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"I was thinking I would get my hands on an executive ID card and use the executive elevators, since they're a straight shot to the first floor. There's bound to be an executive ID card somewhere on this floor. But I don't know how I could fight my way through the whole city..."
In FFVII, after Cloud and co. find that Sephiroth killed the President, they make their escape using the executive elevators to get to the ground floor, and then the vehicles on display on the second floor marketplace and drive their way down a massive highway built over the technometropolis of Midgar that leads out of it. The reasoning behind stealing the display vehicle keys was to prevent such a thing (like I mentioned earlier, kind of meta but not too illogical so I let y'all have it).
"Look, I want to apologize for... you know..." you say, the deep, sympathetic pain in your heart coming to the fore. Tifa looks at you incredulously. She doesn't believe you! "No, really, I am sorry! And I forgive you for killing my men!"
Tifa just stares at you, dumbfounded, then winds back her arm and punches you in the face, and you only feel an instant of pain before you are engulfed in the sweet embrace of darkness.
~~~
You are suddenly jolted back to reality by the sensation of cold water splashing on your face and body. You gasp and manage to get enough water in your mouth to gurgle and choke as you try to cry out to no avail. Soon, the flow of the water stops, and you spend a solid minute coughing and trying to catch your breath. Eventually you manage to look up and see that Tifa has apparently dumped the several-gallon container of water that had been on the water cooler all over you. "Is that really necessary?!" you shout, furious. You realize you can't see out of your left eye, as it and your eyelids have swollen up and probably turned a dark purple.
"We don't have time to mess around, now are you going to help me or not?" she says coldly, towering over you. Incidentally, because you're laying on your back and she's standing over you, you can see up her skirt. White, glorious white. You really need to get laid.
You already made your decision a while ago. You banish those thoughts from your mind and summon your discipline. "Yeah, I'll help you. Taking the executive elevators down is a good idea, but like you said, you have no ideas for getting out of Midgar, right?" you ask, pulling the keys to the few display vehicles out of your pockets and holding them up. "There's some cars and a motorcycle in the second floor gallery. You can jump onto the unfinished overhead highway from the first floor and ride that to the end, which is just outside the city and there should be some way of getting to the ground from there since it's a construction site," you say.
"That's... actually not a terrible idea," Tifa says, surprised. "It's got better odds than anything else I could think up, at least." She takes the keys from you.
"Now, we're even," you say. "But before you start your escape attempt, I'm gonna need a favor." Tifa eyes you warily, waiting to hear what it is. "Beat me up. I need to make this convincing to my bosses." She smiles a strange sort of predatory smile that makes you very uncomfortable. She begins to crack her knuckles, a very unnecessary display of intimidation considering you're well aware that she could kill you with her bare hands like a man clubbing an innocent baby seal who doesn't recognize the danger of humans.
"No, we'll be even after this," Tifa says, and she raises a fist and bends over you, her immaculate and tremendous breasts jiggling against her thin white tanktop just a bit and providing you with one last little tease before she proceeds to beat the everliving shit out of you. It's not long before you pass out under her relentless assault, probably wishing you had told her to be gentle.
~~~
The next time you wake up, it's in a hospital bed in the actual infirmary of the building. The morning sun is shining through the blinds of the window. You see that your left leg is suspended with same cables, and in a cast. Your right arm is also in a cast and laying on your chest, and you can feel the last cast on your neck. Your entire body feels like you got hit by a train. Judging by the fact that you aren't lying in a ditch and dead, you reckon that your superiors probably do not suspect your betrayal. That's good. That means this whole mess is done and over with, and you can finally take your well-earned vacation.
The quiet tranquility leaves you with a chance to finally think about everything that happened. All of your men are dead. You can still see their faces in your head, but you were never really that close to them. Sure, you shared jokes and stories and had a strong working relationship with them, but you didn't know them as people, really. Most of the guys in this job are the kinds of guys who have money and influence enough to be assigned to the least dangerous guard job in all of Shinra Electric Co. Most of your men were in that category, and they saw this as a boring nine-to-five job that they constantly bitched about. The management knew well enough to recruit a fair amount of competent guys too, like you, but it doesn't change the fact that your men were mostly losers and cowards. Losing them shouldn't hurt at all, but they were still your responsibility, and even though you were off-duty and none of this was your problem, you feel like you failed them.
Glancing over, you can see your wallet, phone, and other personal items on the desk beside your bed. You could grab one of them, but you don't care to. You're a mess. Right now you just want to recover ASAP so that you can blow all of your hard-earned gil on hookers and liquor.
With the continued silence of the room, your mind wanders and you think about Sephiroth, and the fact that the President is dead. It's surreal. Sephiroth was the greatest hero of the Wutai war. He's supposed to be dead. Why has he been in hiding all this time, and what would make him betray Shinra like that? How did he get into Midgar without anyone seeing him? How did he get all the way up the building without anyone seeing him? He's definitely one of the best, if not the best, but it's not a matter of skill or training or experience. It's flatly impossible.
Which reminds you, you have no idea if Tifa made it out.
Your musings are interrupted by a cute blonde nurse peeking in the door's window and seeing that you are awake. She enters the room with a broad smile. "Oh, Mr. Westford, you're up! Great! How are you feeling?"
"I've been worse," you say, but that's patently untrue. Still, you kind of want to impress the lady. She is pretty hot. Why are nurses always so damn hot? Is it the uniform?
"Oh, you!" she says vivaciously, putting her hands on her hips. "Are you hungry? Thirsty?"
"Little of both, really," you say, again downplaying the fact that you're utterly starving. She gives you another smile, an assurance that she'll bring you breakfast in a jiffy, and hastily departs the room.
Time passes and you begin to wonder just where the heck the nurse went. Breakfast doesn't take this long to wrangle up...
Eventually, the door opens and a crotchety-looking middle-aged man with a hell of a beard strolls in. You instantly recognize him - he's General Heidegger, Head of the Department of Public Safety of Shinra Electric Co. In other words, he's the commander of the military and only takes orders from the President himself. He looks you over and promptly produces the most obnoxious laugh you've ever heard. "Gya haa haa haa!" he roars, hurting your ears. "So this is the man who took down AVALANCHE! What a sad sight!"
You try to salute him, but your hand is preoccupied. He shakes his head, still rumbling with chuckles. "No, no, at ease, soldier. I'm merely ribbin' ya! Yer a hero to the world, ya know! Rufus has ordered ya to be given the Star of Shinra, a Purple Heart, and a double promotion to Major, effective immediately!" You raise an eyebrow in surprise. You expected a promotion and a pay raise, but not two promotions and the highest honor in the entire Public Safety branch to be given to you. "Yeh, yer on the fast track now! I've got my eye on ya, in case ya get a little too greedy and try 'ta get my position!" he says with a serious face, then laughs boisterously again at his terrible joke. You wish you could cover your ears, but that would be disrespectful.
"I mean no disrespect, sir, but why me? I was just the right guy in the right place at the right time." General Heidegger settles down and looks you over, then nods.
"Yeh, that's how it goes. It doesn't change the fact that you stopped what several SOLDIERs couldn't. So we've started a huge media campaign about ya! Yer famous, son! Gonna be famous for the rest of yer life! And just so ya know, Rufus said yer gonna get quadruple what ya would normally make in a year as a Major for every public appearance ya make!" You can barely believe it. If the General himself wasn't here telling you all of this, you would probably dismiss it as a cruel prank.
"Sir, what about my failure to watch the prisoners?" you ask abruptly. It has been nagging at you for a while. Heidegger laughs again.
"Oh, ya mean the lady who beat the piss outta ya and escaped on the display truck? She's small fry. She didn't even try to save her friend! What a cowardly bitch! Gya haa haa haa! She's the only survivin' member of AVALANCHE, so it's not like she can do anything now except go into hidin'. To be frank, son, nobody cares about that. Ya already solved that little issue by killin' her compatriot and cripplin' the other one."
You sigh heavily. Heidegger notices and pats you on your sore shoulder. "Ah, don't be down, son. We've got some Turks trackin' her down already. She won't get far." You manage to give a little smile. "Oh, and Major Westford, Rufus also said the company'd pay for you to get Materia treatments so you get out of this borin' room real quick. I'm sure the specialist will be here in a few days, poor fellow's stuck with a lot of cases worse than ya at the moment. That bitch did a number on quite a few other troopers."
"Really? Wow," you say. Materia treatments are super expensive, something only the rich can really afford. But there's something else on your mind, and it might just be the painkillers, but you think you're gonna ask it even though it's a dumb thing to do. "Sir, what about that other girl that was in the office with me? I think her name was Aeris?" Immediately, Heidegger's face hardens and all the laughs are gone. You kind of prefer his dumb jokes to the glare he is giving you now.
"She's confidential and need-to-know only, Major. Of course you would be curious considering the kinds of things you heard, but you understand full well the importance of keeping secrets, and how valuable that is to the company." Oh. You get it now. The crazy accolades, the promotion, being famous - it's all so that you keep your mouth shut about what you saw and heard. You immediately understand that if you do start flapping your gums, Shinra will do everything in its power to destroy you. Who knows how much dirt they've already got on you, ready to fire at a moment's notice? Maybe they would even sic the Turks on you.
"Understood, sir. I will not disclose confidential information," you say.
"Gya haa haa haa! I knew you'd understand! Good boy! I'm glad to have you in my department! Now, I'll get out of your hair. Have a nice breakfast!" he said, laughing yet again on his way out.
The nurse comes in shortly afterward with a tray of eggs, bacon, flapjacks, syrup, butter, hashbrowns, and basically every other breakfast item anyone might want on a platter. She smiles at you and sets the platter up so that you can eat from it, then 'accidentally' drops a pen from her pocket and bends over to pick it up, naturally giving you a good look at her fine rear in her tight nurse's outfit. She winks at you and strolls out of the room to leave you with your breakfast. Hey, she forgot the jam for the toast...
~~~
A few days later, you're totally glad to see the Materia specialist show up, because you're damn tired of watching TV or looking out the window all day with only the flirtations of your nurse (who you have no doubt was flat-out hired by Shinra to treat you and only you considering she's always at your beck and call) to spice the day up. You enjoy her hitting on you, and you hit on her right back, but the idea of banging her leaves a bad taste in your mouth. It's like Shinra thinks they can buy your loyalty with T&A. They're probably right, of course, but you have some pride left as a man and you do not intend to give it up that easily. Or so you keep telling yourself, whenever she bends over towards you to check your IV and gives you a view of her ample cleavage thanks to leaving just the right amount of buttons on her outfit undone.
The Materia specialist quickly pulls out a green orb from his briefcase and focuses on it, and a soft green glow spills over your entire body, the dull soreness quickly fading away. The procedure takes a minute at the most, and then you're totally 100% again. Your bones are healed, your bruises and scrapes are all gone. Materia are amazing! The specialist cuts your casts open for you, freeing you to move around as you wish, and then hastily leaves to get to his next appointment. You're free! You swing your legs off the bed and sit up, and get dizzy from the sudden movement after days of laying in bed. You'll need to take things easy for now, but you're so bored that you've gotta do something.
What do you do?
A) Go hunt down that nurse and proposition her
B) Go up to the employee gym floor and try working out a bit to get a headstart on regaining your fitness and see how far you've fallen
C) Go hunt down that nurse and proposition her
D) Go on a walk through the building, maybe check out the market for something fun
E) Go hunt down that nurse and proposition her
F) Go to the garden courtyard on floor 18 and be one with nature for a while
G) Go hunt down that nurse and proposition her
H) Definitely go hunt down that nurse and proposition her
I) Other (go hunt down that nurse and proposition her)
Character Sheet
Name: Marcus "Maverick" Westford
Class: Ranger
Profession: Major of the Shinra Peacekeeping Corps, Department of Public Safety
Age: 23
Inner Nature: X
Dominant Inner Nature: None
Status: Fine
B, since our chain of command is basically showering us with cool shit, let's make the most of it for our career. Random, can we request some some sort of special training for ourselves?
We need to get back into shape. The girl was really... enthusiastic in the hurting-us part of the plan. Time (and money) enough for other things later.