Before she stood in that sterile, high-security chamber on the top floor of the Shinra Executive Tower, Elena had already made her choice. It hadn’t been a sudden decision—it was born from months of watching her world collapse in slow motion.
Her father, once a proud employee of Shinra's maintenance division, had been laid off after a facility downsizing. Her mother, ill from mako exposure in the lower sectors, needed medication that only Shinra’s private clinics could provide—at prices they could never afford. Her younger brother was barely twelve and already dodging recruiters for gang-run courier rings in Sector 6. And her older sister, once a proud Turk herself, had vanished on an off-book mission Elena was never told about.
Elena had graduated top of her class in Shinra’s Public Security cadet program. But promotions in that branch meant little—petty assignments, routine patrols, dead-end futures. She needed more. Her family needed safety. In Midgar, that meant protection from Shinra—or within it.
And the Turks? They were more than soldiers. They were ghosts. Executives with pistols. Loyalty given form. To join them was to gain status, immunity, and income far beyond anything Public Security could offer.
But the cost was everything: identity, emotion, history. The Turks didn’t hire. They absorbed.
Elena knew what she had to do. She had submitted her request, gone through the vetting. And when the summons finally came—no ceremony, just an elevator code—she packed a single bag, left a note for her brother, and climbed into a steel capsule that carried her far above the slums.
She was ready to burn the past.
She was ready to become something else.
She was desperate enough to make any sacrifice.
***
The elevator hummed as it rose to the top floor of the Shinra Executive Tower, each passing second stretching Elena’s nerves taut. This was it. No more theory. No more drills. No more hiding behind her sister’s name or legacy.
She had asked for this.
The doors slid open with a quiet hiss, revealing a sterile chamber of steel and black marble. No furniture. No guards. Just the skyline of Midgar behind a wall of reinforced glass—and in front of it, Rufus Shinra.
He didn’t turn as she stepped in, her boots clicking faintly against the polished floor. The heavy air pressed down on her shoulders like a weight.
“Elena,” he said.
“Sir,” she answered.
She stood in her cadet uniform—creased from travel, worn from use. It suddenly felt childish. Her badge glinted in the light, the last symbol of her past life.
Rufus finally turned. His pale eyes studied her—not with curiosity, but as a craftsman inspecting raw material.
“You want to join the Turks,” he said.
“I do.”
“Why?”
The expected question. But no amount of rehearsed lines made it easier. Elena drew a breath.
“I want to be useful,” she said. “I want to protect Shinra from within. And…” Her voice nearly cracked, but she steadied it. “The pay. The status. The security. I need them.”
There it was—the unpolished truth. Her family was gone. The slums weren’t forgiving. Becoming a Turk wasn’t just a dream—it was survival, disguised in a suit.
Rufus nodded slowly, as if her answer confirmed something he already knew.
“The Turks are not soldiers,” he said. “They are loyal only to me. They are unseen, unknown, and untouchable. That requires more than skill. It requires transformation.”
He gestured toward a panel in the wall. It slid open to reveal a folded black suit, gloves, tie, shoes, and a fresh ID card bearing only one word: ELENA.
“This is your new skin. But before you can wear it, you must shed the old one. Completely.”
Elena looked down at her uniform.
“You will remove everything,” Rufus continued. “Not just the badge, not just the insignia. All of it. Even your underwear. Nothing of the girl who walked in here can remain.”
The words hit her like cold steel.
“I understand,” she said, though her mouth had gone dry.
Rufus stepped back. “Then prove it.”
She hesitated—not from doubt, but from the deeply human instinct to protect herself. The training uniform had never felt more suffocating. Her fingers twitched near the seams.
This is what it means to belong nowhere, she reminded herself.
She unzipped the jacket first. It slipped off her shoulders and fell silently to the floor. Beneath it, her standard-issue shirt. She removed it slowly, folding it as she had in the barracks. Each motion was deliberate, like shedding layers of her old name.
Her fingers paused at the waistband of her pants. She didn’t look at Rufus—didn’t need to. He wasn’t watching with malice. He was measuring her. And Elena knew that this wasn’t about modesty. It was about breaking the boundary between identity and obedience.
She stepped out of her boots. Then, her socks. Her pants came next, crumpling on the floor with a whisper. All that remained were her undergarments.
Her cheeks burned. Despite the cold professionalism of the moment, she was human—and a voice inside her screamed to stop.
But another voice, stronger, spoke back: Turks don’t flinch.
She reached behind her back and unfastened her bra. Her hands trembled only slightly. She folded it like the others and set it aside.
Then, her underwear.
The final piece. The last thread connecting her to Elena the cadet, Elena the sister, Elena the person.
She removed it.
And for a heartbeat, she stood completely exposed.
Not just physically—but emotionally. Every fear, every shame, every vulnerability she had ever buried rose to the surface in that moment. But she didn’t cover herself. Didn’t retreat. She stared straight ahead, her eyes fixed on the suit waiting in the wall.
She chose this.
Behind her, Rufus’s voice was cool and steady.
“This is the first and only time you will feel uncertainty. Remember it well. From this point on, you are what I say you are. You feel nothing. You regret nothing. You act without hesitation.”
He gestured toward the suit.
“Put it on.”
Elena stepped forward, her bare feet silent on the cold floor. She took the undershirt first—soft, crisp, unfamiliar. Then the slacks, perfectly tailored. The blazer felt like armor when she slid it over her arms. Gloves, tie, shoes. Each piece wrapped her like a seal, a ritual. By the time she clipped the blank ID to her collar, the past was gone.
She looked at herself in the reflection of the glass.
She wasn’t a cadet. She wasn’t a sister. She was a Turk.
And she had never looked more alone—or more certain.
Rufus nodded. “Report to Tseng. You are now operational.”
She smiled faintly and walked out of the office.
