Chapter 804 - 803: Abrupt Change of Plans Because of Barret’s Enormous Fingers."

After eliminating all the Elite Shock Troopers, Alex immediately suggested the group take a couple of minutes to catch their breath before moving on. After all, no one knew for certain what other surprises Shinra had prepared for them if they had thrown such elite and dangerous fighters at them from the very beginning. Barret, out of habit, wanted to object on this point and charge straight ahead, but Alex timely reminded him that they needed to be extremely careful about what might await them further on.

Even Claudia unconditionally agreed with Alex's words, additionally reminding them that in their current position, when a real witch hunt had literally been declared against them, any wrong step would become fatal. Snorting irritably, Barret took a deep breath and exhaled to restore his disrupted breathing. He did not want to show it openly, but the short battle with the Elite Shock Troopers had indeed made him sweat a little—and solely because the anomalous durability of those modified creatures had made them damn hard to kill.

While they were catching their breath before the next push, the deafening siren continued to wail around them, and from the speakers on the walls the sharp voice of a commander kept issuing curt orders without pause. Rubbing his forehead, Alex momentarily considered cutting this irritating siren off at the root and severing all of the corporation's means of communication at once. But he quickly changed his mind, deciding that it was still not that important for his plans.

"I think we've rested enough already. Time to move on," Barret suddenly said, casting a demanding look in turn at Alex, Tifa, and Claudia.

"Hmm… I'm ready to keep going," Claudia said with a short nod of her head, folding her arms across her chest in her usual manner.

"I'm ready too. We need to leave this place before Shinra has time to try anything else," Tifa supported, nodding her head confidently and demonstrating full combat readiness.

"Then only forward… Let's go and thoroughly tickle the chimichangas of all these Shinra Grunts," Alex said with a smirk, casually throwing his hands behind his head in his habitual careless motion and stepping first toward the only corridor.

"Your stupid catchphrases are getting more and more ridiculous every time," Barret muttered with a barely noticeable smirk, briskly stepping after Alex.

Chuckling in reply at Barret's ironic comment, Alex entered the corridor first and moved forward confidently, roughly remembering the original layout of this place. Approaching the first metal sliding doors, Alex saw a bright holographic plaque right above them on which glowed the inscription: "Assembly Workshop." Narrowing his eyes, Alex pressed the external opening panel.

And the moment the leaves slid apart with a quiet hum, another long corridor stretching ahead presented itself before the group. Quickly running along the passage, they stopped near the next massive doors, and Alex activated those as well without extra thought. The moment the doors began to open, the fused voices of Grunts and the loud, cracking voice of their commander issuing clear orders immediately carried from the other side.

When the doors fully swung open, Alex, Claudia, Tifa, and Barret saw before them a huge, spacious assembly workshop in which active preparations for transferring large spare parts for a robot were in full swing. Alex's gaze immediately caught on the central loading control panel, on whose screens detailed blueprints and technical data of the combat robot "Airbuster" were displayed. And while Alex was momentarily distracted by the monitors, the Grunts who were directly engaged in loading the components immediately noticed their presence.

"Intruders! Intruders! Stop them immediately…" the captain of the Grunts shouted at the top of his lungs, but his order was cut off mid-sentence.

Hearing the desperate cry of their commander, absolutely all the Grunts in the room immediately grabbed their weapons and instantly spun toward Claudia, Tifa, and Barret, who without delay prepared for a hard fight. However, instead of opening a withering barrage, all the Grunts suddenly froze in place with their mouths wide open.

The faces of the guards began rapidly paling from the horror they saw right behind the backs of Claudia, Tifa, and Barret. Before their eyes appeared such a horrific and nightmarish picture that they could not utter a single word: all that remained for them was to tremble helplessly in place, convulsively clenching their assault rifles in their hands. They saw something that even with a stretch could not be called human.

Alex's entire body was completely covered by a dense, pulsating darkness through which only the snow-white gloves clearly showed, on which the seal of Cromwell flared up and filled with light in a crimson flame. At that same instant Alex smiled so widely that his face unnaturally deformed, revealing rows of long and razor-sharp teeth.

The shadow of Alex's figure began rapidly spreading across the walls and the corridor behind, completely absorbing the surrounding light. And a moment later dozens of mad red eyes and hungry mouths erupted across this entire swaying abyss, including Alex's own body.

The Grunts instantly felt a freezing sensation, as if something ancient and unknown was rising from the very depths of their souls, trying to swallow them whole. In their consciousness only all-encompassing panic fear remained, and a strange whisper merging with the sound of the wailing siren. For a short moment the image of a city shrouded in thick fog arose before the eyes of the guards, turning before their very eyes into a hellish place thoroughly saturated with rust and blood.

In that same second one of the Grunts let out a piercing, cracked howl, flung his weapon onto the floor, and took off at full speed in the opposite direction, clutching his head. Following him, howling in terror and screaming about the awakened monster, all the others scattered in panic as well.

Claudia, Tifa, and Barret, already prepared for yet another unpleasant fight, froze in place, silently watching the fleeing Grunts and sincerely failing to understand what had just happened. Slightly narrowing her eyes, Claudia managed to notice that before fleeing the guards had been looking with wild fear at something behind their backs. And behind her, as she knew for certain, stood only Alex. Turning her head, she saw him casually rolling a small Materia orb between his fingers.

"What the hell just happened to them?!" Barret asked with deep bewilderment, sincerely not understanding why the Grunts had suddenly screamed and scattered in all directions.

"Just a little trick with Materia," Alex lied carelessly, walking past Barret and nonchalantly tucking the fake spherical crystal into his pocket.

"And what kind of Materia trick is capable of making Shinra guards howl so piercingly?" Tifa inquired, completely failing to understand the essence of what had happened before her eyes.

"It's all about Illusion Materia. I simply showed them their worst nightmare," Alex answered in the same carefree tone, continuing to confidently lie about the nature of his power.

"That explains a lot. Though usually such an illusion is used to deceive an enemy, not to scare him to death," Claudia said in a calm tone, nodding slightly at such an explanation.

"Some people just have no imagination. All right, let's better look around and see what Shinra was up to here," Alex said with a chuckle and cast an attentive look over the emptied supply workshop.

Having received such an explanation, Claudia, Tifa, and Barret asked no further unnecessary questions and immediately began thoroughly examining the workshop in order to understand exactly what cargo Shinra had been transferring. Hearing no more inquiries about the demonstration of power, Alex merely shrugged slightly and also proceeded to inspect the premises.

In reality he was absolutely not against revealing his true identity, but that inevitably led to a very tedious and exhausting part where he would have to explain at length why he simply could not do everything himself in a single moment and finish it all at once. And that was precisely why Alex, as always, preferred to wait for the most suitable moment before dumping on his companions the truth about who he really was and other multiversal nonsense.

Lighting another thin cigar, Alex opened one of the massive metal containers installed right on the loading capsule. Inside, in neat rows, lay a multitude of compact energy cores the size of a small flask. Showing genuine interest in the find, Alex took one core in his hands and slightly turned it before his eyes, trying to determine its purpose on the spot.

However, all he managed to make out was only the engraved serial number. Sighing irritably, Alex carelessly tucked the energy core into his pocket. And yet he was truly damn curious why the combat robot "Airbuster" required such an enormous quantity of power sources if even one such core would have been more than enough to supply an entire apartment with electricity for a week.

Barret and Claudia, meanwhile, also found nothing among the metal containers that could be useful to them in battle. All the crates they opened were packed to the brim with either special ammunition for the robot or exactly the same energy cores.

"Hey, everyone come here! Look, it's that same robot we saw upstairs!" Tifa shouted loudly, calling the others over to her while standing at the central loading control panel.

Turning his head toward Tifa, Alex closed the heavy metal container, carelessly tipping it onto the floor, and approached the central loading control panel. Standing next to Tifa, Alex slightly tilted his head to the side and began thoughtfully stroking his chin. No matter how much he peered at the blueprints of this giant mecha, it still seemed to him that the robot's design looked far too strange.

After all, as far as he remembered from the game's plot, "Airbuster" had been stuffed only with powerful bombs, an advanced combat system, and various little things for repairs right during battle. But what Alex was seeing on the screens right now differed radically from the canon. Continuing to rock his head from side to side, he sincerely tried to understand why a model like this required such excessively powerful energy cores and special elemental rounds.

Scratching his cheek with a finger, Alex quickly typed a combination on the keyboard, trying to call up a more detailed specification. But all the monitor produced were brief delivery details, while full blueprints of the "Airbuster" were absent from the local system. Clicking his tongue irritably, Alex continued typing while standing in front of the loading control panel and trying to figure out exactly what the robot needed so much energy for in order to launch.

But after a quick review of all available documents he still found nothing useful. And what angered Alex even more was the complete impossibility of accessing the neighboring loading terminals: all of them operated on an isolated network inside their own workshops and were not connected to the plant's main network at all—as if Shinra had deliberately designed the system to exclude any possibility of data theft or sabotage.

"Hey, that's that same big guy! Are they seriously going to launch him?" Barret said in a surprised tone, having approached Alex and Tifa from behind.

"Most likely that's exactly it. According to the schedule here, some key spare parts are still on the way," Tifa said, pointing a finger at the parts loading scale displayed on the screen.

"Well, we'll see about that… Looks like nothing else is going to leave from here," Barret said with a laugh, turning his head back and casting a satisfied look over the undelivered containers.

"If we tinker a little with its current equipment…" Claudia began, folding her arms across her chest and carefully peering at the terminal screen.

"…then we'll get an excellent advantage in battle," Tifa finished the phrase for her with a smile, nodding her head understandingly.

"You hear that, kid? Go on, get to it! Do something with that robot. Stick a dick on its head for all I care—the main thing is that this metal bastard can only fart at us afterward, and that's it," Barret said with a smirk, clapping Alex on the shoulder with feeling and pointing a finger at the terminal.

"Hmm… That won't be too hard. Only there's one small snag," Alex said, pulling a free chair toward himself so he could sit more comfortably.

"And what's the problem?" Claudia asked, shifting her gaze to Alex, who had taken a seat in front of the terminal.

"We're currently in the third loading workshop, and there are five of them here in total. The maximum I'll be able to squeeze out of this terminal is to cancel the delivery of those cargos that were formed and sent specifically from this particular workshop," Alex said, bringing up the delivery data on the monitor so everyone could see it clearly.

"To hell with it, do everything you can! And we'll deal with the rest somehow on the spot," Barret responded with a nod of his head and once more encouragingly clapped Alex on the shoulder.

Nodding his head at Barret's words, Alex began typing quickly on the keyboard in order to manually cancel the delivery of cargos, redirecting them to a completely different workshop. Canceling one container after another, Alex at that moment felt like an ordinary warehouse worker who had to manually redirect all the cargos to another place.

Having canceled practically all the sent containers from this sector, Alex could not help but admit that Shinra had acted rather smartly by isolating all the Assembly Workshops into a single closed network from the very beginning. And he understood the reason perfectly: after all, their robot "Airbuster" was an absolutely new military prototype whose detailed blueprints must under no circumstances fall into the wrong hands. Having spent a couple of minutes completely canceling all available deliveries, Alex slightly cracked his stiff neck and raised his gaze to the main screen.

And what he saw there made him heave a heavy sigh: the overall loading completion process had changed from ninety percent to a mere eighty. Shaking his head at the fact that after canceling dozens of heavy containers the indicator had barely moved, Alex was already beginning to guess: such an anomalous quantity of energy cores was needed to power something that consumed a simply colossal volume of energy. He had only one question left: what exactly had Shinra managed to stuff into the "Airbuster" for it to require such a heap of resources?

From these thoughts Alex felt a colossal interest in the robot and an irresistible desire to personally see what was inside it. Understanding that he would still not get answers until he faced the "Airbuster" again face to face, Alex turned to Tifa, Claudia, and Barret, making it clear that he had finished work with the terminal.

"Awesome… I'd love to see the faces of Shinra's leadership right now when they see us smash their vaunted goddamn robot to hell!" Barret laughed loudly, heading first toward the exit from the Assembly Workshop.

"Do you think they're still watching us? Even right now?" Tifa inquired, following Barret to the sliding doors.

"Yep. Most likely they're broadcasting our live feed to the entire city right now," Claudia said with a smirk, briefly nodding her head toward the blinking surveillance camera under the ceiling.

"So you can blow an air kiss to your numerous fans right now. Though they won't see it anyway," Alex said with a smirk, sliding his finger across the screen of his phone where Shinra's news broadcast was displayed, on which their silhouettes were still completely covered in dense digital interference.

"You must be terribly sorry that your fangirls won't be able to make out your pretty face again," Barret said with a smirk, slamming his massive fist against the panel with a full swing to force the doors open.

"At least I'm not running around completely naked in front of the video camera lenses," Alex said with a chuckle and, whistling a cheerful melody, casually walked past Barret.

"You little shit! I've already told you more than one goddamn time: it was just a fucking joke!" Barret roared with furious rage, smashing his fist into the terminal with all his might so that bright sparks flew in all directions with a crack from the mutilated casing.

In reply Barret heard another sincere laugh from Alex, which angered him even more. Unable to restrain himself, he again slammed his fist with all his might into the already damaged terminal, finally finishing it off. This caused an instant overload of the local network, cutting electricity and light to the entire Assembly Workshop. Passing by Barret frozen in the darkness, Claudia only snorted slightly, considering that he himself was to blame—no point making such a stupid joke when they were making their way through the technical sector right under the Plate.

And only Tifa gently patted Barret on the shoulder, quietly suggesting that he keep going and not linger any longer, since they still needed to climb to the very top. Nodding his head, Barret exhaled irritably and obediently walked forward. Catching up to Claudia and Alex, who had already gone far ahead along the corridor, Barret inquired whether they would encounter any more Assembly Workshops on their path where they could again mess with Shinra.

Hearing this question, Alex pulled his phone from his pocket and immediately opened the plant map. Quickly casting a glance over the holographic projection, Alex turned his head back and answered that if they continued along this same route they would pass right through the first and fifth Assembly Workshops. Continuing to climb upward along the long corridor, Alex did not even think of putting the phone back into his pocket, remotely disabling automatic combat turrets on the way so as not to waste precious time and strength on them.

Claudia walking beside him quickly noticed what exactly he was occupied with and raised her gaze to the ceiling, examining the hidden shafts intended for retractable turrets. Noticing Claudia's attention, Alex smiled slightly, expressively pointed a finger at one of the shafts right above them, and after that made a quick press on the screen of his phone. At that same moment a loud hissing sounded above their heads, as if from a short circuit, followed by a dry pop, and acrid black smoke densely poured from the slits of the ceiling hatch.

"Hey, what the hell did you just do?!" Barret asked, watching in surprise as black smoke billowed out of the hatch above them.

"Just playing one entertaining mobile game with Shinra," Alex said with a smirk, lightly waving the phone in his hand.

"And what kind of mobile game is that which causes real explosions?" Tifa inquired, having caught up to Alex and Claudia.

"The game is called 'How many turrets will Shinra manage to regain control of before I blow them the fuck up,'" Alex said with a laugh and pressed the phone screen again, after which another turret explosion immediately thundered at the end of the corridor.

"Heh, now those are games I really like! Come on, let me press too," Barret said with a wide smirk, heavily laying his palm on Alex's shoulder and already stretching his healthy big thumb toward the smartphone screen.

Alex did not even manage to stop Barret before the latter had already jabbed his enormous thumb right into the phone screen and begun chaotically sliding it up and down, indiscriminately activating everything that could possibly be activated in the system. Watching this chaos, Alex felt his left eyelid begin to twitch uncontrollably—at that moment a bright inscription about the launch of the emergency self-destruction protocol for all turrets of the complex flared up on the screen.

Alex would have been completely fine if Barret had acted carefully and one by one. But this muscle-bound gorilla with the brains of an ape had decided to do everything his own way. And what made Alex's eyelid twitch even more from the approaching fury were Barret's subsequent words.

"Looks like this crap doesn't work for shit," Barret snorted slightly, naively pointing a finger at the system warning on the smartphone screen.

At that moment Alex sincerely wanted to strangle Barret with his own hands, who, without understanding it himself, had just arranged complete chaos. Giving Barret an absolutely empty, filling-with-weight look, Alex tightly clenched his fist, wanting with all his might to smash him over the head for unprecedented stupidity. Tifa and Claudia exchanged bewildered glances, not really understanding why Alex had reacted so sharply and painfully to Barret's stupid stunt.

However, the answer came almost immediately, and Alex did not even have to explain anything in words. In that same second a deafening series of sequential explosions rang out throughout the entire complex, rolling in a wave farther and farther, rapidly enveloping the whole plant. Listening to this growing roar of detonation, they saw with their own eyes how absolutely all the turrets in the long corridor before them were simultaneously destroyed.

Looking at the dozen smoking hatches, Claudia and Tifa turned to Barret, on whose face a wide, self-satisfied smile was already on display—as if he had been counting on exactly such an effect from the very beginning. But Alex knew perfectly well that this was by no means the end yet, and that the explosions of all the turrets were only a prelude to a real catastrophe. And indeed: immediately afterward acrid black smoke began rapidly seeping from the closed ceiling hatches, behind which raging flames were barely contained through the narrow slits.

Heaving a heavy sigh, Alex grabbed the collar of his coat and with one quick motion pulled the hood deep over his head. At that same instant alarm red lamps began flickering along the entire corridor and the mass evacuation siren wailed, while from the speakers under the ceiling a dry AI voice began loudly announcing a critical fire in all sectors of the plant.

"Well that was damn cool! And why the hell did you pull a hood over your head? Who or what are you hiding from there?" Barret said with a wide smirk, turning to Alex and noticing his strange appearance.

"From this, you muscular imbecile with thick fingers!" Alex barked, furiously pointing a finger straight at the ceiling.

The moment Alex finished shouting, the emergency fire-suppression system activated synchronously throughout the entire plant, and a powerful stream of water poured down on them right from the ceiling. Feeling their clothes instantly soak through to the thread, Claudia first raised an irritated gaze to the ceiling and then shifted it to Barret, frozen in place with his mouth stupidly open.

Now she, like Alex, desperately wanted to smash Barret over the head with a full swing. But the most embarrassed of all in this situation was Tifa, whose light clothing was clearly not suited for walking under such an abundant stream of water. Tifa's white tank top instantly got wet, becoming completely transparent, and beneath it the sports bra clearly showed through, which she immediately tried to cover with her hands.

Noticing this, Alex decided to sacrifice his own comfort: he quickly removed his dense coat and threw it over Tifa's shoulders so that she could fully wrap herself in it. Seeing this act, Tifa nodded with deep gratitude, still experiencing slight embarrassment. Alex only nodded understandingly, showing that everything was fine, and calmly raked his wet dark hair back.

Having dealt with Tifa's problem, Alex sharply turned to Barret and gave him a hearty kick in the leg for such an unprecedentedly stupid act. Receiving a painful blow to the shin, Barret immediately hissed in pain, grabbed his leg, and began comically hopping in place.

At that moment Alex felt an irresistible desire to smash his own head with full force against the nearest wall. However, he knew perfectly well that if he really did it, even a portion of his true power would simply destroy the entire planet Gaia, and with it a good part of the Galaxy.

"What the hell, kid?! Why are you so upset just because we got a little wet? What's the big deal!" Barret shouted in an irritated tone, rubbing his bruised leg and staring indignantly straight at Alex.

"What the hell am I upset about?! Because of your goddamn poking the entire electronic system of the plant has gone into complete lockdown!" Alex answered with boiling irritation, barely restraining the desire to land another blow on Barret.

"And what exactly does that mean?" Tifa asked, wrapping herself more tightly under Alex's large coat and carefully squeezing water from her long hair with her free hand.

"It means that absolutely all the terminals in the building are now tightly locked. And the only way to shut off the emergency system is to do everything manually," Claudia sighed heavily, pushing her wet hair back.

"Well, this is fucking great…" was all Barret managed to squeeze out, finally realizing how badly he had screwed up.

"To hell with it… Switching to my Plan B," Alex said while trying to light a thin cigar, unhurriedly continuing upward along the corridor.

"You really had a Plan B?" Tifa inquired, quickly catching up to Alex and carefully cupping her palms like a boat over his cigar to protect the flame from the stream and let him take a drag.

"Yep. Only Plan B is even more unpleasant than Plan A," Alex answered with a nod of his head and exhaled a stream of gray smoke through his nose.

"And how unpleasant is it, SOLDIER boy?" Barret inquired, carefully wiping the water from his sunglasses.

"It's unpleasant exclusively for me… Though you'll see everything for yourselves soon enough," Alex said with a heavy sigh, wiping the remaining water from his face with his hand.

Claudia, Tifa, and Barret desperately wondered what kind of Plan B Alex had prepared, since he had not even managed to properly explain to them what his original Plan A consisted of. But Alex himself was absolutely not about to spell anything out right now. He felt only deep disappointment over the fact that his perfect Plan A had gone on a long walking adventure through the most unpleasant places.

After all, he had so wanted to stage a truly epic team battle against the "Airbuster," smashing the vaunted military prototype right before the eyes of Shinra's leadership! And right after that—to pull off a spectacular trick with the public humiliation of President Shinra and Heidegger for all of Midgar. But now this entire grand show would have to be canceled and they would have to act along a completely different, far more tedious path. Continuing to walk along the corridor and wiping the remaining water from his face on the move, Alex approached the sealed doors with a sigh.

Without extra ceremony ripping the sensor panel out by the roots, Alex shoved his hand deep into the wall and began feeling for the necessary wires. Fiddling with the bare wiring in order to unlock the tightly locked doors, Alex thought only that now he would have to go all out, displaying all his acting mastery and skillful ability to competently hang noodles on people's ears. Having closed the necessary contacts and manually disabled the door sealing, Alex turned to Barret and asked him to help open them.

Grabbing the dense edges of the massive leaves, they began slowly pushing them apart with effort, opening the passage into Assembly Workshop 5. Finding themselves inside, they noticed that the premises were completely empty, and the loading containers were scattered everywhere in chaos. Alex's gaze immediately fell on the central loading control panel, on which a message about a critical alarm was pulsing with all its might. Merely shaking his head, Alex headed without stopping toward the next locked doors.

"You still haven't explained what this Plan B is? And in what exactly is it unpleasant for you?" Tifa inquired, hurrying after Alex across the entire workshop.

"It's too long to explain… But if briefly, afterward I'll feel a little unwell for some time," Alex said thoughtfully, already ripping out the next sensor panel in order to remove the next sealing.

"Your vague explanations clarified absolutely nothing!" Barret said with irritation, grabbing the edge of the stuck doors and preparing to open them.

"Well… That's how it is. It's easier to see everything once than to wait for coherent explanations from me. And now enough questions, and start pulling from that side. From this corridor we'll be able to get straight up to the charging stations," Alex said, tightly grabbing the opposite edge of the door and beginning to pull it toward himself with force.

At that moment Alex was absolutely not about to answer questions about exactly what he had planned. After all, under no circumstances could he admit that he was planning to pull a dangerous trick with transformation, employing one of his Red Materia for the final battle with the "Airbuster." And still less was he about to say that this demonstration of power would ultimately lead to the inevitable: the residents of Midgar would brand him a dangerous Monster and Terrorist, and Shinra would begin a hunt, wanting to drag him into Hojo's laboratories exactly the same way they dreamed of doing with Aerith.

Alex also understood perfectly well that this entire chain of events would with one-hundred-percent probability push Shinra toward the decision to drop the Plate onto Sector Seven of the Slums, and formally it would happen through his fault. Such a catastrophe was supposed to occur under any scenario, therefore Alex decided to seize the initiative and flip the situation with the fall of the Plate on his own terms, squeezing maximum benefit from it. This entire sequence of events played perfectly into his hands for the embodiment of global plans for the future. All that would remain for him after this was to convincingly play the role of a fatally broken and tired man.

Alex barely restrained a satisfied smile at the thought that the canon was confidently moving in the needed direction, yet at the same time a completely new reality was forming in which there would no longer be senseless victims. While they continued walking along the corridor, climbing toward the charging stations, the alarm signal of the siren suddenly stopped wailing, and water ceased pouring from the ceiling. Raising his head toward the ceiling hatches, Alex slightly tilted his head to the side.

"Well finally! A little more and the water would have started overflowing the tops of my boots. Did these cheapskates simply run out of water or what?" Barret said with a smirk, leaning his shoulder against the wall and quickly removing his massive boot from his foot in order to pour out the accumulated water.

"I don't think so. Someone just shut off the emergency system manually…" Claudia said, slightly shaking her head and wiping the remaining water from her face with her palm.

"Does that mean all the electronics in the plant are working again?" Tifa clarified, turning to Alex with concern.

"Yep. And it also means that this goddamn robot is going to be launched right now, even before we manage to climb to the upper tier," Alex said, squeezing the wet edge of his T-shirt in his fist and wringing it out.

"Now that's not cool at all," Barret muttered, struggling to pull the boot back onto his wet foot.

"Then we'll just hurry up. Maybe we'll still manage to interfere with them… Though that's extremely unlikely," Claudia said, slightly shaking her head.

"There's one closed technical corridor ahead. Passing through it, we'll be able to get straight to the charging stations," Alex said, confidently heading forward and pointing with his hand at the locked gates at the very end of the T-shaped corridor.

To be continued...

(I was actually planning on finishing this segment lazily, like just crushing the robot in front of Heidegger and saying something along the lines of, "Oi, your robot is actually pretty shitty." But halfway through writing the chapter, I thought, heh, screw it, I need to make it more epic. And *Spoiler*. I won't say what exactly I had planned here, it's a secret. Hmm. What else can I say, well, we're almost there, the plate falling, and even closer to leaving Midgar, and I can't wait for that moment. Now, time to eat. Peace, love, and it's going to be fun.)

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