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Three months before Rufus' sixteenth birthday, and two weeks after the latest kidnapping & ransom attempt, a Turk summoned Rufus to his father's office.
Rufus amused himself on the approach by making his shoes echo against the stone flooring. It wasn't unusual to be called to his father's office for something, but most meetings were scheduled a day or two beforehand.
The Turk, a middle-aged woman with box-brown hair named Bola, stopped at the top of the staircase while Rufus walked to the front of his father's desk.
"You wanted to see me, father?"
His father looked him up and down, then nodded. "I've decided on your birthday present," he said abruptly, as if Rufus would follow his train of thought
"I'll look forward to it, sir."
"Hmph." So, not quite the right answer, but not entirely wrong. "It will take some time to prepare, but Scarlet has been held up in Junon and there's no sense wasting the meeting block. With me."
"Yes, sir." Even if he was simply being slotted into a free space, a part of Rufus was glad - that his father was making time for this now meant he'd put thought into Rufus' gift, into Rufus, rather than leaving it for Verdot or a junior Turk to pick up last minute.
(Rufus wasn't proud of his snooping, but his father insisted on receipts for everything and that made it easy to tell if he was the one to buy something. Rufus' fourteenth birthday present had been bought the morning of, and in Midgar while his father was on a helicopter from Costa del Sol.)
Rufus followed his father back to the executive elevator, a pace behind and to his father's right where Heidegger usually walked; Bola was on his left. They picked up a few security officers at the Conference floor, then his father led Rufus to the entrance to R&D.
Rufus kept his stride and expression smooth, even if he switched to muffling his steps when they left the carpet of the Conference level for the metal of R&D; Bola scuffed her shoes the way Turks usually did when they wanted to make noise, and Rufus refused to be grateful that she didn't go silent.
Rufus didn't know the R&D floors well and he usually liked it that way, but it made their path a little disorienting as they bypassed Hojo's laboratories entirely. The exposed metal of the walls bounced sound oddly, and the green light of mako tanks was cold - which was doubly disturbing given that Rufus usually thought the light of the reactors from his bedroom window was warm and comforting.
Two more security doors, opened by a trooper with his father's keycard, and they entered a moderately-sized lab. The officers fanned out around the door while Bola and Rufus followed his father toward a thin man in a lab coat.
"Mr. President!" The scientist beamed at them, putting down his clip board, and had the good sense not to try and shake his father's hand. "Thank you for making time for this project."
"Your work has promise, Dr. Porkins. This is an excellent opportunity for a feasibility study."
Ah. Rufus didn't let his disappointment show on his face. This wasn't about him at all, just a chance to efficiently combine social obligation with profit-seeking.
"Still, I'm honoured by the trust you're putting in me and my procedure."
Rufus took in the room the way he'd been taught, facing his father but not looking directly at him. The walls were lined with specimen tanks, which contained what looked like guard hounds in various stages of growth. Or at least, the more mature ones looked like guard hounds; Rufus hadn't covered fetal development in biology yet. There were microscopes and pipettes on the desk in the middle of the room, and two plastic chairs beside it.
"Only the best for a Shinra. And given the recent security concerns-" his father pointedly didn't look at the Turk, "-I'm sure you understand the necessity of excellence in our protection details."
"Of course, of course." Porkins gestured toward his equipment. "If the young sir could follow me?"
If Rufus was understanding correctly… Well. He'd always wanted a dog. At least his father got that much right.
His father tipped his head toward Porkins, so Rufus followed the scientist to the desk. He sat in the indicated chair, and reminded himself that Porkins was taking samples, not injecting them.
Porkins chattered aimlessly about "dedicated protection" and "genetic loyalty" while Rufus rolled his shirtsleeve up and allowed Porkins to prepare & perform the blood draw. Rufus almost wished the scientist was less affable: Hojo was creepy, but at least he was honest about it. Scientists who cared about ethics usually ended up in Urban Planning, not R&D.
A hound that was loyal to Rufus above everything, everyone else sounded pretty good, though.
It was only one vial of blood; the scientist set it in a test tube rack, dropped the needle in a yellow box, and stripped off his gloves. "Do you have any further questions, Mr. President?"
"Your briefing was appropriately thorough."
"Thank you, sir. I assume the Turk is here to ensure any excess sample is destroyed?"
"Genetic privacy, I'm sure you understand."
"Do I," Porkins muttered, then returned to full volume. "And with that-" he brushed his hands together theatrically, "- you just need to choose your hound, Mr. Rufus."
"Are there any criteria I should be aware of?" Rufus asked, ostensibly of Porkins but while looking at his father.
His father dipped his chin in acknowledgment, but let the scientist speak.
"Pick any you like. Rows R through W are the right development stage, but if nothing suits the young sir we can grow one custom." Porkins scribbled something on his clipboard. "Colour is associated with intended purpose, for ease of identification in the field, but it's a simple enough thing to alter."
Rufus walked to the indicated wall and scanned the tanks. These hounds looked like actual puppies, the kind of thing he saw on advertisements with happy families in picturesque parks, but they had none of the energy he associated with those images. They floated in the mako solution, their skin mostly shades of black, red, and grey, and his attention was caught by the hound in tank S7. It was a purple-ish black on top, a paler purple on its belly. There was nothing else special about it, it didn't wiggle or blow bubbles, its ears and tail were the same length as those of the hounds around it. There were even a few other similarly-coloured hounds scattered around the room, in different stages of development.
Rufus always had liked purple.
"This one," he said.
"S7? Mm, good lines, that one, meant for escort rather than the front, excellent choice."
Rufus kept his eyes on S7. He heard the scientist babbling something about "telomeres" and "empathic links;" his father was nodding along, asking about weapons compatibility.
Rufus turned so no one could see his face. "Hi," he whispered to the hound in the tank. "I look forward to meeting you."
His father arranged lessons in guard hound care & handling the same way he had arranged for Rufus to learn marksmanship & hand-to-hand combat: efficiently, and with the expectation of regular reports.
A Turk escorted him to the Public Security training facility on Monday afternoons, after his calculus lessons. Monday evenings were for supper with his father and relating his progress with training.. at least on the nights his father bothered to show up; if he didn't, Rufus was expected to write a report and leave it on his father's home desk.
Rufus worked with a series of different officers & hounds over the weeks, and Rufus didn't ask if they had volunteered or been picked by Heidegger. They didn't quite seem to know how to treat him and waffled between firm & deferential, which was annoying. But they were thorough, starting from basics like verbal & signed commands and working up to combat sim training with rubber bullets. They covered care like feeding and minor wound treatment, and how to tell if an issue was serious enough he needed to bring his hound to the labs. They didn't talk about links, though, or any of the other "special features" Porkins had mentioned.
Rufus read every piece of dog training advice he could get his hands on. Some of it was less applicable to guard hounds - the grooming needs were different, for a start - but the principles of reinforcement and randomness vs consistency still applied. When Verdot brought Rufus pet store catalogues he pored over them, even if a lot of the toys would be shredded by a guard hound's teeth. He thought long and hard about a name.
While he was in public, Rufus watched the troopers with their guard hounds. On patrol, on watch, in training. The hounds who had regular handlers seemed to have some affection for the officers - they'd lean against their officer's leg sometimes when at rest, or press their head against their officer's hand for scratches during training. But they were all skittish, wound tight and prone to snapping at strangers.
Rufus didn't want that. He wanted his hound to be happy to see him and confident at his side: a friend and secret keeper and something that only cared about him.
And when Rufus gave the wrong command during a lesson and the hound gave Rufus a warning nip, he learned what happened to hounds who disobeyed. The officers weren't so crass as to destroy the hound in front of him - and that was the word they used, "destroyed," when Rufus arrived for his next lesson and asked why he would be working with a different animal that day. The hound hadn't been assigned a dedicated handler, but he had expected at least one of the officers to be regretful.
It was ridiculous. The animal hadn't even broken his skin, and Rufus could admit he had moved too quickly, too close to the hound's face. Killing the hound was a waste of resources. And it was procedure.
So. If his hound ever hurt Rufus - or worse, his father - it would be killed, and Rufus refused to let that happen. He took care of things which belonged to him.
There were changes around the house too. Rufus had to use the guest bathroom for a few days while workers installed a Public Security-approved "waste management system" for guard hounds in his ensuite. His hound wouldn't need to be walked to relieve itself, and therefore would not expose his location during a lockdown. That said, to Rufus the convenience of not needing to walk in bad weather was by itself worth losing a few feet of vanity space.
An oversized dog bed appeared in his room while he was out, the same colour as the one he'd admired in a catalogue, along with a bowl & water dish in the dining room; a week before Rufus' birthday another freezer was installed in the kitchen and stocked with monster meat & supplements.
Then, finally, Rufus' sixteenth birthday arrived.
Rufus waited in the living room with his father, and kept his feet from tapping impatiently.
His father turned his unlit cigar in his fingers. "What will you name it?"
"Darkstar."
His father squinted at him for a moment, then shook his head. "Better than Stamp."
"I wouldn't want to waste the PR's department's hard work by using 'Stamp' for a weapon."
"Indeed."
Darkstar was led into the room by a trooper with a red scarf; Rufus suspected it was one of his trainers, but was too busy examining his dog to suss out the man.
Darkstar paced obediently on the lead. She'd grown more than the guidebooks said, from puppy-sized to late adolescent in just a few months - her legs were still a little gangly for her build, and she had room to fill out. He could see her tilt her head to get a better idea of the room, but her movements were subdued like the hounds he'd worked with rather than the dogs in the guidebooks; he wondered whether that was trained into her too. The leash itself was black leather, attached to a black leather collar that was already equipped with healing materia.
"Sir," the trooper said as he stopped in front of Rufus. "I present S7 of '93."
"Thank you for accompanying it from the labs," Rufus said. He held out his hand for the leash.
"Trade," the trooper said as he handed it over, and Darkstar swapped easily to Rufus' side. The trooper had Rufus & Darkstar run through a series of commands - sit, stay, heel, target, drop, heal - and she listened beautifully, not distracted by the new environment or when the trooper intentionally tried to confuse her with orders which contradicted Rufus'.
Rufus looked at his father and waited for the verdict.
"Acceptable."
Rufus let a real smile show. "Thank you, father. It's worth the wait."
His father waved it off, but Rufus was relieved it was the right response. "Porkins will be in touch next week to discuss link training."
After his father had dismissed him, Rufus went directly to his bedroom. With the door safely shut behind them, he unclipped Darkstar's lead. "At ease," he said, like the trainers had taught him. He expected her to investigate the room, and him, but she simply sat on the floor and looked at him, tentacle held still.
Oh. Oh he was going to buy her so many toys, until they found one she was willing to play with. And chewing bones, and a better collar, and more materia-
But first. He sat on his rug, careful not to block her in or corner her, and scooted awkwardly toward her. She just watched him approach, though her tentacle curled down toward the floor.
"Hello," he said quietly. He didn't actually expect her to understand his words - guard hounds were smart, and her series more so, but they weren't human. She should understand his unthreatening tone, though. "I'm Rufus, and your name is Darkstar," he said, slowly raising his hand. He touched the back of her furless head, and she didn't shy away or pin her ears back. "I'm so glad to meet you." He slid his fingers so he could rub behind her ear; she leaned into the pressure, just a little, and her tail wagged in tiny increments.
"We'll protect each other, and once we're out from under my father's thumb we won't need anybody else."