Chapter 803 - 802: Shinra Decided to Play Very Dirty."

At the Shinra plant in Sector Seven of the Plate, everything continued to unfold from beginning to end without any particular problems. Dean and Wedge encountered no serious obstacles along their path and without unnecessary difficulty reached the central security room in time to activate the emergency protocol for a mass Mako leak, forcing every employee to immediately abandon the plant. But before triggering the alarm system, Dean and Wedge decided to watch a little longer through the cameras as the group of girls made their way to the key valve for switching the Mako flow.

Aerith, Jessie, and Yuffie likewise met almost no tangible resistance from Shinra Security on their route. They dealt with yet another small squad of Grunts without any real effort and calmly continued advancing straight toward the main valve for redirecting the energy. Even right at the vent itself they found only a few patrolling guards and a couple of workers lazily monitoring the instrument readings.

And the moment Jessie confidently switched the Mako flow, Dean instantly saw it on the monitors and immediately flipped on the emergency protocol. A wailing alarm siren rolled through the entire plant, and from the loudspeakers on every floor a mechanical voice began repeating the warning about a large-scale Mako leak.

Watching through the screens as the panicked plant employees raced to evacuate the grounds, Dean and Wedge unhurriedly left the security post and headed into the very heart of the complex—straight toward the long-awaited Mako Reactor.

And while everything in Sector Seven was proceeding relatively smoothly and calmly, the same could not be said of the situation in Sector Five. The moment Alex finished his grand concert and stopped controlling every media system in Midgar, Shinra immediately launched a full-scale military operation.

Having ended the broadcast, Alex carefully placed an ordinary-looking black cube right onto the main control console of the Mako Reactor and turned to Claudia, Tifa, and Barret, giving a clear sign that it was time to leave.

"Finally this whole circus is over! I hope I never see anything like it again in my life… Now let's get the hell out of here before Shinra pulls another one of their damn tricks!" Barret barked with deep irritation, sincerely glad that he would no longer have to watch Alex's insane performance live.

"And here I thought you even liked it a little. Marlene is going to be incredibly happy when she sees her dad singing," Tifa said with a light, teasing smile, looking at the irritated Barret.

"Fine… Maybe I liked it just a tiny bit! But I'm never taking part in anything like that again. Don't even ask me, kid!" Barret muttered, clearing his throat into his fist, and immediately shot a heavy glance at Alex.

"Heh-heh. Papa Bear… Or is it 'singing Papa Bear' now?" Alex answered with cheerful laughter, casually walking past the scowling Barret.

Grumbling something unintelligible in reply, Barret stepped forward decisively, intending to leave this place before Shinra sprang another surprise. Thanks to Alex's warnings they understood perfectly well: Shinra was going to use this "terrorist attack" exclusively for its own purposes in order to paint them all in the eyes of the public as dangerous, bloodthirsty terrorists.

Shaking his head at those thoughts, Barret decided not to clutter his mind any further with such political intrigues. In his understanding everything was extremely simple: if Shinra sent an entire army after them—they simply had to smash it to pieces and calmly leave the plant grounds before the detonator went off. Heading toward the technical staircase to climb back up to the upper levels, Alex pulled a clean handkerchief from his coat pocket and began unhurriedly wiping the makeup from his face.

He already knew in advance: the moment they approached the staircase, Shinra would instantly activate the emergency protocol and seal every main door shut. Roughly guessing what kind of performance the corporation's leadership was about to stage, Alex merely nodded understandingly. And the moment they reached the landing, everything unfolded exactly according to the scenario Alex had expected.

Barret had not even managed to take a single step toward the stairs when a deafening siren blared throughout the entire complex, and the technical staircase itself began rising upward with a metallic screech, cutting off their path of retreat. Watching this mechanism, Alex did not even need to explain anything—Tifa, Claudia, and Barret understood everything perfectly without words. Looking around in search of camera lenses, they instantly noticed that every single surveillance camera in the workshop was aimed exclusively at them.

"So they've already grown tired of waiting," Claudia said in a calm, cold tone, narrowing her eyes toward the nearest lens.

"Stay ready! There's no telling what these bastards are going to pull in the next second," Barret warned in a grim tone, switching his cybernetic arm into machine-gun combat mode with a loud click.

"Everything's already perfectly clear… They're just going to stage their own grand show now," Alex said with a light smirk, calmly taking a thin cigar from an inner pocket and lighting it casually.

The moment Alex finished speaking, the only technical doors on this level suddenly ground open, and dozens of combat robot drones poured out in a swarm, beginning to circle the group at tremendous speed. Claudia immediately seized the hilt of her Buster Sword in a death grip and with one wide, crushing blow sliced the nearest combat drone clean in half.

Tifa nimbly deflected another piece of metal with a sharp kick, sending it into a long flight straight into the metal wall. Barret, without pause, opened continuous fire from his cybernetic arm at the flying machines circling around them. Alex watched the entire commotion with absolute calm, continuously smoking the thin cigar. Clenching the filter between his teeth, he snatched a combat drone flying past by its chassis mid-air and crushed it with a simple squeeze of his fingers like an empty tin can.

Only after the majority of the combat drones had been completely destroyed did the remaining machines retreat to a safe distance and hover in the air, continuing to circle in place. Seeing that the robots had stalled, Barret immediately trained his machine gun on them, intending to mow down the rest in an instant. But before he could open fire, the combat drones abruptly scattered in different directions, extended their built-in manipulators, and synchronously activated a volumetric projection.

At that same moment an arrogant, rolling laugh rang out from every speaker in the workshop, and then a giant hologram of Heidegger himself appeared right in front of Alex's group in his usual dress military uniform, with lush thick facial hair and a malicious, triumphant expression. Seeing the laughing face of the head of security, Alex lightly stroked his chin, thinking that this idiot Heidegger was acting far too arrogantly.

Claudia, Tifa, and Barret reacted with extreme wariness to the fact that one of Shinra's leaders had decided to appear before them personally, even if only as a projection. Having finished laughing, Heidegger narrowed his eyes slightly, casting a contemptuous look over the entire group, and his gaze immediately settled on the unflappable Alex.

"Greetings, my dear sewer rats!.." Heidegger began in an arrogant tone, leaning slightly forward in hologram form.

"Who the hell are you supposed to be?" Alex interrupted him aloud, skillfully pretending he had no idea who stood before him.

"What else could one expect from slum scum… No manners at all! As the chief organizer of our retaliatory PR campaign, I, Heidegger, head of the Department of Public Safety… Welcome you to our show, organized especially for you. Since you love the attention of Midgar's residents so much," Heidegger said with undisguised disgust, casting a scowling glance at Alex before smiling arrogantly once more.

"So you're that top militarist," Barret said in a grim tone, tensely aiming the barrel of his machine gun straight at the hovering combat drones.

"You should be immensely flattered! Shinra doesn't stage a performance like this for just any vermin. And right now the attention of every single person in Midgar will once again be fixed exclusively on you," Heidegger summarized with an arrogant smirk, pointing authoritatively with his hand somewhere to the side.

The moment Heidegger finished speaking, several combat drones drifted a little aside and immediately extended their manipulators, launching another hologram that looked like a giant television screen. At that same instant an emergency news report from Shinra's main channel flared up on the projection, where the anchor began narrating in an anxious voice about the impending terrorist attack at the Fifth Mako Reactor.

Seeing that Shinra had once again decided to play its old favorite trick of mass manipulation, Alex could only shake his head understandingly. After all, only a few minutes earlier he himself, live on air and in song, had told every resident of Midgar straight out that they were being manipulated like an obedient herd. But what happened next on the screen made Alex narrow his eyes sharply.

In the next moment the announcer handed the floor over to a correspondent right from the scene. The hologram showed the face of a reporter who stood with a microphone in hand, broadcasting right in front of the massive gates of the plant in Sector Five of the Plate. But the most unpleasant part of it all was that around the journalist, in a dense crowd, hundreds of ordinary citizens with placards were jostling, loudly shouting that Shinra must immediately stop Avalanche. And right in front of the complex gates an entire armed garrison of Grunts with heavy combat equipment and robots had already lined up.

The most disgusting thing about the entire picture, however, was that Alex clearly made out a multitude of dense Gray Whisperers who were literally pushing the unwitting people closer and closer to the plant gates. At that moment Alex finally understood: it was not only Shinra that had gotten involved, ready to sacrifice hundreds of ordinary residents and its own Grunt garrison for the sake of a pretty shot.

The Gray Whisperers themselves had intervened directly in the situation. Their harsh design instantly reached Alex: Shinra planned to hang the corpses of all these people on Avalanche, while the Gray Whisperers were simply trying to forcibly kill those who should have died back during the explosion at the First Mako Reactor.

Tifa, standing beside Alex, immediately covered her mouth with her palm in shock: she instantly realized that if the detonation still occurred, hundreds of completely innocent citizens would die. Watching the raging rally, Barret clenched his fists until the knuckles cracked, feeling a furious rage boiling inside him and an uncontrollable desire to smash Heidegger's screeching head right against this concrete wall. Claudia only frowned more deeply, understanding without extra words that the corporation's top brass would turn this entire PR campaign into one massive bloody witch hunt.

Heidegger, carefully observing the entire group's reaction through the lenses, only smirked arrogantly, sincerely believing that his plan had succeeded brilliantly. He was firmly convinced: even if Alex's group somehow miraculously perished within these walls, the skillfully staged corpses of the citizens would still be hung on Avalanche without any problem.

"I see you tremendously enjoy the scene Shinra has so generously organized for you! And therefore, for people burdened by the deaths of loved ones and the chaos that has erupted, Shinra will offer the very best consolation," Heidegger declared with arrogant laughter, showing not the slightest remorse over the impending deaths of hundreds of people.

"You… You're really ready to sacrifice so many living people for something like this?!" Tifa cried out with tears in her eyes, feeling an even greater anger toward the bloodthirsty Shinra flaring up inside her.

"Us? Oh, sweetheart, it's not us sacrificing these people—it's you! You're the ones who will kill them. And our valiant security service only managed with great difficulty to stop the desperate terrorists… But, to our enormous regret, failed to prevent the explosion itself," Heidegger said with nauseating arrogance, staring intently at Tifa and completely ignoring her tears.

"Nice move… Bravo! I'm simply applauding standing up… Although I'm already standing," Alex said with a grim, stony face, lightly clapping his hands.

"Heh-heh. After all, how did it go in that song you just sang? 'We tell the people of Midgar who the villain is and who the hero!' And from this very moment the brand of bloody terrorists whose attack led to the mass deaths of Midgar's residents will be hung on you forever!" Heidegger delivered with a wide, malicious smile, turning his projected face toward Alex.

"You know, I'll personally turn you inside out the moment we meet face to face," Alex said in an ice-cold tone, tossing the extinguished thin cigar at his feet and grinding it under his heel.

"Good luck… You're all going to need it very much. Because none of you will get out of here alive! HA-HA-HA-HA!" Heidegger shouted with incredible superiority, breaking into insane, rolling laughter.

Continuing to laugh loudly and uncontrollably, Heidegger abruptly cut off the holographic projection. Immediately afterward his icy voice rang out from the built-in speakers, issuing a curt command for the immediate start of the operation to capture the targets. Alex, Tifa, Claudia, and Barret did not even need to clarify who exactly those targets were.

And the moment Heidegger's voice finally fell silent, Barret could no longer contain the raging anger inside him: he roared crushing and began blindly gunning down the remaining combat drones in the air. In that second he sincerely wanted to beat every Shinra bastard to death with his bare hands. It felt to him as though that terrible tragedy that had once erupted in his hometown of Corel was repeating itself in detail right before his eyes.

Clutching his head with his free hand, Barret saw his native city engulfed in flames and hundreds of bloodied bodies lying motionless on the blood-soaked earth. A similar nightmare was happening to Tifa at that moment: before her eyes once again stood the horrific picture of burning Nibelheim. Even Claudia experienced another sharp flare of headache—chaotic images of a past she still could not fully remember flashed rapidly before her vision.

Only Alex at that moment covered his face with both hands and raised his gaze to the ceiling. He could not deny that he had clearly not expected such a radical and crude move from Shinra's leadership. But that in no way meant the corporation had outplayed him in this complex chess match.

Hiding an anticipatory smile behind his palms, Alex thought only that the situation that had developed was turning out incredibly fun and rather intriguing. After all, it only confirmed once more: he was moving in the absolutely right direction, continuing to rewrite the fate of this world. Hiding the smirk, Alex turned to the others and carefully assessed the depressed state they were in. He understood perfectly what dark thoughts were currently swirling in their heads.

"Are you going to stand there like that much longer? Who cares what Shinra has cooked up for itself. We simply keep going calmly," Alex said in an absolutely calm tone, sweeping an expectant look over the entire group.

"To hell with Shinra! They want to make a bloodthirsty terrorist out of me? Fine! I'll show them what kind of terrorist I am!" Barret shouted in a grim tone, slamming his fist loudly against his chest and instantly redirecting the accumulated rage at the corporation.

"I'm only sincerely worried about the civilians… They don't even realize what's waiting for them. Even if we take the bomb right now, Shinra will still detonate everything themselves," Tifa said with difficulty, feeling deep sadness over the madness taking place.

"If I don't want it, then absolutely no one will die," Alex said with a light smirk, nonchalantly twirling the Ring of Death on his index finger with his thumb.

"Do you already have a plan?" Claudia asked, slightly jerking her head to shake off the residual headache attacks, and raised a quick glance at him.

"I have a plan… But carrying it out is going to be rather unpleasant," Alex answered in a calm tone, slightly raising his thumb.

"If there's a plan, then why the hell are we still standing in place?! Let's go and beat the shit out of these Shinra bastards! They want to make scapegoats out of us? Well screw them! For her little angel, her father will always be a damn Hero!" Barret shouted with a wide, bared smile and stepped forward decisively.

Casting a quick glance at Barret's retreating back, Tifa turned a questioning look toward Alex, sincerely wanting to learn at least the details of his mysterious plan. But instead of long explanations Alex simply showed her a raised thumbs-up, unambiguously demonstrating that he would solve absolutely any problem and everything would be completely fine. Feeling a deep trust in that gesture, Tifa smiled slightly and decided to rely on him unconditionally.

Continuing to smile, Alex turned to Claudia and quietly reminded her that they would now have to fight their way to the very top, and even in this chaos they strictly needed to avoid lethal outcomes. Claudia understood perfectly why Alex was emphasizing this: because if they started killing soldiers right now, Shinra would gladly use those bloody frames against them, even if the plan that had matured in Alex's head was successfully put into action.

Lightly patting Claudia on the shoulder, Alex followed after Barret and Tifa, who had already stopped at the only closed doors on this level. Approaching the passage, Alex immediately recalled what exactly was supposed to happen next and who exactly was waiting for them on the other side of the steel partition.

And the moment that thought fully formed in his head, the massive metal leaves began slowly sliding apart with a quiet hydraulic hiss. The moment the doors opened a little, the heroes immediately saw that an entire group of fighters stood frozen in the corridor. Alex and Claudia narrowed their eyes simultaneously, instantly recognizing in these Grunts the Elite Shock Troopers—soldiers who had undergone a process of extremely harsh genetic and cybernetic modification.

Their arms and legs had been replaced with special mechanical prosthetics that massively increased physical strength, and on their heads sat sealed helmets with injectors that automatically injected a special chemical compound straight into the brain, completely suppressing the feeling of fear and multiplying reaction speed several times over.

And the moment the doors fully opened, the narrow slit openings where the Elite Shock Troopers' eyes were located suddenly flared with an ominous crimson light. From under the helmets came a characteristic quiet hissing sound as the automatic combat stimulant injection activated.

"What the hell are these mechanized bastards?!" Barret shouted loudly, encountering this kind of modified Shinra trash for the first time in his life.

"These are Elite Shock Troopers! Get back fast!" Claudia immediately cried out, managing to block a sudden crushing lunge from a Shock Trooper and with a clang setting the massive blade of the Buster Sword right in front of Barret.

Having managed to block the sudden crushing lunge of the Elite Shock Trooper, Claudia was still forced to step back one pace, absorbing the powerful inertia. Reacting quickly to what had just happened right in front of his nose, Barret immediately leapt backward, trained his machine gun on one of the Elite Shock Troopers on the move, and opened a withering barrage.

At that same instant the dense body of the Shock Trooper practically turned into a riddled sieve-like mass from which blood poured. But even after receiving such horrific wounds, the Shock Trooper continued standing on his feet as if nothing had happened and immediately charged straight at Barret at frantic speed. Seeing this, Barret widened his eyes in genuine surprise, completely failing to understand how someone with such fatal wounds was still capable of moving so quickly.

Realizing they were under serious attack, Tifa reacted in that same second: she swiftly delivered a sharp spinning kick, aiming exactly at the protected helmet of a Shock Trooper. But before her foot could reach the target, she felt herself being yanked hard backward by the shoulder. At the very last moment Claudia managed to pull Tifa out from under a counter-lunge. At first Tifa did not even understand what had happened until she saw: instead of the usual mechanical hand, a red-hot vibrating blade had now extended from the Shock Trooper.

Realizing she had just barely avoided losing a leg, Tifa nodded to Claudia with deep gratitude. Alex, meanwhile, unnoticed applied a light control spell, instantly forcing three Elite Shock Troopers at once to switch all their attention exclusively onto him. Lazily and gracefully dodging the fierce lunges, Alex casually parried their blows using only his legs and without even taking his hands out of the pockets of his long coat.

"What the hell makes these bastards so inhumanly durable?!" Barret shouted at the top of his lungs, delivering one crushing blow after another with his cybernetic arm straight against the helmet while sitting on top of an Elite Shock Trooper.

"They simply don't feel pain or fear! They'll keep fighting even if they're practically dead!" Claudia answered curtly, struggling to hold back the pressure of another Shock Trooper.

"So… They're not even human anymore?" Tifa asked, frowning deeply, and performed a nimble backflip, dodging another swing of the red-hot blade.

"They're half-idiots, half-robots on steroids! So it's much easier to kill them completely than to stop them somehow," Alex said in his usual lazy tone, continuing to casually dodge the attacks of three Shock Troopers at once while lighting a new thin cigar on the side.

Hearing confirmation from Alex and Claudia that the Elite Shock Troopers could already hardly be called human, Tifa finally understood: she needed to act far more decisively, yet at the same time with extreme caution so as not to accidentally fall under a lethal strike from the red-hot vibrating blade. Continuing to nimbly dodge every swing of the blade, Tifa waited expectantly for the ideal opportunity for a swift counterattack.

At the same time Barret had already managed with his crushing blows to turn the head of the first Elite Shock Trooper into one continuous smeared mess consisting of blood, a crushed skull, and shattered fragments of the metal helmet. Heaving a heavy sigh from the unpleasant feeling that he had just had to turn someone's head into bloody pulp, Barret quickly gathered his spirit and immediately transformed his cybernetic arm back into a combat machine gun in order to help the others at once. Quickly rising over the defeated body, Barret narrowed his eyes and saw that Tifa was having the hardest time.

Without thinking for a second, he aimed the barrel and opened dense covering fire at her opponent. Hearing the deafening shots, the Shock Trooper with lightning reaction raised his armored arms in front of himself as an improvised shield. Seeing that his bullets once again had not inflicted tangible damage on the Shock Trooper, Barret only smirked—because his main task had simply been to buy time.

Immediately after that Tifa swiftly attacked the disoriented Shock Trooper and nimbly wrapped herself around his right arm. Taking it in a deadly lever hold, Tifa pressed slightly with her full weight and immediately broke every bone in the limb. Completely feeling no pain from the fracture, the Shock Trooper swung the red-hot blade of his second arm by inertia straight at Tifa, who was hanging on his shoulder.

Narrowing her eyes, Tifa immediately released the broken arm, slipped under the very swing, and at once took the opponent's second arm in an identical hold. Pressing slightly again, she completely broke that one as well. However, even the loss of both arms did not stop the modified soldier in the slightest. Seeing this madness, Tifa frowned even more deeply, immediately dropped into a rigid combat stance, and slightly raised one leg, presenting the knee forward. And the moment the Shock Trooper closed in tightly, Tifa delivered a most powerful, sharp strike exactly against his supporting legs.

A distinct, dry crunch rang through the workshop as Tifa with one direct hit broke both of the Shock Trooper's legs. But even after losing absolutely every limb, this barely living Shock Trooper continued stubbornly crawling toward Tifa. Seeing all these inhuman attempts, Tifa felt only silent horror at the kind of terrible and unnatural experiments these people had been forced to endure for them to continue behaving so soullessly.

Not wanting Tifa to soil her hands with blood against this half-dead corpse any further, Barret approached with a heavy step and stepped with his massive boot right onto the back of the crawling Shock Trooper. Slightly turning the mechanism of his cybernetic arm, Barret set the burst-shot mode on the sensor panel and aimed exactly at the back of the Shock Trooper's head.

"Goodbye, stubborn bastard… Better this way than remaining a pitiful puppet of Shinra any longer," Barret said in a grim tone, aiming the barrel of his machine gun point-blank at the Shock Trooper's head.

The moment Barret finished speaking, a dry and loud gunshot rang out, after which the head of the second Elite Shock Trooper exploded in a bright bloody salute. At such a horrific sight Tifa tightly squeezed her eyes shut and instantly turned away. Deep down she understood perfectly: Barret's action had been the only possible mercy toward someone whom Shinra had ruthlessly turned into a piece of meat and a will-less puppet.

Having finished dealing with yet another Shock Trooper, Barret reassuringly patted Tifa on the shoulder, making it clear that they still needed to help Claudia and Alex immediately. Quickly nodding her head, Tifa turned and saw that Alex was single-handedly holding off three Elite Shock Troopers at once. Thinking it would be better to come to his aid first, Tifa took a step in his direction, but Alex momentarily distracted himself and with a quick gesture indicated that they needed to help Claudia first.

She at that moment was fending off two Elite Shock Troopers, and he himself would have no problem dealing with his own. Tifa frowned slightly at the fact that Alex was once again demonstratively refusing support. But Barret shouted loudly across the entire workshop that they would now quickly deal with the bastards Claudia was fighting alone, and then immediately return and help him.

Hearing Barret's confident shout, Alex only smirked understandingly and raised a thumbs-up. Smirking in reply, Barret ran to the other end of the platform to intercept the attackers and help Claudia. Tifa once more looked intently at Alex to finally make sure that he was indeed completely fine.

"Be careful, we'll be quick!" Tifa shouted loudly, rushing after Barret.

Watching as Tifa and Barret hurried quickly to Claudia's aid, Alex lazily blocked a red-hot vibrating blade with the help of a thin cigar clamped between his fingers. Having made sure there were no longer any witnesses nearby who could see what was about to happen next, Alex with one fingertip lightly pushed the red-hot blade of the second Elite Shock Trooper aside, redirecting the edge with filigree precision toward the third.

The blade, heated to a red glow, with a loud hiss pierced straight through the chest of the third Shock Trooper, and he instantly froze in place as if rooted to the spot. And while the second and third Shock Troopers were completely occupied with each other, Alex unhurriedly turned to the first, brought his hand right up to his protected face, and froze, clenching his fingers for a snap.

At that same instant Alex snapped his fingers sonorously right in front of the first Shock Trooper's helmet—and his head instantly exploded in a bright-red bloody salute. Having beheaded the opponent, Alex merely twitched his leg slightly, and the heavy corpse immediately crashed into the metal wall with a deafening crack, turning into a continuous crimson blot of blood and entrails.

Having destroyed the first of the three Shock Troopers, Alex turned to the second, who at that moment was struggling to pull his red-hot blade from the chest of the third. Unhurriedly bringing the thin cigar to his lips, Alex heavily laid his hand on the armored shoulder of the second Shock Trooper and began pressing lightly downward.

And the moment Alex applied a little more force, the sturdy body of the second Shock Trooper with a horrific crunch of breaking bones and armor began literally being forced through the narrow grated floor, instantly turning the metal cells into a genuine meat grinder. Having turned the second Shock Trooper into bloody pulp with the help of the floor, Alex turned to the third, who had already helplessly collapsed onto his knees after the fatal wound to the chest.

"And you, I suppose, will be the last," Alex said, baring his sharp teeth predatorily, and exhaled thick gray smoke straight into the mutilated face of the third Shock Trooper, seizing him in a death grip with both hands by the head.

Continuing to smile, Alex began slowly crushing the head of the third Shock Trooper, coldly watching as the metal helmet crumpled with a dry crunch and dark blood slowly seeped from the cracks that had formed. Continuing to unhurriedly kill the last Elite Shock Trooper, Alex thought that since Shinra wanted so badly to paint him as a merciless monster, he was absolutely not against demonstrating to them what a real, truly cruel monster looked like.

Squeezing his fingers even harder, Alex ultimately completely crushed the helmet together with the skull: at that same instant a dense mixture of blood, scraps of brain, and bone fragments flew in every direction, liberally staining everything around. Shaking his head, Alex looked at his snow-white gloves, now completely covered in fresh blood. Tilting his head to the side, he shrugged and carelessly licked a drop of blood from his finger, wanting to check what the blood of those who had undergone such horrific experiments tasted like.

But in that same second Alex regretted his decision, feeling in his mouth a disgusting metallic taste mixed with the nauseating chemistry of drugs and, what was even more unpleasant, a pungent concentration of Mako. Grimacing from this foul bouquet, Alex immediately spat the remaining blood onto the metal floor, thinking that even Pennywise's blood had been far more pleasant to taste than this biowaste.

"Ugh, fuuuck… I'm afraid even Carmilla wouldn't drink this crap. And she's not a picky wife at all," Alex said, grimacing, remembering his wife Alucard while pulling a sweet strawberry candy from his pocket.

"I can hear everything perfectly, my love," Alucard's calm, velvety voice immediately sounded right in Alex's head.

"It was just a joke, dear," Alex answered with a strained, guilty smile, placing the strawberry candy on his tongue with a habitual motion.

"Hmm… We'll definitely talk about this later… And don't even make me come to you personally: your pitiful look of forgiving enemies only evokes sincere dislike in me," Alucard said in a lazy tone, not hiding the clear mockery in her voice at all.

"I'm just a real softie," Alex said with a feigned cute smile, pressing his bloodied palms to his own cheeks.

"Tell that to all those you cruelly killed in the past and sent straight to the Red City, my love," Alucard answered with undisguised sarcasm, continuing to openly mock her husband.

"That one actually hurt," Alex said in a dry, theatrical tone and demonstratively coughed into his fist.

"That only delights me, my love. And stop standing there like a pillar already—your new friends urgently need help. And you do so love playing the noble hero," Alucard said with a chuckle, after which her presence in his mind finally faded.

Heaving a heavy sigh at Alucard's last words, Alex could not help but admit: his wife, as always, adored causing pain—and not only physical, but mental as well. Slightly chuckling to himself, Alex flung open his coat, pulled the massive "Jackal" from the shoulder holster, and instantly aimed toward the Elite Shock Trooper whom Claudia was holding at that moment. Aiming quickly, Alex pulled the trigger: the bullet hit the Shock Trooper's helmet exactly, instantly detonating his head from within. Seeing the spectacular explosion right in front of her, Claudia smoothly turned her head and looked at Alex.

Slightly snorting with a barely noticeable approving smile on her face, Claudia gave him a short nod and immediately rushed lightning-fast to help Tifa and Barret. Making one swift, explosive lunge forward, Claudia instantly closed the distance to the last Elite Shock Trooper and pierced his heart straight through with the massive blade of the Buster Sword. Having destroyed the last enemy on the level, Claudia with a confident motion shook the limp corpse off the blade and with a habitual gesture slid the sword behind her back.

To be continued...

(Wow, another chapter is written, and I was sitting there thinking, hey, it's been a while since we've seen any brutal moments of enemy slaughter, and here we are. As for the plot, hmmm. Well, as I've mentioned many times, Alex is creating a snowball effect for the events of time, and this could lead to the world aging and everything rolling out as it should, or it could turn into something like Shinra sending people to their deaths thanks to the intervention of the Grey Farts. Although in canon, Heidegger and President Shinra left with pompous words and then released the robot and blew up the Mako Reactor themselves. And here, as you can see, things are worse. Well, that's all for now. Time to eat and rest. Peace, love, and don't try to taste everything, it's not always delicious.)

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