her neural net indicated everything was still ticking along like it should be. So, not broken, at least. Hopefully.]
[There wasn't any point in sitting here trying to figure things out, either. So after another minute or so of gathering up her energy she rose to her feet and started towards the closest thing she recognized. Midgar. Almost Midgar. The skyline didn't match her memory, or any of the images in her databank. The city of Edge, but the intact silhouette of the Shinra building? The Sister Ray? Well. She'd figure it out when she got there...]
[Not that she made it more than a quarter of the way before she had to sit down on a rock, hands on her knees as she tried to catch her breath, her tiny frame already feeling the strain from the walk. And the rain certainly wasn't helping anything. Useless body.]
This is going to take forever.
[She murmured to herself, her voice flat but tinged with frustration. Just two minutes and she'd get moving again...]
Midgar
[When she finally reached the city, the first thing she did was look for a terminal that would let her access the Shinra network. If the Shinra Tower was here, then they had to have information on what was going on, an explanation for this bizarre...well, everything. At least she was reasonably sure this wasn't some kind of mako-induced dream, considering how sore she still felt. Dreams weren't supposed to be this uncomfortable, right?]
[When she finally found an access terminal, she wound up having to drag a box over to it, climbing up so she could more comfortably reach the keyboard. A quick second to take in the screen before she was flipping down the keyboard...and away she went. Her fingers were practically a blur as she moved from screen to screen, bypassing the public security encryption without even hesitating before starting in on the deeper ones. There had to be a way to access the internal network from here...]
[Of course, she wasn't exactly hiding what she was doing, far too used to the privacy that being a Tsviet offered her in Deepground. Here though, she was a child in glowing clothing, with Mako eyes, seemingly hacking her way through shinra security like it wasn't even there. And anyone could just walk up and look over her shoulder to see.]
[Whoops?]