Stairwell, ShinRa Building, Midgar, Gaia, Tuesday Night

[flowering_mind]

It had taken her ages to fly across the greater part of a continent, and then over a piece of the ocean, in the dead of winter. Ino never wanted to repeat that journey, but it had given her plenty of time to think. Getting into her emails without being noticed was still a… well, she'd managed. But it had been a challenge. Ino was a born hacker of

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[ponytailedturk]

"Iris."

Tseng was only slightly winded as he came up the last few steps to where she had been sitting. That was the hell of it, when it came to this building. If it wasn't accessible by elevator, it was the stairs.

And the Shin-Ra tower had a hell of a lot of stairs.

"You're back early."

That came out... neutral. Very neutral. If she was back, there was no doubt in his mind that she knew. That she knew. And this was a situation that had to be handled... carefully. The fact that she hadn't come right for him was heartening, but that didn't mean that standing here talking to her was by any means safe, either.

[flowering_mind]

It was one of the reasons she'd chosen this floor to be on, really, since it was one of the harder places to reach just via elevator.

Ino kept her eyes shut, since she didn't want to look at him. Not because he was hard to look at but because she didn't know what she'd do when she saw him. Silly made small, happy noises, though. Silly liked Tseng. Ino envied Silly.

"I learned everything I could about Professor Gast's research," Ino said, her voice very carefully controlled. It was like walking a tightrope only if she fell off it, it wasn't her death she was worried about. Tseng was formidable. She could take him, if she fell. "And snowboarding isn't really my thing."

[ponytailedturk]

"You never did strike me as the snowboarding type," Tseng allowed, frowning fainty. He pulled in a deep breath before he spoke again, this time in a quieter tone. "What did you find?"

He wasn't asking about Gast.

He figured that much was clear.

[flowering_mind]

The correct answer could have been a flip and true 'more every second', but she'd backed out of his mind before he'd ever hit the stairs. Safer, really, for both him and her.

"Enough," she says. "You haven't found him."

Ino drew in a slow, slightly unsteady breath. It was better than screaming. Or crying.

"And I don't know why I wasn't brought in."

Or told, years earlier.