InsaneJournal

The roar of the gun was like a thunderclap in the confined space of the office, and both Sephiroth and Zack were moving at full speed even before the echoes had begun to die away. Both of them headed for the door to the outer office, the General reaching it first, despite having the longer distance to travel. But both of them were out within moments, blades drawn.

What greeted them was startling. The wall opposite Nesa's desk (a desk positioned to be in clear line of sight of both the doorway to Sephiroth's office, and to the corridor doorway) was splattered with blood, and large areas of the panelling were sporting damage. On the floor before the desk, a man was writhing and bleeding, large areas of his left side torn open. The front panel of Nesa's desk was torn open, as though by an explosion, and Nesa was sitting behind her desk, her face blanching.

"What the hell happened?" Zack asked.

Nesa shuddered. "He felt wrong. The story didn't ring true. He wanted to speak to the general and wouldn't take no as an answer. So I shot him." Her voice sounded detatched, distant.

"Remind me not to nag you," Zack said, joking in an effort to lighten the mood. "What did you shoot him with, anyway? I've never seen a pistol do that."

"Didn't use a pistol," she said, her voice getting fainter. "Shotgun."

"Whoops, hey, don't faint on me, Nes." Zack grabbed at her. "Need you conscious for a bit longer. You can't faint now; there's paperwork needs filling out. Killing someone in the offices generates a stack of the stuff about a foot high. It's the only thing keeping Heidegger alive some days, I swear."

Sephiroth, meanwhile, was looking at the damage done. He'd been somewhat disappointed, he had to admit, when he discovered Nesa's skill with a gun was minimal, and all the training she could get on the range from the best shooters in the Turks merely upgraded it from appalling to atrocious. Of course, it was the one thing which stopped all the other department heads from attempting to poach her from his office, for which he was truly grateful, since as a secretary and office manager she was a wonder. Unlike every other department head, he didn't need his secretary to be able to act as bodyguard on a moment's notice, and he was more than willing to accept her inability in the area as a minor flaw. Yet it seemed she hadn't been, and had worked hard at figuring out how to work around it.

He bent down and looked at the front of her desk, breaking off a piece of the splintered wood. It broke even more easily than he'd expected - the wood was soft, almost fragile. Indeed, the only thing which appeared to be holding it together was the coating of varnish and stain on the outer side. There was a gun chassis strapped to the underside of the desk, and a brief test showed the apparatus swivelled, allowing the gun to be pointed toward either door. Ingenious.

The sound of footsteps outside drew his attention to the corridor, and both he and Zack were standing before the door, blades drawn. The door burst open and two of the Turks came rushing into the room, pulling themselves up swiftly before they wound up impaled.

"What the fuck's going on?" Reno asked, looking at the mess on the floor.

"Someone pissed off the General's secretary," Zack replied.

"And she yelled for the General?" the other Turk, a blonde girl, queried.

"Nope. Nesa did that herself," Zack said, sounding proud.

"Cool," was Reno's only comment. He looked down at the still-twitching man on the floor. "S'pose we better take him down to medical, yeah? Tseng's gonna want to know how the hell he got this far in without being spotted."

"Ummm, maybe we'd better take the lady down to medical, too," the girl said. "She doesn't look too good."

Sephiroth turned slightly to see Nesa looking nauseated and pale, as though she were trying to decide whether to faint, vomit, or do both. Shock, no doubt - given her lack of skill with a gun, she'd most likely never so much as wounded anything before now, and the reaction would take a lot out of her. Zack and Reno weren't able to assist - they were busy scraping together her victim, so it fell either to him, or to the young Turk girl.

Then Nesa started retching, and he moved without thinking, dragging the wastepaper bin into range before she started to vomit, and holding her hair out of her face while the poor woman heaved up everything she'd eaten all day.

Once she'd finished throwing up everything that would come up, Sephiroth took the bin from her, and handed it over to the girl from the Turks. "Dispose of that, please, and bring back some water," he said. "Miss Conway will be in my office when you return." The girl gave a look which mingled disgust at the task with a certain amount of compassion for someone who had just faced their first violent action without even the mild buffer of military training, and nodded.

Nesa, meanwhile, was shaking like a leaf, and trying hard to hold on to her composure. Sephiroth led her from behind her desk, into his office, seating her on the sofa someone in facilities had provided as part of the office furnishings. Usually, the only person who used it was Zack Fair, but Sephiroth doubted Zack would argue the decision. Closing the door gently behind him, he turned to the woman.

"Thank you, Miss Conway," he said. "You did very well. You saved at least one life."

Nesa looked up at him, surprise clearly visible on her face.

Sephiroth looked at her kindly. "Your actions mean the assassin will survive to be questioned."

Inspirations:
This story started kicking its way out of my head before "Shooting Fish In A Barrel" - in a way, the second story was written to explain the background for this one. At the moment, the Nesa-verse appears to have about three different strands, all of which are presumably interlinked in some fashion, although I haven't yet worked it all out. The main inspiration for this story was the fairly standard Mary Sue trope of the Mary Sue character being able to master just about any weapon without any trouble whatsoever. I've never been fond of that one, so I decided to subvert it just a bit, and then work from the subversion.

Oh, and the front of Nesa's desk was balsa wood. She came in one weekend when the carpets were being cleaned and made all the alterations to the desk (the smell of the chemicals from cleaning the carpets covered up the changes in the scent of the room for just long enough for all the SOLDIERs to accept it as normal) without mentioning it to anybody.