Favorite Lines from Hidden Machinery
Everytime I do an editing pass, I always crack up at these parts. It's fun to read them in isolation like this. 🤣
Its rotary phones came in delicate shades of puce.
It should be noted here, as a matter of record, that while Janelle Levitz is capable of many forms of charm, she hates Tori with a passion usually reserved for power outages and unsalted fries.
The appendices were even stranger. A floor map of the sixty-second level was obscured by gray redaction bars labeled CLASSIFIED CLEARANCE REQUIRED. Corridors ended abruptly in black rectangles. Even the bathrooms were marked Restricted. She traced the lines with her pen, trying to imagine what kind of workplace required such secrecy.
“A committee with more than five members will never reach a decision on time. A committee with more than nine will never reach a decision at all. When in doubt, propose a subcommittee.”
Tori wasn’t a saboteur. At least, not yet.
But as she lay staring at the ceiling, one thought refused to let her rest: if Simple Sabotage had fallen into the wrong hands, Shinra would have a problem.
And if it had landed in the right ones—
Well, that would depend entirely on the kind of assistant she decided to become.
Director Lazard Deusericus, who in the recruitment brochure had been described as “a picture of composed leadership,” was sprawled on the floor in what could only be described as systematic defeat.
“Ah, Ms. Sutton,” Lazard managed, offering her a smile that was only partly soot-stained. “Apologies. We weren’t expecting combustion this early in the morning.”
“No worries,” she said mildly. “Happens to everyone on a Monday.”
Lazard stopped, and she nearly ran into him. He swung open a glass-covered panel and gestured to it with an overly rehearsed:
“This switchboard is your lifeline. Yellow for emergencies. Red for escalated emergencies. White for anything involving Sephiroth. Never confuse them. One of my former assistants pressed the wrong one and we evacuated the entire floor by aerial dispatch.”
Tori stared at the buttons. “Sir…?”
“You’ll find a parachute strapped under your desk,” he said by way of explanation. “There's also a flotation device and a bulletproof vest. Improbability does not exist in this department, Ms. Sutton. You must prepare for the unimaginable.”
He closed the panel and resumed walking.
“Focus,” he warned, the single word low enough to tighten every spine in the room. “If your attention strays beyond these walls while a threat stands before you, pray the distraction’s worth it.”
He lowered Masamune and let his attention track the path of their interest.
There was no reproach in his expression, or any sign of annoyance for the disruption. Only an unwavering notice, as if he could see past the barrier, past her blouse and notebook and newness, and identify the exact shape of her reaction to him.
Kovacs lifted her eyes from a chipped cuticle. “Copier’s still down.”
“It’s been broken since last Wednesday,” she said. “Keeps throwing a ‘no input detected’ error. Sometimes it beeps. Sometimes it hisses.”
“We call it The Demon.” Orla nodded. “It’s possessed.”
At that, a strange and completely miraculous flicker of hope sparked in Tori’s chest.
Broken machinery. Now that was a problem she could fix.
Her entire tenure at the Service Center had been littered with malfunctioning equipment. Paper jams, toner explosions, error codes written in what may as well have been script; she had seen it all. Once, she had even talked a junior executive out of throwing a late model printer off the rooftop ledge, deescalating what could have been a minor setback in equipment inventory.
“Let’s go meet The Demon,” she said, standing with a little more purpose than she had all morning.
Tori faltered. There was something deeply surreal about watching the most lethal SOLDIER browse through the flavored coffee options.
Not in the simplistic way people used that word—cloying or sweet or soft—but in its rarer form. Steadfast. Fierce. The kind of resolve that shrugged off embarrassment and clawed its way toward usefulness, no matter how graceless the beginning.
“Henrietta Larkspur,” he said, reverently. “Space Program. Palmer’s assistant.”
Tori started. “That’s Palmer’s assistant?”
“I know. Try not to stare directly at her or your brain might melt. Palmer’s over there double-fisting lobster rolls, and Henrietta’s coordinating a rocket launch using her elbows.”
There he was. The war hero. The company’s silver sword.
Reading glasses, judging by their shape. Silver-rimmed and resting low on the bridge of his nose. He wore a simple black dress shirt, the collar unbuttoned, sleeves pushed to his forearms. There was no armor or elaborate uniform, only fitted slacks and an uncharacteristically relaxed posture. He leaned over a silver laptop as if resigned to completing a corporate compliance module.
A half-peeled orange he was segmenting with deft fingers.
That was what halted her. His hands, renowned for their lethality, moved with a quiet, almost unassuming grace. She found herself snared by the motion. The contrast between his fearsome reputation and this small act of everyday mundanity was disorienting.
Tori had seen him a thousand times in Shinra marketing collateral: flanked by firelight, serpentine and majestic, the wind catching his hair as if it were some divine shroud.
This resembled a doctor completing his residency. Or a particularly suave adjunct professor who spent his evenings moonlighting as a weapon of mass destruction.
Tori began her second week in SOLDIER with a single, decisive act:
Not for a weapon. (Not yet anyway.) Just the holster. A warm, soft-grain leather rig with a shoulder harness and padded straps that cinched neatly across her waist. She adjusted it twice in the warped mirror of the Turk Surplus Shop, then a third time before deciding she liked its weight.
Now that she was thinking clearly, the signs had been there.
The hyper-efficiency. The jittery, always-on-alert posture. The way they drifted through the office like cryptids caught in the daylight, bright-eyed and pallid.
“Ladies,” she said, smacking the paper on the desk like it was a soul-binding contract. “Pick a day this week. You’re taking it off.”
Their reactions were instantaneous and nearly identical: stunned silence followed by an outburst of protests.
"But… what about reception?" Choufleur asked.
"Who will field calls?" Kovacs added.
Orla just stared at her, wide-eyed, as if Tori had suggested they all jump from the roof.
“One day,” Tori said, holding up a finger. “Just one. Go. Live. Be human again.”
Lazard blinked. “You’re not panicking.”
“I’ll panic later,” Tori deflected with a wave of her hand. “In private. Preferably in the supply closet.”
“There,” Kovacs declared, folding the collar inward to frame her now-exposed collarbones. “A little décolletage goes a long way.”
Tori’s breath caught. “That's a lot of décolletage.”
“You’re fine,” Kovacs said coolly. “Scarlet shows more than this on purpose.”
“I’m not Scarlet,” Tori whispered, horrified.
“Of course you’re not,” Choufleur murmured, brushing feather-light foundation across Tori’s cheeks. “But the woman knows what she’s doing in a room full of power-hungry men. You must utilize every advantage, Ms. Sutton.”
“I’m—what are you doing to my skirt?!”
She should not affect him this strongly.
It was her eyes that did it.
Bright. Green. The vivid, luminous kind only mako could explain. Cure Materia at full charge.
Sephiroth sank a little deeper in his chair and laced fingers over his mouth.
There was only one word for the emotion running through him.
What unfolds next in the President’s boardroom will one day eclipse the very project it was created to defend. It will be immortalized in university case studies, pored over in late-night cram sessions, and invoked by professors who swear they once knew someone who knew someone who was almost in the room that day. It will become the gold standard of institutional persuasion: the model everyone cites and no one successfully imitates.
Because despite countless seminars and corporate trainings, no subsequent attempt will ever capture the alchemy Tori Sutton and her team are about to unleash.
Future seminars will brand it under electrifying titles: S-Class Presentation Strategy, Pitching in High-Stakes Environments, and the perennial favorite, How to Get the President to Sign Off on a Proposal in Under Fifteen Minutes Without Crying.
But today, it happens live.
The lights go off, and a blue wash from the holoscreen plunges the board into darkness. Cheekbones catch the glow. Breath gathers in a single, suspended hush as the screen above the table flares to life.
Two minutes and twenty-one seconds past their timeslot, Director Lazard Deusericus begins his pitch with a proverbial bang.
He pressed a hand over his eyes. “Confound it all, Hart. You’ve done it again. Pulled a firearm on a lady.”
“I don’t even know where to start,” Lazard said, flustered. Tori stood next to him, their backs facing Sephiroth as they assessed the paperwork.
“You said you preferred a modular approach,” Tori replied gently. “Wouldn’t it make sense to start with the first tier? Get your feet wet, so to speak?”
“I did say that,” Lazard muttered, as though surprised he’d had a coherent thought in the past year.
Sephiroth listened, the corner of his mouth ticking ever so slightly upward.
“Or,” Tori added, “we can focus on the training branch and rollout strategy, and then I can prompt you with ‘if/then’ logic until you find your rhythm.”
“Prompted agreement. I love it.”
“And maybe have a few of your cheddar crackers before the meeting,” she added lightly. “Your blood sugar is going to crash and then you’ll start over-apologizing to everyone, and that’s exhausting for all involved.”
“I do over-apologize,” Lazard admitted, patting his jacket as if looking for the crackers on cue.
📕You can read the full fic here: Hidden Machinery.
