Tseng's tongue stops abruptly. He pulls away, searching Rufus's eyes for the answer to the suddenly pressing question that he has. His own expression is nothing, a mask of nothing, with eyes gone black and void. There is hardly anything of Tseng left to speak of.

What remains behind is rote, all those years spent in service to Shinra, raised by drills, fed the same motions again and again and again. He lifts the blade to Rufus's carotid artery, holds it flat, elegantly angled so just a slip, just a shiver, will nick the tip of it clean through his pretty flesh.

"How do you know about that?" he demands. His head is never clearer than when he is in this place, but trying to recall other instances within it tends to confuse him. They bleed together, fuzz out at the edges. Is he talking about Sephiroth? Or Reno? And how does he know?